Debian Bug report logs - #383890
w3m: [Colors] For fg=black, bg=white, some text is invisible

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Marc-Jano Knopp <pub_br_debian.org@marc-jano.de>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: w3m: [Colors] For fg=black, bg=white, some text is invisible

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 16:05:12 +0200

Package: w3m
Version: 0.5.1-5
Severity: normal

On the Linux VGA 80x25 textmode console (no graphical framebuffer), some
texts are invisble, if w3m is configured with a white background (and at
least a black foreground) color.

Details:

* Start "w3m -config /dev/null http://www.debian.org/" (just as example)

* Open a new tab with 'T'; by default, it clones the original tab.
  Both tabs should have the title of the web page as label, namely
  "Debian - The Universal Operating System". Both titles are displayed
  lightgray on black (default colors of the Linux console), with the
  label of the active tab surrounded by a pair of white "[]".

* Press 'o' to enter the options screen, and set

    "Color of normal character" from "terminal" to "black",

  as well as

    "Color of background"       from "terminal" to "white".

  Then hit the [OK] button.    

* Now the Debian web page is displayed black on lightgray.

  But alas, this has rendered the label on the active tab invisible; the
  active tab is indicated by a darkgray pair of "[]", but has no label
  on it -- or perhaps a label colored lightgray on lightgray.

* Move the cursor to the News section. As soon as the cursor is over
  "Latest News" or one of the following news headlines (all in
  brightblue), the appropriate text is invisible, save the character
  under the cursor.

This happens only on the standard Linux white-on-black console. In an
xterm, everything works fine; the active tab label is darkgray on
lightgray, and the news links don't change colors, but become underlined
when the cursor is over them.

I'd suggest two more options for the tab labels:

  - Color of the active tab
  - Color of inactive tabs

where both colors should be used for both tab *label* and the brackets
around them -- the current behavior sets only the color of the brackets,
which makes the active tab hard to see in the tab bar.

For the invisible links I don't know a solution, they become invisible
with the cursor over them, although "Enable coloring of active link" is
disabled. Maybe w3m interprets CSS?

Sidenote: I just notice that "Enable coloring of active link" doesn't
have any effect at all, I'll file a separate bug report for that.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16-2-686
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=de_DE@euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)

Versions of packages w3m depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.3.6-15   GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libgc1c2                      1:6.7-2    conservative garbage collector for
ii  libgpmg1                      1.19.6-22  General Purpose Mouse - shared lib
ii  libncurses5                   5.5-2      Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libssl0.9.8                   0.9.8b-2   SSL shared libraries
ii  zlib1g                        1:1.2.3-13 compression library - runtime

Versions of packages w3m recommends:
ii  ca-certificates               20050804   Common CA Certificates PEM files

-- no debconf information

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