Re: horrible mc colorscheme

[Phil Requirements <simultaneous@comcast.net>]

On 2010-04-18 14:42:15 -0500, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
>godo wrote:
>>Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
>>>Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Hi,
>>>>
>>>>I just made the mistake of my life and upgraded mc from
>>>>2:4.6.2~git20080311-4 to 3:4.7.0.1-1.
>>>>
>>>
>>>So what happened is that starting with 4.7.0 mc supports skins.
>>>
>>>I found no skins anywhere with my choice for years: white background.
>>>
>>>So it's back to the old blue default because it takes days of
>>>diddling to make up a skin.
>>>
>>
>>Hi,
>>I was just download and open elite_commander skin.
>>I think if in:
>>[core]
>>    _default_=gray;
>>
>>change to white
>>[core]
>>    _default_=white;
>>it should be white background.
>>
> 
> It's not that simple as I mention there: when you change that
> default option all the directory entries turn bright white and in
> mcedit the entries turn black on white with a blue background which
> looks ridiculous.
> 
> The problem is that they changed a major function without fallback
> and without a spectrum of options.
> 
> Too bad but it's waiting until skins get developed or pinning mc to
> prevent 4.7.0.1 from installing.
> 

Hugo,

I recently upgraded my mc to try to fix an issue. I use a custom theme
for mc, and the upgrade made my theme go a little weird. So this
weekend I redid my theme to fit into the new skins paradigm.  It was
not too hard to do.

While I was at it, I made a white background theme that you might want
to try. Personally, I don't use a white background because some colors
like yellow, green, and cyan don't show up very well. But I thought it
was an interesting exercise, and it didn't take too long.

You might want to try it, you can get a copy here:

    http://www.kasploosh.com/out/polar_bear.ini

Copy it to this path on your local system:

    ~/.mc/skins/polar_bear.ini

Close all instances of mc so that the ini file will be available for
editing.  Edit ~/.mc/ini, search for "skin", and change it to this:

    skin=polar_bear.ini

After that, you should have a white background, assuming you did not revert
your mc to the 4.6 line already.

My overall impression is that the team that is revising mc is doing a good
job. This change to using skins is a step in the right direction. It makes
the themes *much* easier to edit. In the past they were located directly in
~/.mc/ini and it was a mess. The syntax for the skins is barely different
than the previous method, so it's not a giant change.

The documentation is lagging, as happens with a lot of projects. But it's
nice to see that they are fixing some longstanding issues.

Feel free to change anything in this theme according to your preferences.
Everybody experiences colors differently. One note is that I tried to make
this look good both in console mode and in an xterm. If you only use mc
inside an xterm, some of the color choices could be different.

Hope this helps,

Phil