Adds true color support #1628

veeman · 2022-03-07T10:04:16Z

Fixes #48

Added true color support.
Based on the #103 pull request implementation.

As in this implantation the struct Attribute changed to class Attribute.
Also there are now TrueColorAttribute and TrueColor definitions wich can be used as dropin classes to provide the new feature.

The abstract ConsoleDriver has two more properties which determinates the true color support state of the driver:

bool SupportsTrueColorOutput { get; }
bool UseTrueColor { get; set; }

The drivers WindowsDriver and NetDriver are extended to render the new true colors.
Also the WindowsDriver is optimized to do the rendering faster.
The CursesDriver is not touched yet and would run only in the basic color mode.

Moreover i added an exampel scenario and some basic unit test for this feature.

Currently only tested on Windows 10.

Any feedback is appreciated.

…ity mode

BDisp · 2022-03-08T00:41:45Z

I'm loving your work on this, thanks. I think for CursesDriver you will need to use can_change_color and init_color. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25091638/other-colors-in-ncurses and https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/man/curs_color.3x.html#h3-can_change_color.

…eTrueColor during AttributeWrite

NoUDerp · 2022-03-30T23:19:18Z

I'm using this to render simple canvases as a window. I made a modification for a custom constructor for TrueColorAttribute to allow providing the linux 256 color (calculated on a GPU) to avoid calculating it on the CPU, for flexibility. I'm taking quite a GC beating over the high frequency allocations of TrueColorAttribute being a reference type when I update the frame (it's video). The best solution I came up with was making the base Attributes Foreground, Background, and Value into read/write, but requires I run a modified library.

public TrueColorAttribute(TrueColor foreground, Color foreground_color4, TrueColor background, Color background_color4)
: base(foreground_color4, background_color4)
{
TrueColorForeground = foreground;
TrueColorBackground = background;
}

veeman · 2022-04-28T19:07:53Z

I looked into the ncurses library.
They provide for true color support the methods init_color and init_extended_color.
However this methods are used to define indexed rgb values which in turn can then be used to identify the color.

With the current implementation, we need some sort of mapping to these indexed colors and keep track of them.

Currently this sounds very inefficient to me. So I will not do this.

The true collor support works just fine. The NetDriver also works on Linux and Mac.

In my experience, the bottleneck for rendering various things is in the drivers using StringBuilder
that are instantiated on each run and the entire screen is reprinted.

The whole Drivers could be optimized further, but this should be another task.

tig · 2022-05-07T14:30:10Z

This PR is pretty darn exciting. I'd love to get it merged as soon as it is ready.

@veeman could you update us on your ability/plans to complete this awesome work?

Thanks!

JessicaMulein · 2022-05-14T18:06:25Z

Awesome, I still have to keep my promise to make HACC support Spectre.Console and it supports true color so this will be hot as snot!

tig

This PR is a big deal. And great.

I believe this is a breaking change and that there's probably no way to NOT make it a breaking change. Thus this PR will likely define Terminal.Gui v2.x.
The ColorPicker and other Scenarios that demo colors should be updated to use TrueColor support. I suggest that be done as separate PR's that are dependent on this one.
I've asked for some changes throughout. I did not run this code and my review was fairly superficial. We'll need many more eyes on this given the magnitude of the changes.

tig · 2022-08-04T15:32:22Z

Terminal.Gui/Core/ConsoleDriver.cs

@@ -82,6 +82,86 @@ public enum Color {
 		White
 	}

+	/// <summary>
+	/// 24bit color. Support translate it to 4bit(Windows) and 8bit(Linux) color


Change summary to:

/// Represents a 24bit color. Supports translating to 4bit (Windows) and 8bit (Linux) colors.

tig · 2022-08-04T15:33:09Z

Terminal.Gui/Core/ConsoleDriver.cs

+		/// <param name="red"></param>
+		/// <param name="green"></param>
+		/// <param name="blue"></param>
+		public TrueColor (int red, int green, int blue)


Please apply correct source code formatting to all files in this PR (hit Ctrl-K-D in VS).

Auto format applied.

Terminal.Gui/Core/ConsoleDriver.cs

tig · 2022-08-04T15:39:21Z

Terminal.Gui/Core/ConsoleDriver.cs

+	/// <summary>
+	/// Defines a true color attribute.
+	/// </summary>
+	public class TrueColorAttribute : Attribute {


I'm confused as to why this class is needed? Why not just put this into Attribute and make it so true color is the default/assumed, supporting non-truecolor as a fallback?

