Ptyxis | colorcodes from ls command | terminal color profiles are dificult to adapt for balanced coloring

As much as I like pytaxis, setting color schemes in the new gnome terminal, is just as difficult as unpractical as it is in the moment.

  1. Setting the color scheme / palettes can be done in the > Preferences
    1.1 (Hamburger-menu or Ctrl + , )

  2. Per default there are 11 options available as long as I do not press on the button “Show all palettes

  3. On the short as on the long list of Palletes I can not display or search for a name.

  4. To make it a bit easier I had to go deeper and try to explain the difficulties I faced.
    The coloring of the prompt as the coloring of the ls command is done with two different apps/packages.
    4.1 bash-color-prompt[1] package colorizes the color prompt (installed by default).
    4.2 dircolors [2] command displays the pre-configured colors also visible with env
    4.2.1 dircolors --print-ls-colors | column shows even the colors of the dir command mime-types in any terminal!


  1. The upstream name is shell-color-prompt see: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/shell-color-prompt ↩︎

  2. Parses the configuration from /etc/DIR_COLORS to a ansi color code file ↩︎

Workaround:

  1. In >Preferences >“Profile section” section on the tree dots I can select “Edit”
    1.1 This time I can see a “Color Palette” name and also choose one
    1.2 Search for a Color name still not works this way. Long list scrolling works!

  2. Lets move back to the >Preferences>Profile in a open Ptyxis window > three dots … “Dublicate” on our preferred or default profile. I named it “DIR_COLORS (/etc/DIR_COLORS) save to ~/.dir_colors” to personalize for a specific user.
    The exact command below prints the colored list with rows. This way no scrolling is needed when going thru the available color palette.
    sh -c "dircolors --print-ls-colors | column"


    2.1 Select as example “Gnome” as “color palette”
    2.2 Under “Shell” we do activate “Custom Command” and add the command above Point 2. of this section

  3. Now, any time I like a new profile or color setting I do open a new session, while clicking on the top right corner of a ptyxis window the “arrow down” symbol since we created one more profile as just the default.
    3.1 As an alternative, first Duplicate the profile with the command to execute, rename it as desired and make the ajustments.

  4. Now with the >Profile > … >Edit open on the top right corner, I can select the “Color” I like and I will see live how it looks like in the terminal.

That’s it. I hope this information is useful for Users which could not understand while the File list in ls had gabs and group and ownership but no name. The color was unfortunately the exact one as the background.
And then wile try to find a Color Palette I got bothered with this miles of scrolling I had todo :slight_smile:

Placing the mouse cursor over the color profile shows the name.

1 Like

Thanks Joe, I was to nervous hovering on one place for a second :slight_smile: . Now I saw it while, holding the mouse also with my left hand to keep it still :grin:

To all:
It was good to be true, all the thoughts I made, to bring up the colored formats, to live adjust the “Color Palette”.

As alternative I wanted to create a file like:

/usr/bin/dircolors --print-ls-colors | column >>colorcodes.txt 

# and just display the file with

column colorcodes.txt

Till now i was not able to find out to execute any command without getting erros not finding the file/command or a

/usr/bin/dircolors: extra operand ‘column’
Try '/usr/bin/dircolors --help' for more information.

I am out of ideas … if someone has some hints, I will be gratefully to know and test them.

Works for me:

╭─steve@lurcher in ~ took 11ms
 ╰─λ dircolors --print-ls-colors | column >> colorcodes.txt

