task-color(5) User Manuals task-color(5)NAMEtask-color - A color tutorial for the taskwarrior command line todo
manager.
SETUP
The first thing you need is a terminal program that supports color.
All terminal programs support color, but only a few support lots of
colors. First tell your terminal program to use color by specifying
the TERM environment variable like this:
TERM=xterm-color
In this example, xterm-color is used - a common value, and one that
doesn't require that you use xterm. This works for most setups. This
setting belongs in your shell profile (~/.bash_profile, ~/.bashrc,
~/.cshrc etc, depending on which shell you use). If this is a new set‐
ting, you will need to either run that profile script, or close and
reopen the terminal window (which does the same thing).
Now tell taskwarrior that you want to use color. This is the default
for taskwarrior, so the following step may be unnecessary.
$ task config color on
This command will make sure there is an entry in your ~/.taskrc file
that looks like:
color=on
Now taskwarrior is ready.
AUTOMATIC MONOCHROME
It should be mentioned that taskwarrior is aware of whether its output
is going to a terminal, or to a file or through a pipe. When taskwar‐
rior output goes to a terminal, color is desirable, but consider the
following command:
$ task list > file.txt
Do we really want all those color control codes in the file? Taskwar‐
rior assumes that you do not, and temporarily sets color to 'off' while
generating the output. This explains the output from the following
command:
$ task show | grep '^color '
color off
it always returns 'off', no matter what the setting, because the output
is being sent to a pipe.
If you wanted those color codes, you can override this behavior by set‐
ting the _forcecolor variable to on, like this:
$ task config _forcecolor on
$ task config | grep '^color '
color on
or by temporarily overriding it like this:
$ task rc._forcecolor=on config | grep '^color '
color on
AVAILABLE COLORS
Taskwarrior has a 'color' command that will show all the colors it is
capable of displaying. Try this:
$ task color
The output cannot be replicated here in a man page, but you should see
a set of color samples. How many you see depends on your terminal pro‐
gram's ability to render them.
You should at least see the Basic colors and Effects - if you do, then
you have 16-color support. If your terminal supports 256 colors,
you'll know it!
16-COLOR SUPPORT
The basic color support is provided through named colors:
black, red, blue, green, magenta, cyan, yellow, white
Foreground color (for text) is simply specified as one of the above
colors, or not specified at all to use the default terminal text color.
Background color is specified by using the word 'on', and one of the
above colors. Some examples:
green # green text, default background color
green on yellow # green text, yellow background
on yellow # default text color, yellow background
These colors can be modified further, by making the foreground bold, or
by making the background bright. Some examples:
bold green
bold white on bright red
on bright cyan
The order of the words is not important, so the following are equiva‐
lent:
bold green
green bold
But the 'on' is important - colors before the 'on' are foreground, and
colors after 'on' are background.
There is an additional 'underline' attribute that may be used:
underline bright red on black
And an 'inverse' attribute:
inverse red
Taskwarrior has a command that helps you visualize these color combina‐
tions. Try this:
$ task color underline bright red on black
You can use this command to see how the various color combinations
work. You will also see some sample colors displayed, like the ones
above, in addition to the sample requested.
Some combinations look very nice, some look terrible. Different termi‐
nal programs do implement slightly different versions of 'red', for
example, so you may see some unexpected variation across machines. The
brightness of your display is also a factor.
256-COLOR SUPPORT
Using 256 colors follows the same form, but the names are different,
and some colors can be referenced in different ways. First there is by
color ordinal, which is like this:
color0
color1
color2
...
color255
This gives you access to all 256 colors, but doesn't help you much.
This range is a combination of 8 basic colors (color0 - color7), then 8
brighter variations (color8 - color15). Then a block of 216 colors
(color16 - color231). Then a block of 24 gray colors (color232 -
color255).
The large block of 216 colors (6x6x6 = 216) represents a color cube,
which can be addressed via RGB values from 0 to 5 for each component
color. A value of 0 means none of this component color, and a value of
5 means the most intense component color. For example, a bright red is
specified as:
rgb500
And a darker red would be:
rgb300
Note that the three digits represent the three component values, so in
this example the 5, 0 and 0 represent red=5, green=0, blue=0. Combin‐
ing intense red with no green and no blue yields red. Similarly, blue
and green are:
rgb005
rgb050
Another example - bright yellow - is a mix of bright red and bright
green, but no blue component, so bright yellow is addressed as:
rgb550
A soft pink would be addressed as:
rgb515
See if you agree, by running:
$ task color black on rgb515
You may notice that the large color block is represented as 6 squares.