When would someone use this class?

As describe before we need to decide which color escape sequence we should use. To keep backward compatibility i just introduced a new TrueColorAttribute class which holds the rgb values, like in the other PR.

This method has also the advantage that you only need to create new color escape sequences when the instance reference changes. However i can not evaluate if this has further side effects.

Furthermore there is no easy way to merge basic color and truecolor attribute class because any platform defines its own basic color range. The later must be unified first.

Would it be possible to write a mapping algorithm for true color to Console Color (and vice versa)?

An approximation would be fine, I'm guessing someone has already done this elsewhere.

If we could translate between the two then we could just add the properties to Attribute and add a new true color constructor. So the pseudocode would be something like:

public class Attribute { public int RedForeground { get; } public int GreenForeground { get; } public int BlueForeground { get; } public int RedBackground { get; } public int GreenBackground { get; } public int BlueBackground { get; } public Color Foreground { get; } public Color Background { get; } public Attribute (Color foreground, Color background) { Foreground = foreground; Background = background; var m = MapToTrueColor (foreground); RedForeground = m [0]; GreenForeground = m [1]; BlueForeground = m [2]; m = MapToTrueColor(background); RedBackground = m[0]; GreenBackground = m[1]; BlueBackground = m[2]; } public Attribute (int redForeground, int greenForeground, int blueForeground, int redBackground, int greenBackground, int blueBackground) { RedForeground = redForeground; GreenForeground = greenForeground; BlueForeground = blueForeground; RedBackground = redBackground; GreenBackground = greenBackground; BlueBackground = blueBackground; Foreground = MapToBasicColor (redForeground,greenForeground,blueForeground); Background = MapToBasicColor (redBackground,greenBackground,blueBackground); } [...] }

That would allow clients to mix and match true color whenever they wanted. And even have an app that supports true color but falls back on basic colors when deployed to an older machine (with zero effort on the API consumers behalf)?

EDIT: Just realized Attribute describes both foreground and background so have updated the pseudocode.

Yeah, something like that could work. Maybe we can track the index by the lifetime of the Attribute class and use a database approach to select a free index by incrementing a static next-index value.

Apparently this is the RGB breakdown. I might pull your branch and see if a 'transparent' and backwards compatible approach can be adopted following this approach.

Name R G B

Black 00 00 00

DarkBlue 00 00 80

DarkGreen 00 80 00

DarkCyan 00 80 80

DarkRed 80 00 00

DarkMagenta 80 00 80

DarkYellow 80 80 00

DarkGray 80 80 80

Blue 00 00 FF

Green 00 FF 00

Cyan 00 FF FF

Red FF 00 00

Magenta FF 00 FF

Yellow FF FF 00

Gray C0 C0 C0

White FF FF FF

@veeman I've started working on this approach in https://github.com/tznind/gui.cs/tree/true-color

Once its ready (and assuming its viable) I will open a PR to your branch.

tig · 2022-08-04T15:42:04Z

Terminal.Gui/Core/ConsoleDriver.cs

@@ -246,109 +370,109 @@ Attribute SetAttribute (Attribute attribute, [CallerMemberName] string callerMem
 			case "TopLevel":


This whole switch statement scares me. So much brute-force code! It makes me wonder if there's a way of re-factoring it as part of this PR to use reflection or something to radically simplify it?

tig · 2022-08-04T15:44:00Z

Terminal.Gui/Core/ConsoleDriver.cs

+		/// <summary>
+		/// Determinates if the current console driver supports TrueColor output-
+		/// </summary>
+		public virtual bool SupportsTrueColorOutput { get => false; }


I'm confused as to why there's ALSO a method in CursesDriver.cs called CanColorTermTrueColor. Why not just have CursesDriver implement an override of this method?

I think this method should be named SupportsTrueColor for tersness.

This must be abstract in the ConsoleDriver.cs to force to be implemented in all drivers.

The CursesDriver currently does not implement the TrueCollorAttribute feature.
On *unix, there is no easy way to determinate if the current terminal supports color output.
Despite ncruses provides a check for color support, it tells only if the library is compiled with color output support.

The unofficial community way is to check the environment variable COLORTERM for some magic values. This does the static CursesDriver.CanColorTermTrueColor function. This variable is also set under WSL, so i just retrive this information in the NetDriver.

The virtual property SupportsTrueColorOutput tells if the used driver and the used terminal environment supports color output.

