Colored console output

[Calinou]

In an UNIX terminal, you can type this for example:

echo -e "\e[31;1mRed Bold Text"

However, this doesn't work in Godot, the sequence will be output as plain text:

print("\\e[31;1mRed Bold Text")

(There are two backslashes in order to actually print one backslash.)

It doesn't work with printraw() either.

Either the sequences should be supported, or, better, there should be a cross-platform way of colouring console output, as Windows supports a subset of console colours too. Possible uses are:

• Highlighting errors and warnings
• Easier to read logs

[OvermindDL1]

\e in your echo command is not two characters but is instead an escape sequence, thus doing \e will never work in any case like this.

[OvermindDL1]

Also, that is terminal specific, there are ways to use proper colors based on the detected terminal type.

[reduz]

yes this is not portable sadly

On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 7:53 PM, OvermindDL1 notifications@github.com
wrote:

Also, that is terminal specific, there are ways to use proper colors based
on the detected terminal type.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#2308 (comment).

[akien-mga]

I guess we could have a print_colored statement of some sort that would rely on the OS class to define how to implement colouring on the platforms that support it, or do a plain print on platforms that don't.

Basically we could use \E[#;#m on Unix (as used for error output as seen in https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/2737/files), and SetConsoleTextAttribute for Windows console (as in https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/2827/files).

Not sure if it's worth the pain though :)

[Calinou]

It looks like it's already possible, even though it's not particularly straightforward (but it could be abstracted by the user):

var escape = PoolByteArray([0x1b]).get_string_from_ascii()
var code = "[1;32m"
print(escape + code + "Bold green text")

This should support any ANSI escape sequence. I haven't tested this on Windows yet, but Windows 10 is able to interpret ANSI escape sequences so it should work on Windows 10 as well. However, it won't work in the Output panel (escape codes will appear as-is).

People writing libraries or plugins may also be interested in @GDScript.push_error(text) and @GDScript.push_warning(text), which can be used to make clickable errors/warnings appear in the Debugger panel in addition to standard output.

Edit: It seems ANSI escape code support should be enabled in the application code before it can work on Windows 10.

[Zireael07]

Windows command line on any versions lower than Windows 10 does NOT support ANSI escape sequences, though.

[fire]

Remember to be able to disable text colours in the startup flags.

[lifelike]

You could use something like the public domain licensed single-file https://github.com/agauniyal/rang library or find something similar. I only tested it in linux, but it is supposed to work for windows as well.

[Calinou]

@lifelike Can that library work if you don't use the standard library to print text? Its README states:

Rang uses iostream objects - cout/clog/cerr to apply attributes to output text.

Also, in general, we tend to favor libraries that don't use the C++ standard library.

[akien-mga]

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