Sunday, February 20, 2011

pari GP terminal colours - readable darkbg

After 3 years or more of using Pari/GP, the default highlighting (in terminal), bothered me enough, to read up how to change it.

default(colors,darkbg)

Here is a comparison of the effects of the highlighting change:


The lines prefixed %7 and %8 and in between, show the output is now in grey, and input highlighting is now greenish.

The original "1, 6, 3, 4, 5, 2, 3" profile known as lightbg is reactivated briefly, so it can be compared again.

Making the change permanent on Debian by:

emacs /etc/gprc

and changing which lines are commented out, results in the top of my /etc/gprc file looking like this:



So now when I start up Pari/GP my highlighting is set okay from the outset:




Notes and further reading:
On Ubuntu you will want to use the keyword sudo at the front of the command for editing /etc/gprc

If you want a lighter alternative to emacs on your system, then zile is a lightweight alternative that supports basic editing. Alternatively your system default editor is probably already chosen and use that.

The pari/GP command ...

default(colors,d)

... can be used interactively if you do not wish to make the change permanent.
darkbg abbreviated to just 'd' should work.