back to article CMD.EXE gets first makeover in 20 years in new Windows 10 build

Microsoft's making over the Windows Console, the tool that throws up a command line interface and which has hung around in Windows long after DOS was sent to the attic and told not to show itself in polite company. The company's revealed that in Windows 10 build 16257 the Console will get new … colours. Yup, that's all. …

  1. Marco van de Voort

    Blue seems brighter

    Hmm, my Turbo Pascal(*) editor's background will get brighter, don't know if that is comfortable.

    (*) well, the Free Pascal imitation

    1. Simon Harris

      Re: Blue seems brighter

      That brings back memories - I haven't used Turbo Pascal since the 80s!

    2. DropBear
      Coat

      Re: Blue seems brighter

      Ha! It's nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to bolster the productivity of Windows programmers (or cut the coffee expenses of their employers), pushing them to stay up and work further on into the night - blue light _allegedly_ prevents you from sleeping after all... Now, where that tin foil hat...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Microsoft's Line of Command...

      Nothing is Black and White regards Microsoft's Line of Command, it's always been a shady grey.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Trollface

        Re: Microsoft's Line of Command...

        Yep, they don't let users use white at all.

    4. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Blue seems brighter

      blue is like 15% luminosity or something like that, so "brighter blue" would be easier to read, especially if you're old...

      I'm glad MS is brightening up the default colors. Now, will this be done with gnome/mate shells, too? default colors on THEM are like the old CMD defaults. I'm always forced to "unalias ls" and "unalias grep" and things like that to get rid of the colorized trext, because I CANNOT READ THAT DAMNED COLORIZED TEXT half the time (dark blue or dark purple on black - what dim-bulb thought THAT was a good idea?).

      It's *IRRITATING*.

      So a big well-deserved KUDOS to Microsoft <--- spelling their name properly when they do something right

  2. Mage Silver badge

    They are bonkers

    “The legacy default scheme was not built for modern displays and does not render as well on newer high-contrast LCD displays.”

    This is complete gibberish.

    1. Peter2 Silver badge

      Re: They are bonkers

      Yes, it is.

      Personally however, I only use the classic black & light white command prompt. It never had colours when we had black and white monitors, so why change now? ;)

      Or maybe that's just very 1980's of me. Personally, i'd prefer that the engineering time was put into something i'd notice such as putting the start menu into server 2012 as an alternative to the mobile phone interface.

      1. collinsl Bronze badge

        Re: They are bonkers

        Don't you mean black and green monitors?

        1. Simon Harris

          Re: They are bonkers

          "black and green monitors?"

          As opposed to green and black monitors which are made out of chocolate.

          1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
            Happy

            Re: They are bonkers

            If I'm getting a chocolate monitor then I don't want any of this crappy, modern LCD stuff. I want a 30" CRT made of solid chocolate. I want to get my money's worth.

            Now to find a fridge large enough to fit it in.

            Oh and I'd better book some more gym sessions, so I can lift it.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: They are bonkers

              You have ordered your 30", but the "New Improved recipe" means it is now 27".

              1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

                Re: 30" → 27"

                I blame Brexit.

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: The New Improved Recipe

                But the packaging iand the price s still the same size as the 30" thing.

                Shrinkflation at its best.

            2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

              Re: They are bonkers

              I want a 30" CRT

              Well - I have an old 21" Sun monitor at home. Not made of chocolate though. Although I can confirm that the solid wood table it's on groaned when I put it in place..

              And the degaussing pulse on switch-on can make my smartphone go funny.

              1. Lord_Beavis
                Joke

                Re: They are bonkers

                "And the degaussing pulse on switch-on can make my smartphone go funny."

                Not to mention sweet old Mrs. Johnson's pace maker next door...

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: They are bonkers

          black and green? Surely teletypes only uses black and white (with a red border when the paper needs repalcing) ... and what is this "monitor" you speak of?

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

        3. Tim99 Silver badge

          Re: They are bonkers

          @colinsl

          Some of us paid extra to get black and amber - Very nice on a VT220.

          1. Flakk

            Re: They are bonkers

            Some of us paid extra to get black and amber - Very nice on a VT220.

