GNU bug report logs - #79828
[PATCH] Improve tty-menu faces on terminals with rich colors

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Spencer Baugh <sbaugh <at> janestreet.com>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: [PATCH] Improve tty-menu faces on terminals with rich colors
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2025 14:59:18 -0500

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Tags: patch


For rich color terminals, replace the default yellow-on-blue for menu
items with a straightforward gray background, based on the current
background color.  The selected item is still highlighted in red.

Happy for feedback about the exact colors to use, I'm not tied to these.

The default tty frame menu colors are notoriously ugly, this improves
them to an acceptable level.

In GNU Emacs 30.1.90 (build 80, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, cairo
 version 1.15.12, Xaw scroll bars) of 2025-11-12 built on
 igm-qws-u22796a
Repository revision: 794c96e366ae778b796b65ec74951fef53af653f
Repository branch: emacs-30
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12011000
System Description: Rocky Linux 8.10 (Green Obsidian)

Configured using:
 'configure --with-x-toolkit=lucid --without-gpm --without-gconf
 --without-selinux --without-imagemagick --with-modules --with-gif=no
 --with-cairo --with-rsvg --without-compress-install --with-tree-sitter
 --with-native-compilation=aot
 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/home/garnish/libtree-sitter/0.22.6-1/lib/pkgconfig/'

[0001-Improve-tty-menu-faces-on-terminals-with-rich-colors.patch (text/patch, attachment)]

Message #8 received at 79828 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Spencer Baugh <sbaugh <at> janestreet.com>
Cc: spwhitton <at> spwhitton.name, 79828 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, juri <at> linkov.net
Subject: Re: bug#79828: [PATCH] Improve tty-menu faces on terminals with rich
 colors
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2025 09:10:46 +0200

> Cc: Juri Linkov <juri <at> linkov.net>, Sean Whitton <spwhitton <at> spwhitton.name>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2025 14:59:18 -0500
> From:  Spencer Baugh via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
> 
> For rich color terminals, replace the default yellow-on-blue for menu
> items with a straightforward gray background, based on the current
> background color.  The selected item is still highlighted in red.
> 
> Happy for feedback about the exact colors to use, I'm not tied to these.

I don't understand this change.  It completely changes the color
scheme which was there for many years.  I could understand using less
prominent colors when more shades are available, but this is too
radical.  In addition, our convention and policy is to make the colors
on different platforms as similar as reasonably possible, while this
change explicitly departs from that, making menus on low-color
terminal look very different.

> The default tty frame menu colors are notoriously ugly, this improves
> them to an acceptable level.

Faces are easy to customize, so if you dislike the defaults so much,
you can always change the faces locally.  By contrast, default colors
of faces affect everyone, and we should not make such radical changes
unless really necessary.  Which in this case they aren't, IMO.

So I object to this change, as submitted, sorry.  If you want to make
the colors less prominent, I suggest to keep the original colors and
lower their intensity.

There are good reasons for making the colors prominent, btw: menus are
supposed to attract attention, and therefore having their colors
different from almost everything else on the screen is IMO a Good
Thing.  Your changes risk making popup menus harder to find and pay
attention to, which I think is a step in the wrong direction.  But I'm
okay with considering less saturated colors, if that will make them
more acceptable to you.

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