Re: color by default

On Sat, 21 Mar 2020 at 00:25, Jonah H. Harris <jonah(dot)harris(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 31, 2019 at 8:35 AM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>
>> Peter Eisentraut <peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
>> > With the attached patch, I propose to enable the colored output by
>> > default in PG13.
>>
>> FWIW, I shall be setting NO_COLOR permanently if this gets committed.
>> I wonder how many people there are who actually *like* colored output?
>> I find it to be invariably less readable than plain B&W text.
>>
>
> Same.
>

For me it depends on what the colour is doing. I was very pleased when I
first saw coloured output from ls, which if I remember correctly repeats
the information provided by -F but more prominently. Similarly, I
appreciate diff output that highlights the differences. At the same time I
can appreciate a preference for "just plain text please".

> I may well be in the minority, but I think some kind of straw poll
>> might be advisable, rather than doing this just because.
>>
>
> +1 on no color by default.
>

Given that there is apparently a standard NO_COLOR environment variable
which can be set, I think it's reasonable to default to gentle use of
colour, but turn it off if the standard variable is set. Somebody who wants
no color will probably already have the variable set, so in effect for the
people who want it that way no colour would already be the default (not the
default default, but the de facto default).