[nycbug-talk] mac os termcap question

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 14, 2005, at 11:23 AM, Marc Spitzer wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 10:59:33 -0500, Bob Ippolito <bob at redivi.com> 
> wrote:
>>
>> On Feb 14, 2005, at 10:39 AM, steve rieger wrote:
>>
>>> Bob Ippolito wrote:
>>>> On Feb 14, 2005, at 10:06 AM, steve rieger wrote:
>>>>> Bob Ippolito wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> In Terminal, go to Preferences. Click on the Declare terminal type
>>>>>> ($TERM) pop-up menu to change to vt100 (or whatever).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> if you keep it on xterm-colour you also might have vi issues,
>>>>> (although this does not afect vim)
>>>>>
>>>>> as stated change it to vt100 works for me no problem
>>>> It's a trade-off, of course.  ls -G won't be colored if you are 
>>>> using
>>>> vt100.
>>>
>>> an assuming that we are using a black background with green text, 
>>> most
>>> colours will make it harder to see
>>
>> Uh, I guess, but not using colors makes it harder to distinguish
>> between types of files.  I use gray on black.
>
> personally I hate color coding, why bother when you have 'ls -F'
> anyway and it is portable anywhere.

For the same reason most (sane) software developers use syntax 
highlighting.  You either like it or you don't, but it provides a 
"low-bandwidth" way to categorize tokens and can measurably enhance 
productivity.

I personally use "/bin/ls -G -F -h" on Mac OS X as my alias for ls.  
Colored ls -G output also provides more information than ls -F alone.  
It distinguishes a+w directories, for example.  Fortunately I don't use 
any platforms that have issues with colored terminals, though on some 
platforms like Linux I use a slightly different alias to accomplish the 
same thing.

-bob