FORCE_COLOR

[perillo]

Looking at https://docs.python.org/3.13/using/cmdline.html#controlling-color, I found that Python will uses FORCE_COLOR (probably invented by colors.js and improved by chalk.

Searching the internet, there are other projects mentioning FORCE_COLOR.

Having two different standards will make implementing color support more complex. Is there a path for an unification?

Thanks.

[jhasse]

I'm all for unification. I've already talked with chalk, they weren't interested in changing their variable name (which I can understand): chalk/supports-color#32

I could change the site to recommend FORCE_COLOR instead of CLICOLOR_FORCE, but what about the programs that already use the latter?

[perillo]

I'm all for unification. I've already talked with chalk, they weren't interested in changing their variable name (which I can understand): chalk/supports-color#32

I could change the site to recommend FORCE_COLOR instead of CLICOLOR_FORCE, but what about the programs that already use the latter?

At this point the only solution is to officially recommend one of them, but suggest to also add support the latter. If the semantics are the same, then an implementator could easily support both.

By the way: Zig unfortunately started to use YES_COLOR (before it was called ZIG_DEBUG_COLOR`).

[adamhotep]

See also PYTHON_COLORS. The big problem here is that there are so many competing conventions because this has never been standardized. Were a new standard to be proposed, something like #19 would likely make the most sense, but even if you have the ears of the BSD, GNU, and OpenGroup (Posix) folks, that's still quite a tall order.

I've been a fan of CLICOLOR and CLICOLOR_FORCE for a while, as they are (unwritten?) BSD standards. NO_COLOR seems like a good third item and at least has a good presentation over at no-color.org. However, their battle must be fought on a per-program basis and that's going to take forever—at least CLICOLOR and CLICOLOR_FORCE are decently adopted (see #6).

[Ravencentric]

Also see: https://force-color.org/