emacs, true color and iterm2

emacs, true color and iterm2

[Bois Francois-Xavier]

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Dear emacsians

iterm2, a widely used open source terminal on OSX, is working on offering
compatibility with true color (3-byte color mode).

It can be a great feature for emacs users working on terminals.

An interesting discussion about the best way to "code" the colors is taking
place on https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/issues/detail?id=218.

Could a core emacs developer give them some feedbacks ? (does emacs
requires a special encoding ?)

Thank you in advance

fxbois

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Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Bois Francois-Xavier <fxbois@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2013 19:54:26 +0200
> 
> iterm2, a widely used open source terminal on OSX, is working on offering
> compatibility with true color (3-byte color mode).
> 
> It can be a great feature for emacs users working on terminals.
> 
> An interesting discussion about the best way to "code" the colors is taking
> place on https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/issues/detail?id=218.
> 
> Could a core emacs developer give them some feedbacks ? (does emacs
> requires a special encoding ?)

What Emacs needs can be seen from its support of xterm-256, see
xterm.el in the Emacs distribution.  In a nutshell, someone should
write a function that registers all the supported colors as
xterm-register-default-colors does.

Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Stefan Monnier]

>> iterm2, a widely used open source terminal on OSX, is working on offering
>> compatibility with true color (3-byte color mode).
>> It can be a great feature for emacs users working on terminals.
>> An interesting discussion about the best way to "code" the colors is taking
>> place on https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/issues/detail?id=218.
>> Could a core emacs developer give them some feedbacks ? (does emacs
>> requires a special encoding ?)

> What Emacs needs can be seen from its support of xterm-256, see
> xterm.el in the Emacs distribution.  In a nutshell, someone should
> write a function that registers all the supported colors as
> xterm-register-default-colors does.

Tho, obviously, for 2bit color support, we won't will want to have
support for tty colors without going through some approximation table.


        Stefan

Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Stefan Monnier]

> Tho, obviously, for 2bit color support, we won't will want to have
                      ^                      ^^^^^
                      24                     [delete]

> support for tty colors without going through some approximation table.


        Stefan

Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 19:12:30 -0400
> Cc: Bois Francois-Xavier <fxbois@gmail.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Tho, obviously, for 2bit color support, we won't will want to have
> support for tty colors without going through some approximation table.

The approximation table is already built-in, unless I completely
misunderstand what you mean.

Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: Bois Francois-Xavier <fxbois@gmail.com>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 22:07:00 -0400
> 
> > Tho, obviously, for 2bit color support, we won't will want to have
>                       ^                      ^^^^^
>                       24                     [delete]
> 
> > support for tty colors without going through some approximation table.

Now I completely misunderstand what you mean by that, and why.

Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Richard Stallman]

        [ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
        [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
        [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example.

    iterm2, a widely used open source terminal on OSX,

Is it free software, or not?  That makes a difference to how we
should respond:

    Could a core emacs developer give them some feedbacks ? (does emacs
    requires a special encoding ?)

If it is free software, we should help; if not, we shouldn't.

"Open source" is not equivalent to free software.  Most open source
programs are free, but there are some exceptions.  From the
information available, we cannot tell whether this program is free or
proprietary.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
for more explanation of the difference between free software and open
source.  See also http://thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler for
Evgeny Morozov's article on the same point.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.

Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Bois Francois-Xavier]

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This page tells that the licence is GNU PL2
https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/

The sources are available here
https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2


On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

>         [ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
>         [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
>         [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example.
>
>     iterm2, a widely used open source terminal on OSX,
>
> Is it free software, or not?  That makes a difference to how we
> should respond:
>
>     Could a core emacs developer give them some feedbacks ? (does emacs
>     requires a special encoding ?)
>
> If it is free software, we should help; if not, we shouldn't.
>
> "Open source" is not equivalent to free software.  Most open source
> programs are free, but there are some exceptions.  From the
> information available, we cannot tell whether this program is free or
> proprietary.
>
> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
> for more explanation of the difference between free software and open
> source.  See also http://thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler for
> Evgeny Morozov's article on the same point.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation
> 51 Franklin St
> Boston MA 02110
> USA
> www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
> Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
>   Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.
>
>

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Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Andreas Schwab]

Bois Francois-Xavier <fxbois@gmail.com> writes:

> This page tells that the licence is GNU PL2

FWIW, the license is called GNU GPL (where the G stands for General).

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SUSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
GPG Key fingerprint = 0196 BAD8 1CE9 1970 F4BE  1748 E4D4 88E3 0EEA B9D7
"And now for something completely different."

Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Stefan Monnier]

>> > Tho, obviously, for 2bit color support, we won't will want to have
>> ^                      ^^^^^
>> 24                     [delete]
>> 
>> > support for tty colors without going through some approximation table.
> Now I completely misunderstand what you mean by that, and why.

AFAIK, currently, color support in a tty goes through an approximation
step which choose the closest color number to use among the N colors
supported by the tty.

We'll want to skip this step if the terminal supports 24bit colors,
since the table would be both huge (16M entries) and useless.


        Stefan

Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
> Cc: fxbois@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 10:57:31 -0400
> 
> >> > Tho, obviously, for 2bit color support, we won't will want to have
> >> ^                      ^^^^^
> >> 24                     [delete]
> >> 
> >> > support for tty colors without going through some approximation table.
> > Now I completely misunderstand what you mean by that, and why.
> 
> AFAIK, currently, color support in a tty goes through an approximation
> step which choose the closest color number to use among the N colors
> supported by the tty.

Only as fallback.  An exact match is tried first, and if it exists, it
is always used.

> We'll want to skip this step if the terminal supports 24bit colors,
> since the table would be both huge (16M entries) and useless.

You already assume that Someone(TM) will generate such a huge table.
But that's not guaranteed, and if I were the person to do the job, I'd
only make a list for the 256 standard colors.

In any case, the alist of supported colors is used not only for
approximating colors, but also for mapping color names and RGB values
to integer numbers that need to be sent to the terminal driver.  This
same alist is used to find the exact match, if it exists.  So you need
such an alist anyway, unless you want to invent a completely different
API for talking to a TTY.

Re: emacs, true color and iterm2

[Richard Stallman]

        [ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
        [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
        [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example.

    This page tells that the licence is GNU PL2
    https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/

That means it is free software.

Most open source programs are free software,
but there are exceptions, so we can't take it for granted.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.