mintty not able to display (Windows) ColorTool -c output

[E3V3A]

I've been playing around with the Windows Poweshell vs mintty and various colorisation options.

In this respect mintty is superior, but it doesn't display the (ANSI?) color escape sequencies when running ColorTool from mintty shell like this:

# ColorTool.exe -c
                  40m     41m     42m     43m     44m     45m     46m     47m
m         gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
1m        gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
30m       gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
1;30m     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
31m       gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
1;31m     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
32m       gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
1;32m     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
33m       gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
1;33m     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
34m       gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
1;34m     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
35m       gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
1;35m     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
36m       gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
1;36m     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
37m       gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw
1;37m     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw     gYw

# Whereas this works: 
# /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/PowerShell/6/pwsh.exe -c "'?[1;31mRed ?[32mGrn ?[33mYel ?[35mMag ?[36mCya ?[m'.Replace('?', [char]27);"
Red Grn Yel Mag Cya

# But this doesn't:
# /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/PowerShell/6/pwsh.exe -c "write-host -fore Cyan This is Cyan text"
This is Cyan text

I'm using PS 6.1.1 and 5.1.14409.1005

[k-takata]

It looks that ColorTool uses Console API to set the color, not escape sequences. It won't work on mintty.

[mintty]

... unless you would wrap it in winpty which bridges the console and tty worlds

[E3V3A]

It looks that ColorTool uses Console API to set the color

There is also the -x that is supposed to send VT codes

-x, --xterm : Set the colors using VT sequences. Used for setting the colors in WSL. > Only works in Windows versions >= 17048.

Who could I bother so that they send the escape codes?

unless you would wrap it in winpty which bridges the console and tty worlds

Ok how do I go about that?

[mintty]

Download winpty from https://github.com/rprichard/winpty, install it to /bin.
Then call winpty YOUR_PROGRAM.

[E3V3A]

Is that project still maintained? No releases for years and no bug fixes for months with poor building instructions.., IDK why I should bother?

[avih]

winpty is maintained, the build instructions work, and you don't have to bother unless you want to translate window console color APIs to the ansi escape sequences which would work in mintty.

[E3V3A]

@avih
Ok thanks. But I'm thinking there is something fishy here. Why wouldn't the Windows Console color API have already been translated into escape sequences. It must have been around for a good ~20 years by now.

[avih]

Because they work in completely different ways, and mintty is intended to work the *nix way and not the windows way. The *nix way is by printing special characters (escape sequences) to the output which are interpreted by the terminal as various instructions (move the cursor, change color, etc), while the windows way is to call console windows function calls to control cursor, colors, etc.

These are completely different mechanisms, and winpty translates from the windows one to the *nix one.

[mintty]

Actually, winpty does translate console colours into terminal colours. Whether that would not work with ColorTool for some reason, I cannot test because there is no binary.
Background has been discussed, marking as "question" and closing.

[BrianInglis]

Think this may be the MS Windows MS ColorTool docs:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/08/11/introducing-the-windows-console-colortool/
source:
https://github.com/Microsoft/console/tree/master/tools/ColorTool
release:
https://github.com/Microsoft/console/releases

[mintty]

As expected, ColorTool -c shows a colour foreground/background matrix when run in winpty.