Great! As for the killing/restarting explorer.... That's an effect of the explorer shell extension. It's a DLL that links into explorer, but it can't be replaced (on install) until explorer releases it, which usually requires a stop/start. I'll do some research into this to see what the alternatives are. But yes, it can be irritating.
OK, tried again with RC1 with 'allow server to change colors' unchecked. Now I see just white text without a black background. However, at the point where the color switch (white text on black background) *would* have happened, all text is changed to bold (still) black text. If I want to get rid of that, I then have to Disconnect and (re)Connect the session after which the text returns to the expected simple non-bold black text for all new text output. See attached.
Is that something that can be fixed/changed? Or done with a selection of a different font, "translation," terminal type, etc.? All I want is simple black text on a while background. If not, maybe I should try to find a simpler 'dumber' telnet program that just displays simple text.
Good feedback. Of course, anything can be changed or fixed, but that's where my 'devil is in the details' comment comes into play. The current change ONLY rejects color changes coming from the server. But there are other text attributes (bold, underline, reverse) that are not ignored.
Honestly, I'm think of going a different direction with this.... Instead of adding options to suppress various parts we want to ignore, I'm just going to add a new terminal type simply called 'dumb' that doesn't interpret anything. I think this will be a little more clear and obvious and avoid us going back and forth for various bits we want to suppress.
THoughts?
@bpence "Dumb" can be good to see a simple view of what's going on.
I don't know what this will do with control chars that the server may be spewing out. "Dumb" could just display them, resulting in clutter on the screen. Or "Half-Dumb" could suppress them while displaying the ASCII (etc.) text only. Thoughts from your end???
Example from another term program I was experimenting with:
[029;124H [030;003H
[030;124H [031;003H
[031;124H [032;003H
[032;124H [032;126H [005;124H [038;001H The highlighted entry will be executed automatically in 1s.
[005;124H [038;001H The highlighted entry will be executed automatically in 0s.
[005;124H [0m [30m [40m [2J [001;001H [1m [37m [40m [0m [30m [40m [2J [001;001H [1m [37m [40m Booting `Boot SF-F Diag (57600)'
Here's what the author of the other term program said about those visible control characters:
What you are seeing in TTY terminal mode (the codes like "[021;124H" ) are control codes the host sends to move the cursor or do colors. It's quite likely that the system can not do what it's supposed to do with TTY emulation (e.g. because the TTY also does not allow cursor movements).
In your case, either use VT220 and disable the color option (under session profile -> emulation) or
use xterm emulation and in session profile > colors make all colors White or
create a color palette where all the 15 base colors are white instead.
Good to know. I presume their 'tty' mode is similar to what I was proposing for 'dumb'... And yes, in dumb mode, it wouldn't interpret any escape sequences at all, resulting in what you're seeing above. Suppressing the escapes isn't a great option either. If they're cursor positioning sequences, the text may just show up in the wrong place, overlap, or overwrite. Probably not what you want.
I propose continuing down the route we're on, but instead of
"Allow server to change colors"
We'll rename it to
"Allow server to change text attributes"
And include the other text attributes in the list of what we're suppressing, including BOLD, UNDERLINE, REVERSE, etc... In the sample text pane on the right, you'll see immediately the effects of turning that on.
Sound good?
I've made the change I suggested above and you can grab RC2 on the beta page now:
https://www.celestialsoftware.net/beta-testing/
@bpence Yes, "TTY" = "Dumb" (including the fact that it was displaying the ctrl char ASCII values).
Agreed that that seems to be the better approach (since we want AT to "eat" the control chars instead of displaying them).
Although I don't know that "Allow server to change text attributes" fully conveys the right thing -- I think it's closer to "Allow server to change/apply colors & text attributes", but that's getting too long to squeeze into that spot in the GUI. Let me try RC2 (next Monday when I'm at work) and I'll report the behavior and my opinions & observations related to what I see (not) happening if I have a better text-description proposal.
RC2 is looking pretty good. No colored background or (permanently) colored text, no bold or italic text, no oddball visible control characters.
I was surprised to see a few characters showing grey backgrounds [see attached pic]. It's not causing a problem, mostly because it doesn't cause a *permanent* switch to that as I was previously seeing with black backgrounds or bold text--once AT switched to those with pre-RC1, it never reverted to black-on-white unless I manually disconnected/connected the session. You can decide if that's worth thinking about or if it's good as-is. I'm not complaining, just observing, since I wasn't expecting the momentary grey background on some text vs. *only* black-on-white.
The proposed "Allow server to change text attributes" setting still feels a little off since that doesn't convey the full meaning of the feature. Would "Allow server to change colors/text attributes" be clearer and still fit in the space?
@goawest , those are URLs, as seen in the data and highlighted by the CLIENT not the server. Absolute identifies them and makes them clickable. See 'URL Highlighting' under 'display options' in Options->Properties->Appearance if you want to turn that off too.
'text attributes' encompasses all of it and there's not really room for a longer description. Color, after all is just another text attribute. And if it's confusing, I think when you deselect it, the text pane on the right makes it clear. Maybe bubble help (popups when you hover the mouse) would help for that one.
Otherwise, it sounds like RC2 is doing what you need it to do. Let that marinate for a bit and we can call it 'done'.
Brian
In RC3, when you hover the mouse over that option, it will say
"Allow server to change text attributes such as color, bold, underline, etc. This is typically used by applications such as vi to highlight text. If you are using a program that uses color and other attributes, you will want to keep this option enabled."
FYI.... RC3 has been posted to the beta page if you want to take a look.
Getting close here on a 'final' release, but you're free to use RC1/RC2/RC3 until they expire.
Tried RC3 along with unchecking 'URL Highlighting'.
All looks good, nothing but black-on-white, as boring as we can make it 😎
Thanks for the work.