            Way, way back in the day I had a NetWare server with a bad VGA monitor. The green pin went out on the connector, leaving only red and blue active. I called it my "purple monochrome" monitor.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: They are bonkers

        absoblinkenlutely.

        Black and white is the way to go with CMD. You don't get much higher contrast than that. The only "features" that are ever used is occasionally font size and copy and paste.

      3. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: They are bonkers

        black and white monitors

        Pah. We had sparkly yellow and green ones! So there!

      4. Mage Silver badge

        Re: They are bonkers

        Mine was set to nearly black and light amber, or vice versa, I forget, like the nice Amber CRTs that superseded Green CRTs. I stopped using it last November 2016. Quite happy with customisation of Mate on Linux Mint.

        The only thing ever that was a problem was some sorts of CGA cards stuck on Slug Death colors (black, cyan, magenta, white). There was a nicer alternate (black, red, yellow, green). It was horrid going to shiny CGA from a matte ACT Sirius 1 (800 x 400?) mono (Victor 9000). The Sirius 1 arrived marginally before the IBM PC, with its Text only or CGA. Hercules mono (720x350) was later and still inferior to ACT Sirius 1/Victor 9000 (as was entire IBM PC), but better than CGA Mono 640 x 200.

        Why don't they simply fix their broken & totally flat GUI to one suitable for a laptop or desktop? Which is ALSO better for 10" tablet with keyboard than their stupid GUI for a 4" phone.

      5. Trixr

        Re: They are bonkers

        I dunno, the first thing I do is change the RGB settings on that medium grey they use for the default text to something much lighter. Not having to do that on every new box I log on to would be nice.

    2. DropBear

      Re: They are bonkers

      Maybe, but the point is valid - did you take a look at the image in the article? I can confirm the new "dark"-blue-on-black test is readable, but the old one definitely has a "something's there but I have no idea if it's even letters" quality to it, uniquely among the rest of the colours...

    3. Orv Silver badge

      Re: They are bonkers

      It might be explained poorly, but it meshes with my experience running Emacs in Linux text terminals. The dark blue portions of syntax highlighting are extremely hard to read on an LCD that's adjusted for proper photo and video viewing. I actually think the problem may be the opposite of what they say -- LCDs tend to compress the dark end of the contrast range, losing detail in the shadows. CRTs, with their truer blacks, had a wider range.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: They are bonkers

        if you are running Emacs with Syntax highlighting you are

        1) Not getting the full unadulterated experience of Emacs. Like good chocolate, Emacs should be used in as a raw a state as possible, just the way Stallman intended.

        2) You identify yourself as a newbie (e.g. someone with less experience than say 25 years) with Emacs.

        You might as well say you're a VB fan running code in a MS IDE and have done with it.

    4. Daniel von Asmuth

      Re: They are bonkers

      Looking at the pictures the first impression is that most color combinations have better contrast in the old scheme, but maybe I lack a new high-contrast LCD display.

      1. Orv Silver badge

        Re: They are bonkers

        I suspect they're mostly focusing on the contrast between foreground colors and a black background, since that's the most common situation. The slightly lighter blues make a big difference in that scenario.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: They are bonkers

          I suspect they're mostly focusing on the contrast between foreground colors and a black background, since that's the most common situation. The slightly lighter blues make a big difference in that scenario.

          Maybe Microsoft could do something really useful and make a web browser smart enough to figure out that white-on-light grey text should be rendered as white on black.

  3. Slx

    There are still lots of bits and piece of Windows that could do with a makeover. I still find it odd that a company with the vast resources at Microsoft’s disposal produces an OS that has bits and pieces that look like they’re from decades ago. You’d expect absolute GUI consistency across Windows 10’s own components. Surely it can’t be THAT hard to achieve.

    1. gotes

      I always check the "add font" dialog whenever there's a new Windows release; it's been pretty much the same since the early 90s. As far as I can tell it no longer exists as of Windows 10.

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Finally... pretty sure it was still in Win 8 though. It was the most pig ugly, barely usable window but was left in since Windows 3.11 - which, IIRC, was the first edition of Windows to support vector fonts natively and killed the entire market in non-core font applications.

