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python-colorama - Cross-platform colored terminal text.
Published by Tim Cuthbertson
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Download and docs: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/colorama Development: http://code.google.com/p/colorama Discussion group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/python-colorama Description =========== Makes ANSI escape character sequences, for producing colored terminal text and cursor positioning, work under MS Windows. ANSI escape character sequences have long been used to produce colored terminal text and cursor positioning on Unix and Macs. Colorama makes this work on Windows, too. It also provides some shortcuts to help generate ANSI sequences, and works fine in conjunction with any other ANSI sequence generation library, such as Termcolor (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/termcolor.) This has the upshot of providing a simple cross-platform API for printing colored terminal text from Python, and has the happy side-effect that existing applications or libraries which use ANSI sequences to produce colored output on Linux or Macs can now also work on Windows, simply by calling ``colorama.init()``. Demo scripts in the source code repository prints some colored text using ANSI sequences. Compare their output under Gnome-terminal's built in ANSI handling, versus on Windows Command-Prompt using Colorama: .. image:: http://colorama.googlecode.com/hg/screenshots/ubuntu-demo.png :width: 661 :height: 357 :alt: ANSI sequences on Ubuntu under gnome-terminal. .. image:: http://colorama.googlecode.com/hg/screenshots/windows-demo.png :width: 668 :height: 325 :alt: Same ANSI sequences on Windows, using Colorama. These screengrabs show that Colorama on Windows does not support ANSI 'dim text': it looks the same as 'normal text'. Dependencies ============ None, other than Python. Tested on Python 2.5.5, 2.6.5, 2.7, 3.1.2, and 3.2 Usage ===== Initialisation -------------- Applications should initialise Colorama using:: from colorama import init init() If you are on Windows, the call to ``init()`` will start filtering ANSI escape sequences out of any text sent to stdout or stderr, and will replace them with equivalent Win32 calls. Calling ``init()`` has no effect on other platforms (unless you request other optional functionality, see keyword args below.) The intention is that applications can call ``init()`` unconditionally on all platforms, after which ANSI output should just work. To stop using colorama before your program exits, simply call ``deinit()``. This will restore stdout and stderr to their original values, so that Colorama is disabled. To start using Colorama again, call ``reinit()``, which wraps stdout and stderr again, but is cheaper to call than doing ``init()`` all over again. Colored Output -------------- Cross-platform printing of colored text can then be done using Colorama's constant shorthand for ANSI escape sequences:: from colorama import Fore, Back, Style print Fore.RED + 'some red text' print Back.GREEN + and with a green background' print Style.DIM + 'and in dim text' print + Fore.RESET + Back.RESET + Style.RESET_ALL print 'back to normal now' or simply by manually printing ANSI sequences from your own code:: print '/033[31m' + 'some red text' print '/033[30m' # and reset to default color or Colorama can be used happily in conjunction with existing ANSI libraries such as Termcolor:: from colorama import init from termcolor import colored # use Colorama to make Termcolor work on Windows too init() # then use Termcolor for all colored text output print colored('Hello, World!', 'green', 'on_red') Available formatting constants are:: Fore: BLACK, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, MAGENTA, CYAN, WHITE, RESET. Back: BLACK, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, MAGENTA, CYAN, WHITE, RESET. Style: DIM, NORMAL, BRIGHT, RESET_ALL Style.RESET_ALL resets foreground, background and brightness. Colorama will perform this reset automatically on program exit. Cursor Positioning ------------------ ANSI codes to reposition the cursor are supported. See demos/demo06.py for an example of how to generate them. Init Keyword Args ----------------- ``init()`` accepts some kwargs to override default behaviour. init(autoreset=False): If you find yourself repeatedly sending reset sequences