Configurable color/monochrome mode from CLI and config file

[tobimensch]

This is a job for a junior browsh developer and should be possible to solve for anyone who has the development environment setup.

Currently the monochrome mode can only be activated by pressing ALT+m.

The default should be configurable in the config.

And it should be possible to select the color mode from the command line.

Use cases:

• For testing purposes I was using ansi-term inside emacs today and unfortunately the key combination ALT+m isn't forwarded correctly to browsh.
• Prefering monochrome mode to save bandwidth

[j-rewerts]

I might be able to take a look at this this weekend.

For the second point, are you thinking a flag --monochrome or something?

[tobimensch]

@j-rewerts
--monochrome might suffice for now. Long term browsh will probably support many color modes, so something like:
--color-mode string, where string can be one of monochrome, ansi (not supported yet), ..., truecolor (default)
might be a solution.

If you implement a --monochrome flag, then you should also implement a --truecolor flag, because someone might want to change the default in the configuration file to monochrome and use true color mode occasionally using the --truecolor flag.

[j-rewerts]

That seems like a good approach. We do already use --firefox.{insert mode here}. Maybe we could do that?
--colormode.truecolor and --colormode.monochrome

[tobimensch]

@j-rewerts
I don't like --colormode.truecolor . That's not how command line arguments are supposed to look. The --firefox.example is different, as those modes aren't mutually exclusive, while the color modes are mutually exclusive. You can better compare it to the --startup-url flag, which takes a string as parameter.

[j-rewerts]

I hadn't thought about the mutual exclusivity. Good point!

[tobimensch]

@j-rewerts
There's a small cultural issue as well.

@tombh deliberately uses British English, and therefore writes color as colour.

Usually American English is used on the command line. But British spelling is used all throughout this project, so maybe we should stick to it.

Personally I'd prefer color, because it's shorter. Maybe we can be one of few software projects to support both spellings on the command line.

[tombh]

Haha, I think 'color' is better for user-facing features, but 'colour' has already become the standard in the code base, just because why not :D

So I think the CLI should be --color-mode monochrome/true/... and the config file should be color-mode = monochrome/true/...

[tobimensch]

@tombh
Makes sense.

[j-rewerts]

@CodyGramlich I know you're interested in taking this one. Feel free to take it over!

[CodyGramlich]

Great. We'll work on it right now!

[tobimensch]

@j-rewerts @CodyGramlich
So glad to see new contributors!