Re: Funky list-colors

[zsugabubus <zsugabubus@national.shitposting.agency>]

On Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 11:22:52AM -0800, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 9:23 AM zsugabubus
> <zsugabubus@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Though the name clearly states that these are “colors”, but why this
> > artificial limitation? Width measuring happens at the prompts too
> 
> Prompts have the reverse assumption, that everything is nonzero width
> (needs counting) unless special syntax indicates otherwise.  The
> overhead of designating the width of every color element and checking
> whether it is greater than zero doesn't seem worth it, given that
> we're sharing color definitions with other standard apps like "ls" and
> none of THOSE support nonzero-width colors.
> 
> > I really would like it to work
> 
> Chances are there's a different way to do what you are trying to do.
> What's the end goal here?

Recently I completely get rid of terminal file managers because I
realized that they are much-much less powerful than the "plain" shell
could be. I can easily write small functions that do exactly what and
how I need. To keep my message short, I wanted to receive a quick visual
feedback what kind of files I work with. That's where `LS_COLORS` came
into the view. However, if I'm only using 3-4 colors it looks like a
rainbow (more colors can be hardly distinguished and remembered). I even
had no luck with fuzzy finders, because:
- fzf: I can't see the search highlights because of this rainbow
  (everything customize just the one I'd need not... hehh);
- fzy: Doesn't customizable too much;
- skim (fzf in rust): Can set background for search highlights (hurray)
  but fails to correctly display other colors.
So after my success story with colors, I started modifying `LS_COLORS`
to put prefixes before files. It's a way better solution from every
point of view. Programs handle it as much as I need[1], but zsh's
completion fails. .<- Here I'm now.

Personally, I don't care about that few additional microseconds that zsh
takes to parse that hundred 10 chars long string to compute how much
space will it take up on the screen. Maybe, hiding it behind an shell
option?

1: Expect `ls` grid view, but I can live without it.