microsoft / microsoft/TypeScript

Some colors make error messages hard to read on white backgrounds.

Open Beginner friendly
#63,648 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
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Dominant language
Go
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Description

On a terminal with white background, some parts of the error messages are very hard to read:

Image

### Cause

The problem is that the `diagnosticwriter` is forcing the [bright versions of the colors](https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html#h4-Functions-using-CSI-_-ordered-by-the-final-character-lparen-s-rparen:CSI-Pm-m:Ps-=-9-0.1E5F), instead of using the default colors set by the terminal configuration (by writing `9x` instead of `3x`):

https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go/blob/168e7015edf98244febc8f4ae450b673b5d195d7/internal/diagnosticwriter/diagnosticwriter.go#L108-L112

If I patch the binary to replace the colors to `3x` with this:

```
$ sed -i 's/\x1b\[9\(.\)m/\x1b[3\1m/g' ./node_modules/@typescript/typescript-linux-x64/lib/tsc
```

Then the output is much easier to read:

Image

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start in internal/diagnosticwriter/diagnosticwriter.go at the color-writing code linked in the issue, and compare the terminal sequences it emits with the reported white-background behavior. Verify the diagnostic output in a terminal using its default colors; done means the error messages remain readable without forcing bright color variants.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
cli
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
75/100

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