hard to read on light background

[bugabinga]

In terminal emulators with light backgrounds, most of onefetchs output is unreadable.

[o2sh]

Yeah, unfortunately as dark colors don't show well on black background, light colors are hard to read on white background.

I don't see how i could please everyone...

Thx for your feedback @bugabinga

[bugabinga]

I don't see how i could please everyone...

That would be hard indeed :)

However, how about these alternatives:
Offer flags for dark/light colors

$ onefetch --color=auto|light|dark|none

Maybe there is a way to use the default colors of the terminal emulator, though I admit, I don't know.

[skyfaller]

One possible solution is to have a theme that uses ansi colors, as bat does:

• Add a theme that uses terminal colors sharkdp/bat#490
• Default theme compatible with light/dark terminals sharkdp/bat#1104
• Add ansi theme to replace ansi-light and ansi-dark sharkdp/bat#1412

Delta uses more or less the same solution because it uses bat themes: dandavison/delta#447 (comment)

Is creating an ansi theme or using bat's ansi theme possible for onefetch?

[spenserblack]

Themes definitely sounds like a fun idea! I would consider it a new feature instead of a resolution to this issue. Mainly because I consider this issue resolved already due to the below points.

• onefetch supports defining your own colors via command-line options
• isn't this more of an issue of terminal configuration than onefetch output? Out of curiosity I tried onefetch --true-color never with Gruvbox Light, and it looked fine to me

Since bat and delta's themes are for syntax highlighting, I think our themes would be slightly different. No ASCII has more than 9 colors currently (swift.ascii has 9, all shades of red though). I think it would be better if this could be accomplished without changing the language macro rule and calls, which are quite long.