        1. DropBear
          Facepalm

          "It was the most pig ugly, barely usable window"

          I had the impulse to go check out what you mean - then I remembered I'm on Debian...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Six

      "produces an OS that has bits and pieces that look like they’re from decades ago."

      Its not the age thats the problem , after all unix/linux still has plenty of ancient shells and tools which work fine - its the fact that even back in the day the DOS CLI was an underpowered POS that was only really useful for listing directories and starting programs. Doing anything more complicated was either a PITA or impossible. It would have been relatively easy for MS to port one of the *nix shells over to Windows and intergrate it nicely but I suspect Not Invented Here syndrome got the better of them so instead they waited 20 years then came up with powershell which can be rather arcane at the best of times.

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: @Six

        MS to port one of the *nix shells over to Windows and intergrate it nicely but I suspect Not Invented Here syndrome got the better of them

        Or, more likely, the fact that most of the decent shells are licenced un GPL and, as such, a cancer that must be eradicated^W embraced and extinguished.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @Six

        "It would have been relatively easy for MS to port one of the *nix shells over to Windows and intergrate it nicely"

        Ubuntu is in the Windows Store...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If they could make ADUC put the cursor in the Name field of the Find dialog it would save me hours.

      It's been like that since forever, the gripe about it has been passed down from generation to generation, nothing will ever change.

      So the only chance of consistency is if we accept consistently inconsistent, and frequently rubbish.

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
        Flame

        "If they could make ADUC put the cursor in the Name field of the Find dialog it would save me hours"

        You know what pisses me of with that thing?

        You right click / find at the top , start typing the name of a person or a PC , or group

        press search , didnt find anything

        Then you realise that for some fucking reason you have to tell the thing which of those you are going to be seaching for (you dont on my command line vbscript replacment i can tell you!)

        So you drop the dropdown , select 'computer' and you're eager to get going buts its popped up a little dialog saying "This will clear your current search results" Well no fucking shit! when has any other application that has a search function (which is most) thought it neccassary to say that??? so you waste more time clicking ok on that , and start typing again .

        Then you realise that despite informing the app that you are indeed ready to start a new search , and that you are aware this will wipe previous results THE CURSOR ISNT IN THE FUCKING SEARCH BOX!!!

        That added to the fact that no wildcards are allowed , so you have to know the exact prefix for the group / pc that some sysadmin pulled out of his arse years ago makes me conclude :

        "Could do better"

        In fact given a day or 2 I could probably do better

        In fact i bet people already have....

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think that's all part of the game. Over the years that OS has had increased and decreased functionality. The new format makes it easier to decrease functionality and then, at some point, charge to get that functionality back.

      Why I remember when...(old guy, me ;), continues rants as he walks off)

    5. jelabarre59

      You’d expect absolute GUI consistency across Windows 10’s own components. Surely it can’t be THAT hard to achieve

      Don't ask. They'll just turn it ALL into their spastic crayon-y shit.

    6. Sven Coenye

      Indeed. The Win10 syskey dialog still has what looks like the Win 95 logo in it.

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      There are still lots of bits and piece of Windows that could do with a makeover. I still find it odd that a company with the vast resources at Microsoft’s disposal produces an OS that has bits and pieces that look like they’re from decades ago. You’d expect absolute GUI consistency across Windows 10’s own

      components. Surely it can’t be THAT hard to achieve.

      True, if they could just jettison all Windows 8 GUI code, return Aero, remove all "Apps", get rid of "Settings," that would be a start.

  4. Phil W

    What's the point?

    Not sure why they've done this, surely it would have just been easier to retire it and replace it with Powershell. There's already a tickbox somewhere in Win10 to do exactly that.

    As far as I'm aware anything that works in a command prompt work in Powershell?

    1. Beech Horn

      Re: What's the point?

      Agreed, everything works, but it's slower. Makes a difference when thousands of lines of text are flying past. There are programs which are bottlenecked by the speed of stdout. Maybe just put cmd.exe in the Windows Store...

      1. phuzz Silver badge

        Re: What's the point?

        "There are programs which are bottlenecked by the speed of stdout."

