Re: modeline face under a tty

[Alex Schroeder]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:

>> A face with foreground "red" and no background color and specified as
>> inverse-video should look use "red" foreground and the same background
>> as the default face if colors are available.  If no colors are
>> available, it should use the default foreground as background and the
>> default background as foreground.
> 
> What do you mean by ``if colors are available''?  Does that mean ``if
> the terminal supports colors''?  If so, I don't understand why you
> don't want to use the foreground of the default face as the mode-line
> background color, in this particular case.  It seems to be a
> contradiction to what you want to see when ``no colors are
> available''.

Hm, let me make an example for the "terminal supports colors" case:

A user has black background and a white foreground.  He then wants to
customize the modeline, which is being inverted: it has a white
background and black foreground.  He wants to change the foreground to
grey.  So what attribute of the face should he customize?
I think he should just the obvious: customize the modeline foreground.

What do we display, then?  What you suggest makes sense: The display
should then use the new foreground color specified by the user, and
the same background color as before.  And that would be a white
background.

My suggestion is different, however -- and it makes sense as well, I
hope.  We ought to discuss the benefits and drawbacks, therefore.

My suggestion is this: The display should recognize that colors are
available and that the user doesn't want the default inversion to take
place.  The user has specified a foreground color.  Since the terminal
supports colors and the user wants colors, should ignore the
inverse-video attribute and use colors instead.  That means we should
use the default background, black.

I think your proposal is good because it translates to this: There is
an attribute called :inverse-video which will invert the colors of the
default face and use them when nothing is specified.

I think that my proposal is simpler to understand because it
translates to this: When the terminal does not support colors, we
support an attribute called :inverse-video.  When the terminal does
support colors, however, we use colors instead.

I think inverse-video and colors should be orthogonal issues.

Alex.
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