microsoft / microsoft/terminal

"less" pager renders in the wrong color when started at the bottom of the screen from powershell

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Area-Output Area-Rendering Help Wanted Issue-Bug Priority-3 Product-Conpty
Dominant language
C++
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Description

Environment

Windows build number: 10.0.18362.356
Windows Terminal version (if applicable): 0.5.2762.0

Any other software? less pager (https://chocolatey.org/packages/Less)

Steps to reproduce

Open PowerShell Tab
less <somefile> will show the file in foreground color
gci
less <somefile> will show the file in black color

Expected behavior

<somefile> should be shown in foreground color

Actual behavior

Somehow, after "gci" the file is shown in black. This does not happen with Cmd (note: at least when I tried to reproduce it, but I believe it had happened previously with cmd as well) and it doesn't happen in PowerShell or Cmd standalone (same note applies).

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the color change in Windows Terminal with PowerShell, gci, and the less pager using the environment details in the issue. Trace the terminal's handling of the pager and shell output, then verify that the file keeps the expected foreground color after gci and that the behavior is covered by a regression test.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, powershell
Domain
cli, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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