        Minimise the window and the program will run faster.

        I have no idea why that is the case.

        (Kudos to whichever Powershell programmer added a set of default command aliases so that not only does dir do what you expect, but so does lh)

        1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          Re: What's the point?

          Minimise the window and the program will run faster.

          I have no idea why that is the case.

          Because it's not being constrained by the speed of writing characters to the display..

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What's the point?

        "Agreed, everything works, but it's slower."

        Not if you use Powershell commands. It's very very fast even with large volumes of data.

    2. jaywin

      Re: What's the point?

      > Not sure why they've done this, surely it would have just been easier to retire it and replace it with Powershell.

      Console windows are used by lots of things other than the command prompt.

      1. John Riddoch

        Re: What's the point?

        "Console windows are used by lots of things other than the command prompt." yup - you'll find things getting launched as "cmd.exe /s [something]". Yes, it's probably just laziness, but in many cases, it's effective and simple and simple means less likely to have bugs.

    3. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      Re: What's the point?

      Nope. Powershell does not work the same way as cmd.exe, it's similar, but cmd scripting doesn't work the same.

      It's possibly time to make Powershell the default command line in Windows, but cmd.exe shouldn't be retired.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's the point?

      Ugh, no, PowerShell needs to load the .NET runtime, cmd.exe is much, much faster. And Win32 console application are too.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What's the point?

        "PowerShell needs to load the .NET runtime"

        Which is virtually instant. On my Windows 10 laptop, Powershell takes under half a second to load to a prompt from clicking on the icon.

        "cmd.exe is much, much faster"

        Not once loaded. Powershell is way way faster. And Powershell can also do true parallel branching. So for instance it can go query info from 100 PCs at once, rather than sequentially...

    5. Zippy's Sausage Factory

      Re: What's the point?

      Personally I'm of the opinion that they should just go all-in on bash support. cmd.exe can stay around for legacy support if needed, but is kinda optional. PowerShell, on the other hand, should be given the Old Yeller treatment, as soon as possible. It's kind of the worst of all possible worlds.

      1. earl grey
        Facepalm

        Re: What's the point?

        " Old Yeller treatment"

        That's kinda harsh. At least the Yearling treatment. erm..................

      2. TheVogon

        Re: What's the point?

        "'m of the opinion that they should just go all-in on bash "

        Why would they do that when they have Powershell? It has numerous advantage over Bash and pretty much no disadvantages.

        Not to mention being way way easier to understand and use? For instance:

        DIR -Recurse | Get-Acl | Select-Object Owner | Select -Unique (Powershell)

        vs

        find . -printf "%u\n" | awk '!match(str," "$1){str=str" "$1;print $1 }' (Bash)

        And here are a few of the other advantages:

        1) Object oriented pipes so that I don't have to format and reparse and be concerned about language settings.

        2) Command metadata. PowerShell commands, functions and even *script files* expose metadata about the names, positions, types and validation rules for parameters, allowing the *shell* to perform type coercion, allowing the *shell* to explain the parameters/syntax, allowing the *shell* to support both tab completion and auto-suggestions with no need for external and cumbersome completion definitions.

        3) Robust risk management. Look up common parameters -WhatIf, -Confirm, -Force and consider how they are supported by ambient values in scripts you author yourself.

        4) Multiple location types and -providers. Even a SQL Server appears as a navigable file system. Want to work with a certain database? Just switch to the sqlserver: drive and navigate to the server/database and start selecting, creating tables etc.

        5) Fan-out remoting. Execute the same script transparently and *robustly* on multiple servers and consolidate the results back on the controlling console. Try icm host1,host2,host3 {ps} and watch how you get consolidated, object-oriented process descriptions from multiple servers.

        6) Workflow scripting. PowerShell scripts can (since v3) be defined as workflows which are suspendable, resumable and which can pick up and continue even across system restarts.

        7) Parallel scripting. No, not just starting multiple processes, but having the actual *script* branch out and run massively parallel.

        8) True remote sessions where you don't step into and out of remote sessions but actually controls any number of remote sessions from the outside.

