'normal' shell with curses

[Michael Goerz]

Michael Goerz wrote, on 03/04/2008 12:05 PM:
> Thynnus wrote, on 03/04/2008 08:48 AM:
>> On 3/3/2008 9:57 PM, Michael Goerz wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'm trying to print out text in color. As far as I know, curses is 
>>> the only way to do that (or not?). So, what I ultimately want is a 
>>> curses terminal that behaves as closely as possible as a normal 
>>> terminal, i.e. it breaks lines and scrolls automatically, so that I 
>>> can implement a function myprint(color, text) that does what print() 
>>> does, only in color.
>>
>> You might find the below helpful. Let us know how you make out?
>>
>> --------
>>
>> Python Cookbook
>>  http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/475116
>>
>> Title:
>>  Using terminfo for portable color output & cursor control
>>
>> Description:
>> The curses module defines several functions (based on terminfo) that 
>> can be used to perform lightweight cursor control & output formatting 
>> (color, bold, etc). These can be used without invoking curses mode 
>> (curses.initwin) or using any of the more heavy-weight curses 
>> functionality. This recipe defines a TerminalController class, which 
>> can make portable output formatting very simple. Formatting modes that 
>> are not supported by the terminal are simply omitted.
>>
>> --------
>>
> 
> That looks *extremely* interesting. From a very brief test, it seems to 
> do exactly what I want!
> 
> Now, Windows seems very problematic for color output. I was using the 
> following as a test, based on the above recipe:
> 
> term = TerminalController()
> while True:
>     print term.render('${YELLOW}Warning:${NORMAL}'), 'paper is crinkled'
>     print term.render('${RED}Error:${NORMAL}'), 'paper is ripped'
> 
> On Linux, it works fine, on Windows, it just prints white on black 
> (which is of course what it should do if the terminal doesn't support 
> color). Can anyone get the Windows cmd.exe terminal to do color? I 
> already tried to add device=%SystemRoot%\system32\ansi.sys to config.nt, 
> but that doesn't seem to do anything (neither in what I tried yesterday 
> with the ANSI escape codes, nor with the recipe code now). I also very 
> briefly tried running it on the winbash shell 
> (http://win-bash.sourceforge.net/), it didn't have any color either... 
> So, any way to get color in Windows?
> 
> Michael

This recipe seems to work very well on WinXP:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/496901

So now, I'll just have to combine the two methods, which shouldn't be 
too hard.

Michael