How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
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How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
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Re: How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
#2Use only default (white/black), red for bad, green for good. If you need more than that, like vim or whatever, then maybe a 'fullscreen' TUI is better, with a specified background and foreground. For CLI tools, I'm not sure if I prefer more colours.
The CSS to make the terminals look like iTerm was smooth, to the point I read them as screenshots.
Re: How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
#3[flagged]
Re: How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
#4Use only default (white/black), red for bad, green for good. If you need more than that, like vim or whatever, then maybe a 'fullscreen' TUI is better, with a specified background and foreground. For CLI tools, I'm not sure if I prefer more colours. The CSS to make the terminals look like iTerm was smooth, to the point I read them as screenshots.
> red for bad, green for good
8% of men of Northern European descent (and 0.4% of women) are red-green colorblind. That'd be a terrible choice. Use blue-orange, blue-red, or purple-green.
Re: How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
#5[flagged]
Most things work fine with black on white terminals.
If your software does something dumb when my theme switches to black on white during the day then I am just going to avoid using it...
Re: How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
#6Use only default (white/black), red for bad, green for good. If you need more than that, like vim or whatever, then maybe a 'fullscreen' TUI is better, with a specified background and foreground. For CLI tools, I'm not sure if I prefer more colours. The CSS to make the terminals look like iTerm was smooth, to the point I read them as screenshots.
> red for bad, green for good 8% of men of Northern European descent (and 0.4% of women) are red-green colorblind. That'd be a terrible choice. Use blue-orange, blue-red, or purple-green.
More importantly, dont use color as sole source of information. Strikethrough, emoji or ok / bad can also be used.
Re: How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
#7Use only default (white/black), red for bad, green for good. If you need more than that, like vim or whatever, then maybe a 'fullscreen' TUI is better, with a specified background and foreground. For CLI tools, I'm not sure if I prefer more colours. The CSS to make the terminals look like iTerm was smooth, to the point I read them as screenshots.
> red for bad, green for good 8% of men of Northern European descent (and 0.4% of women) are red-green colorblind. That'd be a terrible choice. Use blue-orange, blue-red, or purple-green.
Red/green is semantic in these cases. They’re user configurable in almost all terminals, so there’s no real accessibility issue. I tend to associate blue with decorative accent, yellow with info/warning text, and cyan and magenta for really fancy stuff.
Re: How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
#8[flagged]
It's easier to see dark text on a light background for people with astigmatism.
Re: How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
#9[deleted]
Re: How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> red for bad, green for good 8% of men of Northern European descent (and 0.4% of women) are red-green colorblind. That'd be a terrible choice. Use blue-orange, blue-red, or purple-green.
Red/green is semantic in these cases. They’re user configurable in almost all terminals, so there’s no real accessibility issue. I tend to associate blue with decorative accent, yellow with info/warning text, and cyan and magenta for really fancy stuff.
Red/green has no inherent semantics. It has the semantics that you assign it. If you choose to assign it meaning that disenfranchises 8% of men using your system, that's your choice, but it is not a good one.