        9) PowerShell web access. You can now set up a IIS with PWA as a gateway. This gives you a firewall-friendly remote command line in any standards compliant browser.

        10) Superior security features, e.g. script signing, memory encryption, proper multi-mode credentials allowing script to be agnostic about authentication schemes which may go way beyond stupid username+password and use smart cards, tokens, OTPs etc.

        11) Transaction support right in the shell. Script actions can join any resource manager such as SQL server, registry, message queues in a single atomic transaction. Do that in bash?

        12) Strongly typed stripting, extensive data types, e.g first class xml support and regex support right in the shell. Optional static/explicit typing. Real lambdas (script blocks) instead of stupidly relying on dangerous and error prone "eval" functions.

        13) Real *structured* exception handling as an alternative to outdated traps (which PowerShell also has). try-catch-finally blocks.

        14) Instrumentation, extensive tracing, transcript and *source level* debugging of scripts.

        15) Consistent naming conventions covering verb-noun command names, common verbs, common parameter names.

    6. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: What's the point?

      retire it and replace it with Powershell

      Please - no. Powershell is an abomination that combines all the worst bits of Windows and *nix command-lines into one crufty package-o'crap.

      I know some of the admins swear by it but that's because none of them have been exposed to a *proper* CLI environment.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. TheVogon

        Re: What's the point?

        " Powershell is an abomination that combines all the worst bits of Windows and *nix command-lines into one crufty package-o'crap."

        Ask yourself then why say VMWare changed from a Bash type command environment to Powershell commands for remote CLI administration of vSphere?

        Clearly they found enough advantages to justify actively ditching their existing solution and *switch* to Powershell...

    7. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: What's the point?

      "As far as I'm aware anything that works in a command prompt work in Powershell?"

      I don't think PUSHD works in PowerShell and I suspect there is other stuff, too, because if it were true that PowerShell was completely compatible then CMD.EXE could have been retired a decade ago and it clearly wasn't.

      For the curious, I'm sure Mr Chen's blog has several articles that tell us why CMD lived on after PS appeared. Here's one ... https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060427-21/?p=31383 ... which isn't actually CMD- or PowerShell-specific.

    8. Falmor

      Re: What's the point?

      Not everything works in a Powershell console. Legacy Perl scripts are the only thing I can remember at the moment but there are others. Biggest improvement to CMD has been allowing Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V to cut and paste. Not having to reach for the mouse to paste when you're typing is so much better. If I could remap Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V to Alt-W/Ctrl-Y for the whole of Windows, I wouldn't then keep pressing Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V in Emacs.

  5. Gordon Pryra

    Fucking Heresy

    That is all I have to say on this.......

    1. 45RPM Silver badge

      Re: Fucking Heresy

      I know - I’m still pissed off at the changes made to the bios font when IBM released VGA. CGA for the win - who needs more than 16 shades in text mode? Or more than 640*200 resolution, black and white, in ‘high resolution’ graphics mode?

      Grumble grumble, I remember when this was all fields. Kids today. When I were a lad, I had to walk 50 miles to school in cardboard shoes with a laptop abacus. And we were grateful.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fucking Heresy

        50! You don't know you're born! When I were a lad it were 100, uphill both ways with the family on me back; hopping because we could only afford one boot.

        1. Solarflare

          Re: Fucking Heresy

          100 miles? Oh you lucky little nipper! In my day I had to walk 200 miles to school and 300 back. A mile was far longer back then too. All you youngun's with your modern conveniences like traininers and shoes and boots...Boots! In my day, we didn't even have feet!

          You don't know you're born, the lot of you.

          1. yoganmahew

            Re: Fucking Heresy

            Bright green on dark green. Bring It Back!

            1. Kevin Johnston

              Re: Fucking Heresy

              Now me, I always preferred the Amber displays to the Green ones. Nice thing was it only seemed to be me so I could always find extras if I needed them

            2. Tom 7

              Re: Fucking Heresy

              Bright Green on Dark Green - Tecktronics storage screens. Used to use them a lot - one thing about them was not only did it burn the text and diagrams onto the screens it burned it into your psyche too. I can still read some help manuals from 1982 even now....

