Change Terminal.app ANSI Color on Leopard

Posted by Yoshimasa Niwa on 11/02, 2007

Introducing TerminalColoreopard!

Terminal.app on Leopard supports full ANSI color and multi color profile and many encodings and treat japanese correctly but, one thing – the changing the ANSI color is missing. When we use the Tiger, we can change the ANSI colors on Terminal.app using Terminal Colors Plugin. But this nice plugin cannot work with Leopard one. I tried to write same one for Leopard and now, I present it as beta version.

Download and Install

  1. Download the package
  2. Double click to mount one.
  3. If you have never install the SIMBL which TerminalColoreopard need to work, double click SIMBL.pkg to install it.
  4. You confirm the Terminal.app does not work now. If not, you should quit one.
  5. Copy the TerminalColoreopard.bundle into (Your Home)/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins. If there are no destination, you should create one.

Defects

  • Currently the color settings are shared any color profile.
  • Even if you change the color using the palette, it will not affect the screen quickly. You currently refresh the screen manually.

Road to 1.0

  • Fix the defects
  • Add the installer.pkg
  • Add the preset of color set like Tango Colors or something

Source code

Now I open the source code at Codereops which is a movement to share the personal source code repository in Japan. You can get the whole codes from follow SVN repository and if you want to commit your code to this branch, you should create an account of Coderepos by sending the htpasswd file to the proposer of Coderepos (the details are given on the Corerepos web site).

  • SVN repository: http://svn.coderepos.org/share/lang/objective-c/TerminalColoreopard
  • Browse the source

Donation

If you would like to help the TerminalColoreopard project, please feel free to donate via PayPal using the following form.

Amount in USD

Thank you for your donation!

Change Log

  • 0.2.1

    • Support MacOS X 10.5.2 software update

  • 0.2.0

    • Fix missing dmg background
    • Remove black and white color settings because we cannot change these color, it seems be depended on the configuration of Terminal.app itself.
    • Change the way to hack and overwrite the methods in Terminal.app
    • Adjust color configuration panel GUI
    • Open the source
    • TerminalColoreopard-0.2.0.dmg (63Kbyte)

  • 0.1.0

Meta

digg it! | b.hatena it!

Comments

  • ms kim said at 11/19, 2007
    Hi, Yoshimasa san..
    I got installed on my private library, but I couldn't get it worked. Also, When I installed SIMBL package, It went to the /Library/InputManagers directory. This is not the one that you mentioned above article.
    Do you have any idea? What I can install your prestigious application.

    Thx
  • Yoshimasa Niwa said at 11/20, 2007
    > ms kim
    At first, Please check the TerminalColoreopard.bundle are placed in ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins. If not, place it and quite the terminal then launch it. If you does not get the Color Preference menu item in Terminal.app Main menu(see the pic), please launch the Console.app(place in /Application/Utilities) and find the log said "TerminalColoreopard installed". If not, it seems the problem of this plug-in. please let me know your environment(I mean, is Intel Mac? The version of Mac OS is 10.5.x?)

    And, now I'm writing the next version of this plug-in which was changed the way to hack the Terminal.app. I also try to put it on the web asap for checking the implementation. Best.
  • Ruzia said at 12/08, 2007
    まさに探し求めていた物です！！
    ありがたく使わせて頂きます−
  • J.e. Turcotte said at 02/06, 2008
    Hello... I tried your application (being desperate to change the dark blue to something else for VI, ls, and such via Terminal) ... but it tells me it hasn't been tested with SIMBL 0.2.1, and therefore won't run... good luck and thanks!
  • Yoshimasa Niwa said at 02/08, 2008
    Hi, J.e. Turcotte: The latest version of SIMBL seems 0.8.2 so, I think you can update SIMBL itself using SIMBL.pkg which I included in TerminalColoreopard.dmg. I tested this plugin with this version of SIMBL.
  • TN said at 03/28, 2008
    Hi,

    Thanx for this application. It is working flawlessly with an up-to-date Leopard installation. I understand (maybe from other sources) that the mechanism used, based on SIMBL is unsupported by Apple and will eventually be removed. I'm not an expert on this matter, so apologies in advance if i'm mistaken. I hope that there is a 'long term' solution, until Apple finaly resolves this issue.
  • stef said at 04/24, 2008
    Thanks Niwa, your app works fine... At last I can clearly see my files and folders in Terminal, with colors !
  • Thomas said at 08/11, 2008
    Thanks a lot! Never again too blue...
  • Michael said at 09/09, 2008
    This worked great with Leopard 10.5.4 and Terminal.app. Thank you very much!
  • Stian said at 09/18, 2008
    Woo! This is brilliant! Thank you very much! Keep up the good work! I changed everything to lovely shaded pastels.. it looks lovely! And the best part - my eyes don't hurt anymore.

    PS - for the best experience combine with the fixed-width font Inconsolata http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html
  • Richard said at 09/26, 2008
    Thank you!
  • kimc said at 11/26, 2008
    I was crying every time I a see dark blue as directory on black background. This is a life saver!!! Thank you.
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