How to Choose Colors for Your CLI Applications (2023)
9 days ago
- #color-readability
- #cli-tools
- #terminal-themes
- Choosing colors for CLI tools must consider different terminal themes for readability.
- Sorcerer theme has readable colors except black, which is darker than the background.
- Basic themes are outdated with poor readability, especially bryellow in light mode and blue/brblue in dark mode.
- Tango themes perform better than Basic but still have issues like unreadable bryellow in light theme and black in dark theme.
- Solarized theme uses L*a*b* color space for perceptual uniformity and is highly popular despite some color limitations.
- Solarized's 16-color palette was a hack for compatibility with terminals lacking 24-bit color support.
- Bright colors in Solarized can cause readability issues, leading to user complaints.
- Historical terminal behavior made bold text bright, affecting modern terminal emulators.
- Only 11 out of 32 color settings are recommended for CLI tools to ensure readability across common configurations.
- Terminal.app's Basic theme switches between light and dark modes automatically, unlike other themes.