onefetch/src/info/langs/language.rs

Lines 175 to 323 in bc09db5

	define_languages! {
	{ Ada, Programming, "ada.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Cyan, Color::Blue] : [Color::TrueColor{r:255, g:255, b:255}, Color::TrueColor{r:0, g:24, b:201}, Color::TrueColor{r:12, g:10, b:124}] ) },
	{ Assembly, Programming, "assembly.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan] ) },
	{ AutoHotKey, Programming, "autohotkey.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Green] : [Color::TrueColor{r:255, g:255, b:255}, Color::TrueColor{r: 0x11, g: 0x98, b: 0x10}]) },
	{ Bash, Programming, "bash.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White] ) },
	{ C, Programming, "c.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::Blue, Color::Blue, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{r:93, g:108, b:191}, Color::TrueColor{r:41, g:54, b:147}, Color::TrueColor{r:57, g:73, b:170}, Color::TrueColor{r:255, g:255, b:255}] ) },
	{ Clojure, Programming, "clojure.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::Green] ) },
	{ CMake, Programming, "cmake.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::Green, Color::Red, Color::Black] ) },
	{ CoffeeScript, Programming, "coffeescript.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red] ) },
	{ Coq, Programming, "coq.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Yellow, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor {r:191, g:140, b:94}, Color::TrueColor {r:213, g:190, b:153}] ) },
	{ Cpp, Programming, "cpp.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::Blue, Color::Blue, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{r:100, g:154, b:210}, Color::TrueColor{r:0, g:66, b:131}, Color::TrueColor{r:0, g:89, b:157}, Color::TrueColor{r:255, g:255, b:255}] ), "c++" },
	{ Crystal, Programming, "crystal.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Black] ) },
	{ CSharp, Programming, "csharp.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::Magenta, Color::Magenta, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{r:155, g:79, b:151}, Color::TrueColor{r:103, g:33, b:122}, Color::TrueColor{r:128, g:55, b:136}, Color::TrueColor{r:255, g:255, b:255}] ), "c#" },
	{ Css, Markup, "css.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::White] ) },
	{ D, Programming, "d.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red] ) },
	{ Dart, Programming, "dart.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::Cyan, Color::Blue ] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:0, g:163, b:231 }, Color::TrueColor{ r:66, g:223, b:205 }, Color::TrueColor{ r:1, g:89, b:125 }] ) },
	{ Dockerfile, Programming, "dockerfile.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::White, Color::Cyan] ) },
	{ Elisp, Programming, "emacslisp.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Magenta, Color::White] ), "emacs-lisp" },
	{ Elixir, Programming, "elixir.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Magenta] ) },
	{ Elm, Programming, "elm.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::Green, Color::Yellow, Color::Cyan] ) },
	{ Emojicode, Programming, "emojicode.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Green, Color::Magenta, Color::Magenta, Color::Magenta] : [Color::TrueColor{r:119, g:178, b:85}, Color::TrueColor{r:146, g:102, b:204}, Color::TrueColor{r:170, g:141, b:216}, Color::TrueColor{r:116, g:78, b:170}] ) },
	{ Erlang, Programming, "erlang.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red] ) },
	{ Fish, Programming, "fish.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red, Color::Yellow] ) },
	{ Forth, Programming, "forth.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red] ) },
	{ FortranModern, Programming, "f90.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Green, Color::Cyan, Color::Yellow, Color::Red] ), "fortran" },
	{ FortranLegacy, Programming, "f77.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Green, Color::Cyan, Color::Yellow, Color::Red] ), "fortran-legacy" },
	{ FSharp, Programming, "fsharp.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::Cyan] ), "f#" },
	{ GdScript, Programming, "gdscript.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:69, g:141, b:192 }, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255, b:255}] ) },
	{ Go, Programming, "go.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::White, Color::Yellow] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:116, g:205, b:221 }, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255, b:255 }, Color::TrueColor{ r:246, g:210, b:162 }] ) },
	{ Graphql, Data, "graphql.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Magenta] ) },
	{ Groovy, Programming, "groovy.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::White] ) },
	{ Haskell, Programming, "haskell.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::Magenta, Color::Blue] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:69, g:58, b:98 }, Color::TrueColor{ r:94, g:80, b:134 }, Color::TrueColor{ r:143, g:78, b:139 }] ) },
	{ Haxe, Programming, "haxe.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Yellow, Color::Yellow, Color::Yellow] : [Color::TrueColor{ r: 250, g: 178, b: 11 }, Color::TrueColor{ r:246, g:153, b:18 }, Color::TrueColor{ r: 244, g: 114, b: 22 }] ) },
	{ Hcl, Programming, "hcl.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Magenta, Color::Magenta] : [Color::TrueColor{ r: 95, g: 67, b: 233 }, Color::TrueColor{ r: 64, g: 64, b: 178 }] ) },
	{ HolyC, Programming, "holyc.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Yellow, Color::Cyan, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:251, g:254 ,b:103}, Color::TrueColor{ r:11, g:68 ,b:157}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255 ,b:255} ]) },
	{ Html, Markup, "html.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red, Color::White] ) },
	{ Idris, Programming, "idris.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red] ) },
	{ Java, Programming, "java.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red, Color::Blue] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:244, g:67 ,b:54}, Color::TrueColor{ r:22, g:101 ,b:192} ] ) },
	{ JavaScript, Programming, "javascript.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Yellow] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:236, g:230 ,b:83} ]) },
	{ Json, Data, "json.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Black] ) },
	{ Jsonnet, Programming, "jsonnet.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Black] ) },
	{ Jsx, Programming, "jsx.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Yellow] ) },
	{ Julia, Programming, "julia.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Blue, Color::Green, Color::Red, Color::Magenta] ) },
	{ Jupyter, Programming, "jupyter.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Yellow, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255 ,b:255}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:112 ,b:15}, Color::TrueColor{ r:158, g:158 ,b:158} ] ), "jupyter-notebooks" },
	{ Kotlin, Programming, "kotlin.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::Yellow, Color::Magenta] ) },
	{ Lisp, Programming, "lisp.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White] ) },
	{ Lua, Programming, "lua.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::White, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:46, g:0 ,b:127}, Color::TrueColor{ r:128, g:128 ,b:128}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255 ,b:255} ] ) },
