Inlined colors

[eugenesvk]

Would it be possible to support a more dense inline style of coloring similar to this python function
print_color("Command {c.b}{name}{c.d} {c.r}not found{c.d}")
where c.b would be blue and c.d would reset to default, ideally with customizable styles so you could have c.bb for blue bold instead of having to do {}, name.blue().bold();

[hwittenborn]

I don't think this a bad idea. The approach I'd like to do is having a module with macros mapping to format!(), println!(), and all of those that are in the stdlib. Then you'd be able to do things like this (it wouldn't have to be exactly like this though):

use colored::inline;

// This could also be `colored::println!`, as an example for other options.
inline::println!("Command {c.b}{name}{c.d} {c.r}not found{c.d}");

By making it a macro it could still check at compile time that everything is correctly implemented, and since the stdlib formatting macros don't support . syntax the macros could also allow normal formatting syntax, and only check for the custom specified colors.

What do you think?

[eugenesvk]

// This could also be colored::println!, as an example for other options.

I like colored::println! better than the inline::println!, though would alias such a frequently used function to use colored::println as pc; similar to use std::println as p;

inline::println!("Command {c.b}{name}{c.d} {c.r}not found{c.d}");

Regarding the main syntax, the c.b notation comes from me stuffing color abbreviation as class properties, but since this would be a custom macro, it's much more flexible and can be made not to interfere with the default {} variable expansion of println!, correct?

Is it flexible enough to have

• user-defined prefix/suffix

in some first initialization call to the macro (or a global var or something? procedural macros should have access to this?)?
For example, ideally I'd like to have very visually light markers like (not suitable for the library's defaults as people don't have easy access to such symbol set up)

‹b›blue ‹r›red ‹×›style reset ‹_r›no fg, red background
‹r_b›red fg default bg bold

• user-defined color abbreviations

‹zy›user-defined fg + bg

• composable colors

like ‹fg bg styles› (‹1 1 1; 255 255 255; b› for rgb foreground/background and bold for style) for inline color values instead of being a predefined set of c.b properties?