GiovanniStyle, high readability for your Terminal.app
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Random Stuff
Soon after Leopard came out I read an article on Slashdot about color contrast. There was a comment that struck me that explained how there were two types of contrast and that you had to maximize both the achieve maximum readabilty. That comment suggested light yellow on dark blue as the best color scheme for terminals.
I made some experimentations with Terminal.app and was pleasantly surprised the commenter was right. I added Consolas to the mix to get the best possible Terminal experience.
After a while my friends and coworkers started to notice my terminal and kept asking me for my .terminal file. Soon after that even customers started asking for it, so I did what the cool guys do and put it on GitHub.
You can find it here: http://github.com/intinig/giovanni_style/tree/master
Let me know what you think 
Update: here’s a screenshot of the default style and GiovanniStyle side by side. It doesn’t do it any justice, so please try it and remember you have to have Consolas installed.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Just saw this on HackerNews. I have been hating my Terminal setup b/c when I ssh in to my server the colors are hard for me to read. I am going to try your setup now.
Thanks!
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Sorry, how do I use this file? I copied it to ~/.terminal, but my Terminal remained the same…
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:43 pm
@Jackson, let me know how it goes
@Roberto, just double click it
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
You know this is my favorite style!
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Screenshot or it didn’t happen…
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
How do non Apple users use this file?
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
@Tim: I don’t think you can
@Ben: Just added screenshot
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I use this http://blog.infinitered.com/entries/show/6 and I like it. You can have a similar look for vim and textmate
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
So basically
Background Color = Dark Blue
Text Color (Foreground) = Light Yellow
Anything else?
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:34 pm
How do you install the Consolas font from Microsoft for the Mac? Googled for it but didn’t find anything… Thanks!
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
@Tim: 12 pt Consolas font (antialiased) and slight transparency
@Hugh: I got it with MS Office for Mac, but I am sure you can find it around…
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:43 pm
I spent a lot of time getting my Terminal.app the way I like it. I finally settled on Monaco 12pt on a slightly yellow background (255,251,232). Now if I could only use my scroll wheel in vim.
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Not bad but the “selected” color makes pretty hard to read.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:24 am
FYI, this was the default style for IRIX’s 4dwm terminal windows (winterm/xwsh) on SGI machines for as far back as I can remember (IRIX 4.x). As a long time IRIX hacker (I worked behind an IRIX workstation daily until 2006!) the first thing I did upon switching to OS X was reconfigure Terminal.app to these colors. The only caveat with yellow on dark blue is that the default VIM syntax highlighting is absolutely unreadable on top of it. You either must be using an explicit vim theme that specifies a background color or at the very least ’:set bg=dark’ in order to use syntax highlighting in vim.
Screenshots of an IRIX desktop can be seen here.
Cheers!
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:24 am
Since you’re apparently stripping basic HTML tags, here’s the screenshot link:
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/screenshot.php?bsgfx=sgi/65_shell-scr-.jpg
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:26 am
@Brandon: nice, it just missed consolas
January 27th, 2009 at 1:11 am
GiovanniStyle rocks!