	{ LLVM, Programming, "llvm.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:152, g:1 ,b:46}] ) },
	{ Markdown, Prose, "markdown.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Red] ) },
	{ Nim, Programming, "nim.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Yellow, Color::White] ) },
	{ Nix, Programming, "nix.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::Blue] ) },
	{ ObjectiveC, Programming, "objectivec.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::Blue] ), "objective-c" },
	{ OCaml, Programming, "ocaml.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Yellow] ) },
	{ Org, Prose, "org.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Green, Color::Red, Color::White] ) },
	{ Perl, Programming, "perl.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan] ) },
	{ Php, Programming, "php.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Magenta, Color::Blue, Color::Cyan, Color::White] ) },
	{ PowerShell, Programming, "powershell.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:49, g:108, b:185}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255, b:255} ] ) },
	{ Processing, Programming, "processing.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:80, g:80 ,b:80}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255 ,b:255} ] ) },
	{ Prolog, Programming, "prolog.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White] ) },
	{ Protobuf, Programming, "protobuf.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red, Color::Blue, Color::Green, Color::Yellow] ), "protocol-buffers" },
	{ PureScript, Programming, "purescript.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White] ) },
	{ Python, Programming, "python.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::Yellow] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:47, g:105 ,b:162}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:217 ,b:64} ] ) },
	{ Qml, Programming, "qml.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Green, Color::White, Color::Green] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:128, g:195 ,b:66}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255 ,b:255}, Color::TrueColor{ r:77, g:117 ,b:40} ] ) },
	{ R, Programming, "r.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Blue] ) },
	{ Racket, Programming, "racket.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red, Color::White, Color::Blue] ) },
	{
	Perl6, Programming, "raku.ascii", define_colors!( [
	Color::Blue,
	Color::Red,
	Color::Yellow,
	Color::White,
	Color::Green
	] : [
	Color::TrueColor{ r:91, g:0, b:253 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:0, b:94 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:243, g:255, b:39 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255, b:255 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:0, g:255, b:57 }
	] ),
	"raku"
	},
	{
	Renpy, Programming, "renpy.ascii", define_colors!( [
	Color::White,
	Color::Red,
	Color::White,
	Color::Blue,
	Color::Yellow,
	Color::White,
	Color::Magenta
	] : [
	Color::TrueColor{ r:234, g:219, b:204 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:127, b:127 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:251, g:238, b:226 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:73, g:95, b:142 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:250, g:228, b:90 },
	Color::White,
	Color::TrueColor{ r:181, g:163, b:150 }
	] )
	},
	{ Ruby, Programming, "ruby.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red] : [Color::TrueColor{ r: 204, g: 52, b: 45 }] ) },
	{ Rust, Programming, "rust.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:228, g:55 ,b:23}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255 ,b:255} ] ) },
	{ Sass, Markup, "sass.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Magenta] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:205, g:103 ,b:153} ] ) },
	{ Scala, Programming, "scala.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red, Color::Red] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:223, g:63 ,b:61}, Color::TrueColor{ r:127, g:12 ,b:29} ] ) },
	{ Scheme, Programming, "scheme.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{r: 85, g:85, b:85}] ) },
	{ Sh, Programming, "shell.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Green] ), "shell" },
	{ Solidity, Programming, "solidity.ascii", define_colors!( [ Color::White, Color::Black, Color::Black, Color::Black, Color::Black] : [ Color::White, Color::TrueColor{ r: 46, g: 46, b: 46 }, Color::TrueColor{ r: 26, g: 26, b: 26 }, Color::TrueColor{ r: 51, g: 51, b: 51 }, Color::TrueColor{ r: 81, g: 81, b: 81 } ] ) },
	{ Sql, Data, "sql.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::Yellow] ) },
	{ Svelte, Markup, "svelte.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r: 255, g: 60, b: 0 }, Color::TrueColor{ r: 255, g: 255, b: 255 }] ) },
	{
	Swift, Programming, "swift.ascii", define_colors!( [
	Color::Red,
	Color::Red,
	Color::Red,
	Color::Red,
	Color::Red,
	Color::Red,
	Color::Red,
	Color::Red,
	Color::Red,
	Color::Red
	] : [
	Color::TrueColor{ r:248, g:129, b:52 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:249, g:119, b:50 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:249, g:109, b:48 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:250, g:99, b:46 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:250, g:89, b:44 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:251, g:80, b:42 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:251, g:70, b:40 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:252, g:60, b:38 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:252, g:50, b:36 },
	Color::TrueColor{ r:253, g:40, b:34 }
	] )
	},
	{ Tcl, Programming, "tcl.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::White, Color::Cyan] ) },
	{ Tex, Markup, "tex.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White, Color::Black] ) },
	{ Toml, Data, "toml.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Red, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:156, g:66, b:33}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255, b:255} ]) },
	{ Tsx, Programming, "tsx.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue] ) },
	{ TypeScript, Programming, "typescript.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Cyan, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:0, g:122, b:204}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255, b:255} ]) },
	{ Vala, Programming, "vala.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Magenta, Color::White] ) },
	{ VimScript, Programming, "vimscript.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Green, Color::Black, Color::White] ) },
	{ Vue, Programming, "vue.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Green, Color::Blue] ) },
	{ WebAssembly, Programming, "webassembly.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Magenta, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:101, g:79, b:240}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255, b:255} ]) },
	{ Xaml, Data, "xaml.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Blue, Color::White] : [Color::TrueColor{ r:51, g:120, b:206}, Color::TrueColor{ r:255, g:255, b:255} ]) },
	{ Xml, Data, "xml.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Yellow, Color::White, Color::Green] ) },
	{ Yaml, Data, "yaml.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White] ) },
	{ Zig, Programming, "zig.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::Yellow] ) },
	{ Zsh, Programming, "zsh.ascii", define_colors!( [Color::White] ) },
	}