The property UseTrueColor is used to decide which mode should be used. If SupportsTrueColorOutput is set then UseTrueColor is also set, but can be uesed to enter baisc color rendering.

tig · 2022-10-14T22:45:38Z

Marked for the v2.0 milestone.

Using the PR "Adds true color support gui-cs#1628" from gui-cs/Terminal.Gui (https://github.com/gui-cs/Terminal.Gui/pull/1628/files), I added true color support to the Terminal.

…-support

veeman · 2022-11-29T16:59:04Z

I merged this PR on the latest devel branch.

The WindowsDriver and NetDriver is feature complete however should be performance tested.

Attached an image of the True Colors ui catalogue scenario:

The CursesDriver can currently not be extended (i have no plan how to do this) with the current attributes architecture to provide color output. ncurses needs pre initialized indexed color values which is not compatible with the current implementation.

BDisp · 2022-11-29T17:02:31Z

The CursesDriver can currently not be extended (i have no plan how to do this) with the current attributes architecture to provide color output. ncurses needs pre initialized indexed color values which is not compatible with the current implementation.

Great work thanks. Do you have any idea how to achieve that?

tznind · 2022-12-04T13:29:11Z

@veeman I've created a PR here veeman#2 with some improvements and changes. Including this new Scenario for opening images:

Note: You can see that when toggling true/non-true color the exact RGB values rendered on screen change. I need to dig into why this is but I think its because each console will render Color.X to a slightly different RGB value (which might prove a problem).

tig · 2023-03-03T22:31:42Z

We need to retarget this PR at the v2_develop branch.

tig · 2023-08-09T21:06:09Z

Done! See #2612

(and #2729)

veeman added 12 commits March 1, 2022 16:03

define Attribute class instead of struct and thus more dynamic

9f39cb8

adapt TrueColor implementation for WindowsDriver

52f28cd

use long field names in TrueColor struct

139f463

adapt TrueColor implementation for NetDriver

10204d4

improve basic color rendering speed in WindowsDriver

f8e91d1

expose TrueColor support properties

0196299

fixup ColorScheme setup, allow to pass unit tests

9e8da20

provide Default Attribute, allow to pass unit tests

8d4a569

adjust TrueColorAttribute impl to work also in basic color compatibil…

b2b7197

…ity mode

cleanup TrueColor struct, add unit tests

d355981

fix TrueColorForeground typo

9c5e891

Add TrueColor demonstration scenario

55fa5db

veeman added 3 commits March 17, 2022 21:50

adjust WSL detection, provide COLORTERM evaulation func

81adab2

NetDriver: use COLORTERM for true color support detection, respect Us…

4c6cfad

…eTrueColor during AttributeWrite

show current driver in TrueColor scene

7c36e2f

tig changed the title ~~true color support~~ Adds true color support May 7, 2022

tig requested changes Aug 4, 2022

View reviewed changes

tig added enhancement breaking-change For PRs that introduces a breaking change (behavior or API) labels Oct 14, 2022

tig added this to the v2.0 milestone Oct 14, 2022

veeman added 2 commits November 29, 2022 16:37

Merge remote-tracking branch 'gui-cs/develop' into feature/true-color…

7ce02cd

…-support

auto format code

0e6f6c1

Merge branch 'develop' into feature/true-color-support

00ef7e0

tig mentioned this pull request Feb 26, 2023

Colors: ColorSchemes refactor - Should honor terminal color settings etc... #2381

Open

3 tasks

tig removed this from the v2.0 milestone Feb 28, 2023

tig mentioned this pull request Apr 16, 2023

Colors: Update Color System (TrueColor, Blink, Underline, etc...) for v2 (Master Issue) #457

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8 tasks

tig closed this Aug 9, 2023

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Adds true color support #1628

Adds true color support #1628

veeman commented Mar 7, 2022 •

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Name	R	G	B
Black	00	00	00
DarkBlue	00	00	80
DarkGreen	00	80	00
DarkCyan	00	80	80
DarkRed	80	00	00
DarkMagenta	80	00	80
DarkYellow	80	80	00
DarkGray	80	80	80
Blue	00	00	FF
Green	00	FF	00
Cyan	00	FF	FF
Red	FF	00	00
Magenta	FF	00	FF
Yellow	FF	FF	00
Gray	C0	C0	C0
White	FF	FF	FF

		@@ -246,109 +370,109 @@ Attribute SetAttribute (Attribute attribute, [CallerMemberName] string callerMem
		case "TopLevel":

Adds true color support #1628

Adds true color support #1628

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