Having been recently delving into getting a TRS-80 DT-1 emulating a Televideo 910 working with Linux, I couldn't agree more.
Even now for modern devices it wouldn't be the worst idea to avoid hard coding things like color (e-ink?). And it's not like it's difficult to avoid hard coding, using tput ( https://linux.die.net/man/1/tput ) means you don't have to write out the arbitrary escape sequences yourself while being compatible with any terminal.
"My team writes a lot of command line tools" is a valid excuse for internal use. But not for writing a educational post.
> And it's not like it's difficult to avoid hard coding
There are upsides to hard-coding the escape sequences that you aren't mentioning. Using terminfo or ncurses requires an extra dependency with a clunky interface. Using tput requires spawning a process, which gets slow if you have to do it repeatedly. But simply hard-coding the escape sequences is dependency-free, as fast as printing, can be done in any language, and is going to work for at least 99.9% of the users out there.
I'm usually a big fan of "use a standard interface rather than one particular implementation", but I haven't found a solution, other than hard-coding the ANSI escape code set, that I'm happy with.
> Using terminfo or ncurses requires an extra dependency with a clunky interface.
Are there any linux distros for any platform that aren't shipping terminfo? I could see some embedded systems cutting it down for small storage solutions. But I don't think it's unfair to assume that terminfo is installed. ncurses is more complex so I won't disagree with that one, but tput isn't part of ncurses.
Clunkiness is an opinion, I see needing to look up what "\x1b[7m" means as being clunky compared to "tput rev".
> Using tput requires spawning a process, which gets slow if you have to do it repeatedly.
If you're pretty printing text for a human to read then I don't think the couple extra ms it will take to spawn a handful of tput processes is going to be an actual performance concern. If you're logging data that's another thing, but this was specifically about CLI programs.
> can be done in any language, and is going to work for at least 99.9% of the users out there.
> I haven't found a solution, other than hard-coding the ANSI escape code set, that I'm happy with.
This is most likely true and I don't disagree that my stated use case is in the 0.01%. I was going to refute the any language comment with libraries based on terminfo, but all the ones I ran across in 30 seconds just hard code the ANSI escape sequences. Since it will likely work 99.9% of the time, it is "easy" in a way to hard code them. So I understand why it is being done that way and why you would also prefer to hard code them. But there is a standard interface to use, it just may not be perfect.
This may be something where we are technically stuck between a rock and a hard place. We have a good resource database of technical information on how to format text. But there isn't a significant reason to put in the effort to use it.
> Are there any linux distros for any platform that aren't shipping terminfo?
Ah, I was referring to higher-level languages such as Ruby here (I have a lot of scripts where I use it a shell script replacement) rather than C, where you can just download a compiled version and use it without any fuss. Ruby moved its curses interface out of the standard library a long time ago, so now you have to add it to your gems list.
> If you're pretty printing text for a human to read then I don't think the couple extra ms it will take to spawn a handful of tput processes is going to be an actual performance concern.
For scripts, I agree — I used to use tput, and only stopped because I'd eventually seen the ANSI escape codes enough time to just memorise them. But I find that if your program needs to use enough colours (my software has been called "overly colourful" before), the time it takes to run a tput once for every bold and normal variant of all eight colours quickly makes it seem like your program is running on the JVM, even if I cache the output. I appreciate that not all software needs every terminal style available to it, but it seems to me that the best interface should be able to scale to many styles, not just a few.
> I was going to refute the any language comment with libraries based on terminfo, but all the ones I ran across in 30 seconds just hard code the ANSI escape sequences.
This doesn't surprise me! I used to be concerned with the growing number of comments and guides on the internet that say things like "this is how you do bold in a terminal" as though it applies to all terminals, so I asked a question on Stack Exchange a while ago:
I was hoping to find an answer from someone like yourself, who regularly works with non-ANSI terminals and was becoming increasingly annoyed at the proliferation of standards-shirking shell scripts... but I only got comments saying I was doing it wrong, as though I was the only one who didn't get the memo. You're the only obscure terminal user I've ever talked to in the wild, congratulations.
Anyway, I agree that we're stuck in this situation, and even though I am taking the easy way out, I still find that a shame.
You'll also find a lot of Google search results for "tput: No value for $TERM and no -T specified". I wish it was as simple as just calling tput, but you need to write a bunch of logic anyway.
Funny, I write terminal codes directly, because where I learned to program (PC DOS), there was no terminfo, only ANSI.SYS. I don't ever plan to port anything to DOS ever again, but old habits do die hard.
Even now for modern devices it wouldn't be the worst idea to avoid hard coding things like color (e-ink?). And it's not like it's difficult to avoid hard coding, using tput ( https://linux.die.net/man/1/tput ) means you don't have to write out the arbitrary escape sequences yourself while being compatible with any terminal.
"My team writes a lot of command line tools" is a valid excuse for internal use. But not for writing a educational post.