This is a collection of information and files to make the NeXT Terminal application more colorful and perhaps informative. It is only useful under NeXTstep 3.3 and later. You should read the warnings at the end of this file. (They're not too serious, but should be understood.)
To enable multiple color terminal windows, you should have files with saved terminal configurations in ~/Library/Terminal. Included with this distribution are some files (Terminal/*.term) that have pleasant color schemes. Copy these, or create your own by dragging colors over the text and background of a terminal window and saving that configuration.
You will find it useful to have key commands open term files. To enable this, run the following command from the shell prompt:
dwrite Terminal LibraryMenu Yes
This gives you a "Library>" menu under "Shell>" with all your
saved terminal files in it.
Next, assign command keys to your favorite term files using Preferences.app. I assign them to the top row of keys (!@#$%^) since these aren't used in terminal, and are easy for me to remember.
Also included here are a bunch of EPS files I wrote that you can open in the color picker panel; each is a different display on all 4096 12-bit pure colors, which to my eye look best on 12 bit displays since they don't require dithering.
1) The color schemes here are saved in .term files, which store all kinds of information besides just a color scheme. They store a default shell (/bin/csh in this case) and can also store initialization commands to be run. As such, they are not particularly secure. However, they are as secure as running a random binary from the archives. You don't need the .term files, since you can save your own. However, they are currently the only way to save a color scheme, and these term files display what I feel are readable and aesthetically pleasing schemes. If you don't like csh, you can use these term files to set the colors in your own term files by opening one of these term files and setting the default color scheme, then creating a new window (with your preferred shell) and saving that window as a term file.
2) I like to have a 2 line prompt, with the current working directory preceding the hostname, and using color to separate the prompt from the input and output text. I supply a sample of code that can be incorporated into your .cshrc file, or you can try it by typing:
source cshrc.sample
at the csh prompt. This slightly breaks the NeXT-supplied csh (I really mean csh is slightly broken...), so that it doesn't process input pending at startup until it gets a keystroke. You will only notice this if you invoke terminal through the remote objects interface or with services like "new shell here", then you'll have to enter a space to get input to flush out.
