[m-rev.] for review: options to control the use of color

[Peter Wang]

On Thu, 02 May 2024 18:40:23 +1000 "Zoltan Somogyi" <zoltan.somogyi at runbox.com> wrote:
> As for (2), yes, users can tweak the base 16 colors to their taste. However,
> in all the terminal emulators I know about, and certainly in the one I use,
> xterm on MATE, they cannot tweak them independently for different
> programs they run in the terminal.

Yes, but that's kind of the point. I can pick a palette of 16 colors
that work well together, and expect programs to stick to that palette
(obviously in the past there was no choice).

As it is, the Mercury compiler wants to use THIS green, THIS red, THIS
yellow. Why can't it just use the green/red/yellow that I've already
chosen, without me having to override it? It's not like it's drawing a
picture where no other shade will do.

> The colors you want for e.g. syntax
> coloring by vim may not be the ones you want for Mercury diagnostics,
> and 16 colors are few enough that *if* you limit all uses to just those
> 16 slots, then conflicts are just about inevitable. And, the scheme I implemented
> *does* let users tweak the colors Mercury uses to their taste, whether their
> taste leads them to choose 3-bit or 4-bit colors, or 8-bit (or possibly later even 24-bit)
> colors.

Will the diagnostics really need that many different colors?
It only needs a little bit of highlighting.

Peter