Terminator

different colour scheme for each new pane andor tab

Bug #350854 reported by Jack Wasey
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Terminator
Confirmed
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

(wishlist)

I would be great to automatically use a random, but easy-on-the-eye color scheme for each new pane or tab.
I often work on remote hosts, so although each would be different colour every time, within one session there would be a strong visual clue.

Colour scheme could be calculated to use a dark background with complementary light text using a simple algorithm, so you don't end up with horrendous eye pain.

Even better would not to do it randomly, but to intercept when remote connections are made, and assign a colour scheme automatically. A similar thing could be achieved filtered by login user, e.g. root prompts could be assigned a a certain colour scheme.

Suggested "Choosing a scheme:" preferences

[ ] assign new colour scheme for each new [ ] window [ ] tab, or [ ] pane.

OR, assign colours as follows:

Host - user - profile/colour scheme
localhost - jack - default
localhost - root - profile2
productionserver - * - red-on-yellow profile

Revision history for this message
Chris Jones (cmsj) wrote :

It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure exactly how it would work (I would think we'd need to be careful to keep a good contrast level between the foreground/background)

Changed in terminator:
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Jack Wasey (jackwasey) wrote :

http://colorschemedesigner.com/ is an example of a simple algorithm generating sane colour combinations.

another way to simplify the UI could be to have a single keyboard shortcut to change the colours of the current view. New panes should inherit, new tabs start white-on-black, perhaps?

Can remote hosts request blanket terminal colour changes?

Revision history for this message
Chris Jones (cmsj) wrote :

FWIW, One trick used by one of my colleagues is to have his bashrc set the prompt colours based on the IP address of the machine. He then copies his bashrc to all of our servers and they each have their own persistent colour.

Revision history for this message
Estanislao (estanislao-gonzalez-r) wrote :

This is a feature I've been looking after for a while now. The idea is to have some visual clue on the console regarding on which host one is working.
I do use the prompt for that, but as soon as you have a tool open (e.g. vim) then there it goes your clue :-/
And setting it form the client side is not enough since ssh into a new host should alter it...

The most simple solution I could think of is to use a regular expression for parsing the prompt and matching that rule to a predefine set of colors. As long as you can identify the host from your prompt, that should do it.
Not sure if it's easy to identify the prompt from the client side though...

Revision history for this message
mkind (mkind-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

> The idea is to have some visual clue on the console regarding on which host one is working.
What about colouring the border? Like scrotwm highlights the focused pane (e.g.: with a red border): http://www.peereboom.us/scrotwm/html/scrotwm.jpg

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