              1. Simon Harris

                Re: Fucking Heresy

                Never used one for diagrams, but I did use a Tektronix storage scope (with long persistence phosphor, not the new fangled digital version) from time to time during my BSc in the 80s.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Fucking Heresy

                  I used to fill my car every night with two Tektronix digital storage scopes+signal generators from work (Companies trusted you implicitly back then, nothing to sign) in order to get my coursework done and write 40 page documents easily, including inline equations using an Acorn Archimedes running the fabulous Impression 2.

                  A feat that even (shitty) Mircosoft Word struggles with today, but really struggled back then. I've hated Microsoft Word ever since, well mainly the way it formatted compared to Impression 2.

                  How we've come full circle. Arm processors running the show again. Archimedes was 20 years ahead of it's time. My 6502/Risc programming background back then, is still is very useful today, actually, never more so.

          2. Simon Harris

            Re: Fucking Heresy

            Only 200 miles, ye sassenach pansies...

            I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more...

            1. earl grey
              Thumb Up

              Re: Fucking Heresy

              I Proclaim you the internet winner for the day!

          3. DwarfPants
            Joke

            Re: Fucking Heresy

            El Reg should dev a button to insert the regularly occurring "When I were a lad" Monty Python sketch. Or implement additional points for the individual who gets back to; when I were a lad we only had Hydrogen and had to craft our own heavy elements, bare foot in the snow.

            Just noticed there is another on in https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2017/08/04/on_call/

            1. Shadow Systems

              DwarfPants, re: hydrogen...

              Hydrogen?

              Luxury!

              I had to cause The Big Bang in order to create them first!

              You young Whippersnappers & your newfangled Elements...

              *Shakes a palsied pseudopod*

              Get off my Spiral Arm!

              =-)p

            2. FIA Silver badge

              Re: Fucking Heresy

              El Reg should dev a button to insert the regularly occurring "When I were a lad" Monty Python sketch.

              Pfft, youth of today. Don't know tha's born.

              When I were a lad we used't 'av 't get by quoting ' At Last the 1948 Show'; and be damn glad of the opportunity I can tell thee.

      2. Robert Moore
        Linux

        Re: Fucking Heresy

        CGA, my fat ass.

        Hercules for the ultimate win. Still the best text mode ever.

        Oh Hell, nearly forgot about MDA. Monochrome Display Adaptor. Monochrome test only, no graphics capability at all, beautiful text though.

      3. chivo243 Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Fucking Heresy

        @45RPM

        "When I were a lad, I had to walk 50 miles to school in cardboard shoes with a laptop abacus. And we were grateful."

        You forgot to include walking uphill both ways... That was the worst part.

  6. 45RPM Silver badge

    Alternatively, and this works on older versions of Windows too, just install ‘Console’ (https://sourceforge.net/projects/console/) and get this benefit and many more besides. And if Console isn’t your cup of tea, there are plenty of other alternatives available just a quick Google away.

    My preferred colour scheme is Ubuntu’s auberginey palette (and typeface, for that matter). Using Console (and the settings for Terminal on my Mac), I’ve given all my computers a little Ubuntu makeover!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: auberginey

      Do you prefer the original brown turd version or the later light mud one?

      Give me a green screened Vt220 any day.

      1. 45RPM Silver badge

        Re: auberginey

        You wouldn't like the VT220 if you had to use one today. I had to use one yesterday - and it gave me a cracking headache. Up til then I'd forgotten all about the CRT induced headache, engendered by CRTs with low refresh rates - and the ghosting.

        My first monitor was a natty amber job. I can't remember the manufacturer - I always think of it as an Elephant, despite the fact that Elephant Memory Systems made disks not Monitors, because I stuck an elephant sticker on the casing - the sticker came free in a box of disks. Happy days.

        But, to answer your question, it's a kind of very dark aubergine purple with white text - the current Ubuntu terminal colour scheme. I can't remember a mud or turd coloured version.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What will be the impact on Brief?

    1. fix

      Brief ?

      Now there is a blast from the past, got to be almost 20 years since I last used that!

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: Brief ?

        Now there is a blast from the past, got to be almost 20 years since I last used that!