All colors in the first square have a red value of 0. All colors in
the 6th square have a red value of 5. Within each square, blue ranges
from 0 to 5 left to right, and within each square green ranges from 0
to 5, top to bottom. This scheme takes some getting used to.
The block of 24 gray colors can also be accessed as gray0 - gray23, in
a continuous ramp from black to white.
MIXING 16- AND 256-COLORS
If you specify 16-colors, and view on a 256-color terminal, no problem.
If you try the reverse, specifying 256-colors and viewing on a 16-color
terminal, you will be disappointed, perhaps even appalled.
There is some limited color mapping - for example, if you were to spec‐
ify this combination:
red on gray3
you are mixing a 16-color and 256-color specification. Taskwarrior
will map red to color1, and proceed. Note that red and color1 are not
quite the same tone.
Note also that there is no bold or bright attributes when dealing with
256 colors, but there is still underline available.
LEGEND
Taskwarrior will show examples of all defined colors used in your
.taskrc, or theme, if you run this command:
$ task color legend
This gives you an example of each of the colors, so you can see the
effect, without necessarily creating a set of tasks that meet each of
the rule criteria.
RULES
Taskwarrior supports colorization rules. These are configuration val‐
ues that specify a color, and the conditions under which that color is
used. By example, let us add a few tasks:
$ task add project:Home priority:H pay the bills (1)
$ task add project:Home clean the rug (2)
$ task add project:Garden clean out the garage (3)
We can add a color rule that uses a blue background for all tasks in
the Home project:
$ task config color.project.Home 'on blue'
We use quotes around 'on blue' because there are two words, but they
represent one value in the .taskrc file. Now suppose we wish to use a
bold yellow text color for all cleaning work:
$ task config color.keyword.clean 'bold yellow'
Now what happens to task 2, which belongs to project Home (blue back‐
ground), and is also a cleaning task (bold yellow foreground)? The
colors are combined, and the task is shown as "bold yellow on blue".
Color rules can be applied by project and description keyword, as
shown, and also by priority (or lack of priority), by active status, by
being due or overdue, by being tagged, or having a specific tag (per‐
haps the most useful rule) or by being a recurring task.
It is possible to create a very colorful mix of rules. With 256-color
support, those colors can be made subtle, and complementary, but with‐
out care, this can be a visual mess. Beware!
The precedence for the color rules is determined by the configuration
variable 'rule.precedence.color', which by default contains:
due.today,active,blocking,blocked,overdue,due,scheduled,key‐
word.,project.,tag.,uda.,recurring,pri.,tagged,completed,deleted
These are just the color rules with the 'color.' prefix removed. The
rule 'color.due.today' is the highest precedence, and 'color.deleted'
is the lowest.
The keyword rule shown here as 'keyword.' corresponds to a wildcard
pattern, meaning 'color.keyword.*', or in other words all the keyword
rules. Similarly for the 'color.tag.*' and 'color.project.*' rules.
There is also 'color.project.none', 'color.tag.none' and
'color.pri.none' to specifically represent missing data.
THEMES
Taskwarrior supports themes. What this really means is that with the
ability to include other files into the .taskrc file, different sets of
color rules can be included.
To get a good idea of what a color theme looks like, try adding this
entry to your .taskrc file (note that your installation may use a
slightly different path from the example):
include /usr/local/share/doc/task/rc/dark-256.theme
You can use any of the standard taskwarrior themes:
dark-16.theme
dark-256.theme
dark-blue-256.theme
dark-gray-256.theme
dark-green-256.theme
dark-red-256.theme
dark-violets-256.theme
dark-yellow-green.theme
light-16.theme
light-256.theme
solarized-dark-256.theme
solarized-light-256.theme
You can also see how the theme will color the various tasks with the
command:
$ task color legend
Better yet, create your own, and share it. We will gladly host the
theme file on <http://taskwarrior.org>.
CREDITS & COPYRIGHTS
Copyright (C) 2006 - 2013 P. Beckingham, F. Hernandez.
Taskwarrior is distributed under the MIT license. See http://www.open‐
source.org/licenses/mit-license.php for more information.
SEE ALSOtask(1), taskrc(5), task-faq(5), task-tutorial(5), task-sync(5)
For more information regarding taskwarrior, the following may be refer‐
enced:
The official site at
<http://taskwarrior.org>
The official code repository at
<git://tasktools.org/task.git/>
You can contact the project by writing an email to
<support@taskwarrior.org>
REPORTING BUGS
Bugs in taskwarrior may be reported to the issue-tracker at
<http://taskwarrior.org>
task 2.2.0 2013-04-07 task-color(5)
