I once had someone tell me they disliked Unix because it was too black-and-white for their tastes. So I created pclr (click here to download) (Pretty CoLoRs), a perl script through which you can run any command line program, that will randomize the color of every character as it is being printed. Then Bill Jonas rewrote pclr in C.

Obviously, the person who felt that Unix was not colorful enough had little experience with it.

1. They had only used the command line and were not aware of Unix's GUI, X, which can be very pretty if you use a window manager like enlightenment.
2. They were unaware of the many applications that can be made colorful.

On this page I intend to document ways to make the Unix command line more colorful.

If you were to use lynx to look at my home page from the command line through pclr (click here to download) (lynx http://www.chaosreigns.com | pclr), it might look like this:

I have tested pclr with many command line applications, and have not found problems with any. Of course, if you find any problems running any console application through pclr, let me know.

Rave Responses to pclr:

"That's horrible" - pinkee@cavegirl.org

"Oh god." - Mom

"my god that's ugly :)" - mct@toren.net

"this rocks 8)" - time@clockbot.net

"I'm getting sick looking at bb through pclr" - mct@toren.net

<bj> i just did a bad, bad thing.
<laserhen> honey, that's awful!
<pinkee> nothing is going to top pclr
<pinkee> nothing

"BB through pclr is about as pleasant as a stones through a kidney" - laserhen

"That sounds more like vomit than rainbows" - Zeph

"thats so disgustingly good" - Duck_liberation_front, 2016-12-12

freshmeat.net has rejected my submission of pclr. This, as you may know, is the main forum through which to publicize the existence of a new open-source application. I encourage you to read their rejection notice, and complain.

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Things You Can Make More Colorful

• Everything (with pclr)
• ls
• vim (text editor)
• bash shell prompt
• tcsh shell prompt
• BitchX (Internet Relay Chat client)
• mutt (mail reader)
• irssi (IRC client)
• Manually embedding ANSI color codes (to be written)

I know the following applications can be colorized but I do not know how (please tell me)

• pine (mail reader)
• tin (Usenet News client)
• slrn
• elvis
• emacs (text editor)

Please email me suggestions for additions to this list, including what can be made more colorful, and how to make it more colorful.

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