RE: ANSI test card

Hi, all.

I've recently noticed that the terminal I wrote myself doesn't seem to display 'intense black' (dark grey) text - it took me an incredibly long time to notice that but here we are...

Does anyone know of an ANSI equivalent to the old TV test cards they used to transmit so you could calibrate your TV correctly? Just something that shows all the combinations of foreground and background colours would do for this case.

Thanks,

BobW

   
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

Hey Bob,

I typically create my own in an .ans file and keep it somewhere in my sysop menu, for the different purpose of remembering what color combinations = ? Something such as:

|011 |022 |033 |044 |055 |066 |077 |088

Each representing pipe code | plus 0 plus the number above.

I would assume if the aforementioned were not "test bar'ey" enough, there might be one pre-drawn on the 16 colors website?

Or maybe one of these photos would be of help?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ansi+color+calibration&t=brave&iax=images&ia=images&ia i=https%3A%2F%2Fazrael.digipen.edu%2F~mmead%2Fwww%2Fmg%2Fansicolors%2Fansicolors -1.png
?

Or does it need to be a physical calibration test card?



On Monday,December 09, 2024 at 05:31 PM, Bob Worm wrote:

RE: ANSI test card

Hi, all.

I've recently noticed that the terminal I wrote myself doesn't seem to display 'intense black' (dark grey) text - it took me an incredibly long time to notice that but here we are...

Does anyone know of an ANSI equivalent to the old TV test cards they
used to transmit so you could calibrate your TV correctly? Just
something that shows all the combinations of foreground and background colours would do for this case.

Thanks,

BobW

|08Gh|150|08sts |07in the |15Machine
|08ghostmachine.ddns.net|15:|08 t|151717 |08ssh|157777


          
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

Hi, Recon.

I would assume if the aforementioned were not "test bar'ey" enough,
there might be one pre-drawn on the 16 colors website?

I should probably add some context... I am looking for something that tests that my terminal is rendering ANSI correctly (since I wrote it myself and it's full of minor bugs). I'm not a sysop so I don't have the luxury of keeping an ANSI handy on my own BBS, sadly.

Weirdly the majority of your message didn't show on my terminal until I quoted it, I guess either a) another bug my side or b) the text was set to black on black :)

Cheers for the suggestions!

BobW

 
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

Weirdly the majority of your message didn't show on my terminal until I quoted
it, I guess either a) another bug my side or b) the text was set to black on
black :)

It was bright black on black (or bold black), some terminals (perhaps yours) render bright colours as bold rather than bright, so would be invisible.

It was rendered that way as there was no reset of colour after the last pipe code example or (PIPE)08 which is bright black.

Andrew

--- Noddy git-4716e54
* Origin: Space Junk! BBS :: SpaceJunkBBS.com:2323 (127)
 
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

Hi, Andrew.

It was bright black on black (or bold black), some terminals (perhaps
yours) render bright colours as bold rather than bright, so would be
yours) invisible.

My terminal does bright colours rather than bold, it's just intense black that doesn't work. If I were a betting man I would wager I probably have an off-by-one in the code (i.e. "if attribute > 90" rather than "if attribute >= 90") as it's only intense black that doesn't work.

I'm away from home so can't look right now... oh, wait, I have a prototype in emulation on this laptop, so I can look! Heh, seems not :(

Will have to do some troubleshooting with a test card!

BobW

 
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

For what it's worth to anyone (probably not a lot) - I have figured out what it is that my terminal is not doing properly :)

The way the colours are set on here seems to translate into ANSI as:

^[0;30;40;1m

Or in other words, set default colour, set foreground to black, set background to black, turn intensity on. For some reason that's not working on my terminal, even thought it should take up to 7 parameters, and even though setting intensity first (i.e. ^[1;30;40m) works as expected.

More research required :)

BobW

p
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

Or in other words, set default colour, set foreground to black, set background to black, turn intensity on. For some reason that's not
working on my terminal, even thought it should take up to 7 parameters,
and even though setting intensity first (i.e. ^[1;30;40m) works as expected.

Ah, yes. I had a leftover remnant of code from when I assumed I'd only ever need 3 parameters. It is fixed now :)

Thanks for the help, guys!

BobW



 
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

^[0;30;40;1m

and even though setting intensity first (i.e. ^[1;30;40m) works as expected.

Are you interpreting these on your own, are you just taking the first parameter of a given type?

i.e. processing the 0 then ignoring any future 0 or 1's since bold has already been set?

rushfan


→
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

Hi, Rushfan.

and even though setting intensity first (i.e. ^[1;30;40m) works as expected.

Are you interpreting these on your own, are you just taking the first parameter of a given type?

i.e. processing the 0 then ignoring any future 0 or 1's since bold has already been set?

It handles multiple parameters (e.g. colour settings) in a single command fine. I had extended the code at some point to allow up to 7 parameters to be fed in for a single command, however I evidently didn't test that out because (due to the way I initialised the parameters in memory) it only worked for the first 3 parameters. I've now corrected the initialisation so it works as expected :)

Cheers,

BobW

 
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

test that out because (due to the way I initialised the parameters in memory) it only worked for the first 3 parameters. I've now corrected memory) the initialisation so it works as expected :)

Ah, that makes sense. Very cool, sounds like it was fun to debug.

rushfan


→
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

Hi, Rushfan.

Ah, that makes sense. Very cool, sounds like it was fun to debug.

Hmm... not so sure about the fun part! I think I was just "pot committed" having already checked the code once and come away empty handed - I can't be defeated by my own bad code :)

Thanks again to WWIV for stress testing my code, man this BBS does more weird stuff with ANSI than anything else I've ever had to deal with!

BobW

 
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)

Thanks again to WWIV for stress testing my code, man this BBS does more weird stuff with ANSI than anything else I've ever had to deal with!

That's the legacy of some of the code still being the same as it was in 1987 or even earlier.

rushfan

→
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)