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Final legacy of 16-color CGA palette is disappearing in Windows 10

vwestlife

vwestlife

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Microsoft is updating the colors in the Windows 10 text console (i.e. Command Prompt) to replace the traditional CGA 16-color palette with colors that are "more compatible with modern high-contrast displays" -- ironically by reducing the amount of contrast between the colors:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/08/02/updating-the-windows-console-colors/

ConsoleChangesSideBySideNoBar1.png
 
I only really use the command line for networking stuff and running the occasional program without a GUI, so I don't usually see anything but mono.

That said, when scanning the comments on the linked post, I saw talk of adding tabs and stuff. That made me wonder "What else might they have added?". So, I popped up a console and looked.

When did they add the ability to copy, paste, etc to it? If the answer is "ages ago" I am going to be very, very, pissed off with myself! Ever since we lost proper DOS (ie booting to it, then loading Windows on top) I've always assumed that the Command Prompt gave you a faux DOS, with nothing extra. In all that time, it had never occurred to me to click on the little icon at the top left, to see what was there. #embarrassed.
 
All versions of the command prompt for NT have had the same mark, copy, paste functions as WinOldAp gave to the versions of Windows that ran on top of DOS. Scroll as a menu item is somewhat newer as is the ability to select font and typesize.
 
FFS! All this time...

I guess I could claim to have always been a purist, but it would be a sham. I just took the hype around Win 95 as being Microsoft's new direction and never revisited it. Sloppy of me.
 
The Windows 10 command prompt does add the ability to cut and paste using the standard keyboard shortcuts. Older versions of Windows required use of the actual menu items. This was done to avoid stealing key bindings from legacy DOS applications, which is a non-issue in 64-bit versions of Windows. I haven't tried it with DOS programs running on NTVDM on Windows 10 32-bit.
 
I don't think the Windows command prompt has ever used the traditional CGA colours on a VGA or later display. The traditional CGA colours are these ones (000000, 0000aa, 00aa00, 00aaaa, aa0000, aa00aa, aa5500, aaaaaa, 555555, 5555ff, 55ff55, 55ffff, ff5555, ff55ff, ffff55 and ffffff). The Windows system colours were tweaked to simplify the dithering algorithm giving these much uglier ones (with the lower contrast between the dark colours and black) and reordered to 000000, 800000, 008000, 808000, 000080, 800080, 008080, c0c0c0, 808080, ff0000, 00ff00, ffff00, 0000ff, ff00ff, 00ffff, ffffff. So, in the sense that the colour scheme is based on the 8 corners of the RGB cube plus one bit for a "bright" level, nothing changes with this update except that the exact set of colours has been chosen by a designer rather than a coder.

Anybody know why IBM picked the colours it did for CGA in the 5153 monitor? Trixter hinted that it comes from one of the IBM 3270 series of terminals, but it doesn't seem to be the original 3279, the first colour device in the series (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3279 this only displayed red, green, blue and white) but perhaps it was the later model that could do 7 colours (though I'd have expected one of those 7 to be yellow and not brown).
 
reenigne said:
nothing changes with this update except that the exact set of colours has been chosen by a designer rather than a coder.
Click to expand...

And rightly so. I am looking at these screenshots on a Dell UltraSharp 4k IPS monitor, and the high contrast of this monitor makes the dark-blue almost invisible on the black background for example.
The new colours have a much better balance on my monitor.
So it seems that originally they 'got away' with the coder-chosen colours, but as monitor technology evolved, the contrast levels did as well (especially black levels have improved a lot over the years), so the balance between certain colours is very different today from when it was first introduced.
 
Scali said:
And rightly so. I am looking at these screenshots on a Dell UltraSharp 4k IPS monitor, and the high contrast of this monitor makes the dark-blue almost invisible on the black background for example.
The new colours have a much better balance on my monitor.
So it seems that originally they 'got away' with the coder-chosen colours, but as monitor technology evolved, the contrast levels did as well (especially black levels have improved a lot over the years), so the balance between certain colours is very different today from when it was first introduced.
Click to expand...

Despite Microsoft's claims, I don't think dark blue on black was ever particularly legible - I'm not convinced this is something that's just recently become a problem with modern monitor technology.

I suspect the reason may be more to do with the improved Linux integration with newer versions of Windows - the dark-blue on back combination is much more common in Linux-land than it is in Windows-land, because Linux consoles switched to using colour schemes in which that combination was more legible many years ago.
 
reenigne said:
I don't think the Windows command prompt has ever used the traditional CGA colours on a VGA or later display. The traditional CGA colours are these ones (000000, 0000aa, 00aa00, 00aaaa, aa0000, aa00aa, aa5500, aaaaaa, 555555, 5555ff, 55ff55, 55ffff, ff5555, ff55ff, ffff55 and ffffff).
Click to expand...
Those are just approximations, since on a true CGA RGB display, the difference between the regular and high-intensity colors depends on how the user has adjusted their monitor's contrast control, and the monitor's own internal calibration of the brown color. Usually with it turned all the way up there is almost no difference between regular and high-intensity, while with it turned all the way down, the regular colors have totally disappeared and only the high-intensity colors remain visible.
 
You're forgetting how dark yellow was brown on traditional true CGA displays. This is what reenigne is referring to, and they are correct.

They aren't talking contrast, they are talking colors. So since IBM hardware dictated dark yellow as being brown, the color palette in the command prompt was never a proper CGA palette to begin with.

On my system (Linux running KDE), I actually find that my terminal's colors more closely resemble TRUE CGA colors, rather than your Microsoft examples.

http://i.imgur.com/AaRfiqz.png
 
I think even Windows 3.1 had some rudimentary copy/paste for MS-DOS applications.

On linux, I was never able to read the dark blue on black that is the default for ls. I always bumped dark blue to be way brighter.
 
reenigne said:
Trixter hinted that it comes from one of the IBM 3270 series of terminals, but it doesn't seem to be the original 3279, the first colour device in the series (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3279 this only displayed red, green, blue and white) but perhaps it was the later model that could do 7 colours (though I'd have expected one of those 7 to be yellow and not brown).
Click to expand...

The hint came from members of the classiccmp mailing list. Several people voiced that opinion, but nobody could confirm it. I admit, when I try to search, I find documents like http://publibfp.dhe.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr/BOOKS/cn7p4000/4.4.6.4?DT=19920626112004#TBLCOLRARC which don't list brown at all, so I'm just as confused.
 
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