So the way I imagine themes working is that colors would be defined as primary, secondary, tertiary, etc., and these would replace color {0}, color {1}, {2}, etc. We probably don't want to define 9 colors since most langs use less than half of that, so maybe 5 colors at maximum, and {5}, {6}, etc. would either use their original color or the primary color.

Basically, themes could be built-in versions of what would happen if you used onefetch --ascii-colors x y z

[skyfaller]

isn't this more of an issue of terminal configuration than onefetch output? Out of curiosity I tried onefetch --true-color never with Gruvbox Light, and it looked fine to me

This is a fair point, but I do not want to figure out which colors I need to change on every terminal program I use. Picking a theme per program isn't as onerous, especially if I can just pick the ansi theme for everything (and ideally do that in a config file so I don't have to call it with command line flags every time).

onefetch --true-color never doesn't seem to make a difference for me, the text is still hard to read:

[spenserblack]

Oh yeah, that white-on-white is pretty hard to read (I actually prefer low contrast output like that, but I know that's not the majority opinion 😆).

So I think I've been thinking about this the wrong way. I was focused on the logo, but really it seems like the text is the issue. As a very quick workaround for you, onefetch -t 0 0 0 0 0 would set all text colors to be black. Our themes should probably act as aliases for onefetch --text-colors a b c....

Looks like your theme keeps black as dark and white as light, but other light themes, like Gruvbox Light, make black the light color and white the dark color (this is why I thought it was resolved). So, if we add themes, we'll at minimum probably need 2 light themes to handle terminal themes that do reverse black and white and themes that don't reverse them.

[skyfaller]

As a very quick workaround for you, onefetch -t 0 0 0 0 0 would set all text colors to be black.

Disappointingly, this doesn't seem to do it either:

The text is still too light to read.

Here's some more info about my system:

My theme is Adwaita.

P.S. Note that neofetch has no problem with this ;-)

[spenserblack]

Note that neofetch has no problem with this ;-)

Without looking at their source code, I think I can guess why: they're probably using unstyled text for the info fields, while we default to using white (showing a bias for dark terminals).

Made #593 based on this, so that you can at least disable some of the coloring for now and use your theme's foreground color 🙂

Also, I needed to add one more 0 to that workaround 😅
onefetch -t 0 0 0 0 0 0