Farben

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Colors In Depth ​

So you've seen [red] and [blue]. Those are great, but Farben supports a lot more than eight colors. Let's go deeper.

Foreground and Background ​

By default, every color tag applies to the foreground, which is the text itself. But you can explicitly target the background too using the bg: and fg: prefixes.

rust
cprintln!("[bg:red]Red background!");
cprintln!("[fg:white bg:blue]White text on a blue background.");
cprintln!("[bold fg:yellow bg:red]Chaotic but valid.");

TIP

[red] and [fg:red] are identical. The fg: prefix is just explicit, useful when combining foreground and background in the same bracket.

ANSI 256-Color Palette ​

Your terminal supports 256 colors. Access any of them with ansi(n) where n is a number from 0 to 255.

rust
cprintln!("[ansi(214)]This is a nice orange.");
cprintln!("[ansi(93)]Deep purple. My favorite.");
cprintln!("[bg:ansi(236)]Don't use black text on me.");

INFO

Not sure which number maps to which color? Look up an ANSI 256 color chart, there are plenty online.

RGB Colors ​

For full 24-bit color, use rgb(r,g,b) with values from 0 to 255.

rust
cprintln!("[rgb(255,128,0)]Orange, but uses unnecessary values. Do we really need RGB for this..?");
cprintln!("[rgb(0,200,100)]Look at that tree!");
cprintln!("[bold rgb(255,0,128)]Is it hot here?");
cprintln!("[fg:rgb(255,255,255) bg:rgb(30,30,30)]I'm light on the inside, dark on the outside.");

WARNING

Spaces inside rgb() are not supported. Use rgb(255,128,0), not rgb(255, 128, 0).

Combining It All ​

All color formats work inside multi-tag brackets alongside emphasis styles.

rust
cprintln!("[bold bg:ansi(236) fg:rgb(255,200,0)]I'm a gold text on dark grey, I'm bold!");

The order of tags inside a bracket doesn't matter, Farben processes them all. But it's better to be sure if you're following the rules, hence why we go towards Conventions.