to turn off color changes at the end of every print, then ``init(autoreset=True)`` will automate that:: from colorama import init init(autoreset=True) print Fore.RED + 'some red text' print 'automatically back to default color again' init(strip=None): Pass ``True`` or ``False`` to override whether ansi codes should be stripped from the output. The default behaviour is to strip if on Windows. init(convert=None): Pass ``True`` or ``False`` to override whether to convert ansi codes in the output into win32 calls. The default behaviour is to convert if on Windows and output is to a tty (terminal). init(wrap=True): On Windows, colorama works by replacing ``sys.stdout`` and ``sys.stderr`` with proxy objects, which override the .write() method to do their work. If this wrapping causes you problems, then this can be disabled by passing ``init(wrap=False)``. The default behaviour is to wrap if autoreset or strip or convert are True. When wrapping is disabled, colored printing on non-Windows platforms will continue to work as normal. To do cross-platform colored output, you can use Colorama's ``AnsiToWin32`` proxy directly:: from colorama import init, AnsiToWin32 init(wrap=False) stream = AnsiToWin32(sys.stderr).stream print >>stream, Fore.BLUE + 'blue text on stderr' Status & Known Problems ======================= I've personally only tested it on WinXP (CMD, Console2) and Ubuntu (gnome-terminal, xterm), although it sounds like others are using it on other platforms too. See outstanding issues and wishlist at: http://code.google.com/p/colorama/issues/list If anything doesn't work for you, or doesn't do what you expected or hoped for, I'd *love* to hear about it on that issues list. Recognised ANSI Sequences ========================= ANSI sequences generally take the form: ESC [ <param> ; <param> ... <command> Where <param> is an integer, and <command> is a single letter. Zero or more params are passed to a <command>. If no params are passed, it is generally synonymous with passing a single zero. No spaces exist in the sequence, they have just been inserted here to make it easy to read. The only ANSI sequences that colorama converts into win32 calls are:: ESC [ 0 m # reset all (colors and brightness) ESC [ 1 m # bright ESC [ 2 m # dim (looks same as normal brightness) ESC [ 22 m # normal brightness # FOREGROUND: ESC [ 30 m # black ESC [ 31 m # red ESC [ 32 m # green ESC [ 33 m # yellow ESC [ 34 m # blue ESC [ 35 m # magenta ESC [ 36 m # cyan ESC [ 37 m # white ESC [ 39 m # reset # BACKGROUND ESC [ 40 m # black ESC [ 41 m # red ESC [ 42 m # green ESC [ 43 m # yellow ESC [ 44 m # blue ESC [ 45 m # magenta ESC [ 46 m # cyan ESC [ 47 m # white ESC [ 49 m # reset # cursor positioning ESC [ x;y H # position cursor at x,y # clear the screen ESC [ mode J # clear the screen. Only mode 2 (clear entire screen) # is supported. It should be easy to add other modes, # let me know if that would be useful. Multiple numeric params to the 'm' command can be combined into a single sequence, eg:: ESC [ 36 ; 45 ; 1 m # bright cyan text on magenta background All other ANSI sequences of the form ``ESC [ <param> ; <param> ... <command>`` are silently stripped from the output on Windows. Any other form of ANSI sequence, such as single-character codes or alternative initial characters, are not recognised nor stripped. It would be cool to add them though. Let me know if it would be useful for you, via the issues on google code. Development =========== Running tests requires: - Michael Foord's 'mock' module to be installed. - Tests are written using the 2010 era updates to 'unittest', and require to be run either using Python2.7 or greater, or else to have Michael Foord's 'unittest2' module installed. unittest2 test discovery doesn't work for colorama, so I use 'nose':: nosetests -s The -s is required because 'nosetests' otherwise applies a proxy of its own to stdout, which confuses the unit tests. Thanks ====== Daniel Griffith for multiple fabulous patches. Oscar Lesta for valuable fix to stop ANSI chars being sent to non-tty output. Roger Binns, for many suggestions, valuable feedback, & bug reports. Tim Golden for thought and much appreciated feedback on the initial idea.
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Version Released Stability Platform Download 0.2.4 2011-06-25 Any Download (13070 bytes) - Required libraries
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