Bug#783692: systemd: systemctl output is unreadable on light background

[Josh Triplett]

On Wed, 29 Apr 2015 12:25:18 +0200 Juergen Stuber <juergen at jstuber.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Apr 2015 12:05:20 +0200
> Martin Pitt <mpitt at debian.org> wrote:
> > 
> > As a daytime worker I also use a white background, but the colors
> > (black, green, and red) are readable very well on it.
> 
> I use a light gray background, so green becomes completely unreadable.

I just checked it on a white background, and I don't find it
particularly usable either.

I do like that it uses colors by default, but I'd suggest either:

1) Setting the background color (http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/color applies
as much here as it does on the web).  On the other hand, that advice
also applies equally well to setting terminal colors; Juergen, you might
consider setting your terminal's entire palette to a set of colors such
that the ones typically used for foreground highlighting contrast with
your background color.

2) Finding some way to automatically detect the background color and
choose a suitable color scheme accordingly.  Personally, I've wished for
quite some time that vim would do this rather than requiring "set
bg=light" or "set bg=dark".  It's possible to retrieve the color palette
(and in particular, the current text background color) using xterm
control sequences.  Perhaps this could become a common helper function.

> Apart from that I generally dislike colors yelling at me, so I prefer
> them off.  For accessibility reasons all important information should
> anyway be communicated in some other way.

The colors don't indicate anything the text doesn't already say; green
corresponds to the "active (running)" description.  I agree that we
should never communicate important information *only* by color, and that
the color schemes should aim for maximum usability, but I do think it's
reasonable to use color for highlights/emphasis/etc by default.

- Josh Triplett