 ╭─steve@lurcher in ~ took 2ms
 ╰─λ column colorcodes.txt 
rs	0			*.pgm	01;35
di	01;34		*.ppm	01;35
ln	01;36		*.tga	01;35
mh	00			*.xbm	01;35
pi	40;33		*.xpm	01;35
so	01;35		*.tif	01;35
do	01;35		*.tiff	01;35
bd	40;33;01		*.png	01;35
cd	40;33;01		*.svg	01;35
or	40;31;01		*.svgz	01;35
mi	00			*.mng	01;35
su	37;41		*.pcx	01;35
sg	30;43		*.mov	01;35
ca	00			*.mpg	01;35
tw	30;42		*.mpeg	01;35
ow	34;42		*.m2v	01;35
st	37;44		*.mkv	01;35
ex	01;32		*.webm	01;35
*.7z	01;31		*.webp	01;35
*.ace	01;31		*.ogm	01;35
*.alz	01;31		*.mp4	01;35
*.apk	01;31		*.m4v	01;35
*.arc	01;31		*.mp4v	01;35
*.arj	01;31		*.vob	01;35
*.bz	01;31		*.qt	01;35
*.bz2	01;31		*.nuv	01;35
*.cab	01;31		*.wmv	01;35
*.cpio	01;31		*.asf	01;35
*.crate	01;31		*.rm	01;35
*.deb	01;31		*.rmvb	01;35
*.drpm	01;31		*.flc	01;35
*.dwm	01;31		*.avi	01;35
*.dz	01;31		*.fli	01;35
*.ear	01;31		*.flv	01;35
*.egg	01;31		*.gl	01;35
*.esd	01;31		*.dl	01;35
*.gz	01;31		*.xcf	01;35
*.jar	01;31		*.xwd	01;35
*.lha	01;31		*.yuv	01;35
*.lrz	01;31		*.cgm	01;35
*.lz	01;31		*.emf	01;35
*.lz4	01;31		*.ogv	01;35
*.lzh	01;31		*.ogx	01;35
*.lzma	01;31		*.aac	00;36
*.lzo	01;31		*.au	00;36
*.pyz	01;31		*.flac	00;36
*.rar	01;31		*.m4a	00;36
*.rpm	01;31		*.mid	00;36
*.rz	01;31		*.midi	00;36
*.sar	01;31		*.mka	00;36
*.swm	01;31		*.mp3	00;36
*.t7z	01;31		*.mpc	00;36
*.tar	01;31		*.ogg	00;36
*.taz	01;31		*.ra	00;36
*.tbz	01;31		*.wav	00;36
*.tbz2	01;31		*.oga	00;36
*.tgz	01;31		*.opus	00;36
*.tlz	01;31		*.spx	00;36
*.txz	01;31		*.xspf	00;36
*.tz	01;31		*~	00;90
*.tzo	01;31		*#	00;90
*.tzst	01;31		*.bak	00;90
*.udeb	01;31		*.crdownload	00;90
*.war	01;31		*.dpkg-dist	00;90
*.whl	01;31		*.dpkg-new	00;90
*.wim	01;31		*.dpkg-old	00;90
*.xz	01;31		*.dpkg-tmp	00;90
*.z	01;31		*.old	00;90
*.zip	01;31		*.orig	00;90
*.zoo	01;31		*.part	00;90
*.zst	01;31		*.rej	00;90
*.avif	01;35		*.rpmnew	00;90
*.jpg	01;35		*.rpmorig	00;90
*.jpeg	01;35		*.rpmsave	00;90
*.mjpg	01;35		*.swp	00;90
*.mjpeg	01;35		*.tmp	00;90
*.gif	01;35		*.ucf-dist	00;90
*.bmp	01;35		*.ucf-new	00;90
*.pbm	01;35		*.ucf-old	00;90
1 Like

Thanks for your answer. I guess you just did cut and paste the commands in the terminal, right?
This works in my case too.

To demonstrate what I would like to achieve and which visual Issues I get, you can see when watching the screen-cast I made on my system.

Keep in mind when watching the Video:

  • how much I have to scroll
  • how bad some color settings are
  • auto start a command, when open a terminal (simplified command)
    dircolors --print-ls-colors

I show the critical parts with moving the mouse around.

Screencast > ptyxis color config troubles

If someone not wants to see the screen-cast , here some screenshots

  • showing invisible text Picture 1
  • showing visible text while changing Color Palette in Picture 2.