        I've still got the boxed install disks and manuals for that in my computer room at home. Maybe the badgering I'm getting from senior management to tidy that room up does have a point..

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Coming soon, the dos ribbon.

    Have they got f*ck all else to do?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Have they got f*ck all else to do?"

      Indeed, I thought exactly the same !

      But, come to think about it, have they really done anything else than cosmetics and awful icons that would have ashamed any Amiga dev back in the days, since XP ?

    2. DropBear
      Trollface

      The TurboVision libs are getting rewritten for ribbon as we speak. Reliable sources tell me the VR/AR extensions for egavga.bgi are up next...

  9. jaywin

    Shades

    The old colour scheme has two brightnesses of each colour - the new one doesn't - why? I don't think I've ever seen the murky brown used, but that's now been promoted to yellow, while the yellow (which is used *everywhere*) now becomes a slightly tinted white. Red now becomes pink, the two greens are the same, the two purples are the same and so on.

    It's just fiddling for the sake of fiddling.

  10. Hans 1

    We'll soon be publishing a tool that will help you apply this new scheme and a selection of alternative color schemes to your Windows Console.

    Feynman, do they really think CLI users need a tool to change the CMD.EXE's colours ?

  11. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Somebody finally figured out how to get ANSI.SYS to work under Windows?

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Holy Molly. I'd forgotten all about ANSI.SYS.

  12. Dwarf

    On the positive side

    As Microsoft are now getting interested in colour again, perhaps they could sort out the monochromatic and flat interface abomination in Windows 10 and everything it touched.

    I am worried a bit though about the premise that "colours don't display right". What happens to all those HTML colour codes in all those little web pages around the world. Surely that's a bigger problem than the command line ???

    I wonder if any of the people working on Windows have ever heard of Pantone colour charts and surely if the monitor are different, then that's a problem for the video driver to sort out, not the requesting application.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: On the positive side

      Pantone colours are spot colours - they are specific colours created mixing specific inks. They are not nor RGB nor CMYK ones. There are conversion charts to approximate a Pantone colour using RGB or CMYK, but not all colours can be easily approximated.

      The video driver and the video card have no way to know how a monitor display colours until a specific device reads them out of the monitors and tell them...

      It is true most default settings for today LCD monitors are high brightness and high contrast. As soon as you calibrate your monitor, it looks very different.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: On the positive side

        There's someone that worked in the print trade.

        I'm sure I've still got some rubber based ink still stuck under my nails.

        1. PickledAardvark

          Re: On the positive side

          I have a print industry tattoo (rubber based ink) on one finger from when it got caught. Don't use your fingers to adjust the delivery feed wheels on an offset.

          When the offset abruptly stopped, my mate upstairs shouted "I think you need a cup of tea" whilst I switched off to pull my bruised finger out.

      2. Dwarf

        Re: On the positive side

        As soon as you calibrate your monitor, it looks very different.

        Exactly, its a display driver / display device issue to calibrate colour, you don't fix display accuracy issues in your application, you simply request "blue"

        The article says that its a response to a "modern monitors" issue, so it should be fixed by a monitor / monitor driver related fix.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    High-contrast? Rubbish

    I've always used the gold/bright yellow foreground, with a dark blue background. It's fantastic contrast - you can see it stand out in the screenshot. In the new palette mix, there's nothing that stands out as well as that combination does.

  14. jake Silver badge

    But can I get a login/command prompt ...

    ... on a dumb terminal plugged into a serial port (USB)? Kinda handy when the GUI goes titsup. If MS still can't provide this capability, the OS is unfit for purpose.

    1. david 12 Silver badge

      Re: But can I get a login/command prompt ...

      >a login/command prompt ... on a dumb terminal plugged into a serial port <

      On every version of Windows I've used since DOS 2.11

      Only up to Win7: I haven't had a need to try since then.

  15. Zmodem

    https://conemu.github.io/ conEmu is alot better and can force itself to be the default console globally throughout windows

  16. TRT Silver badge

    Aha!

    So it now matches the 8 bit ZX Spectrum palette of the Metro UI. Nice move.

    1. Zippy's Sausage Factory

      Re: Aha!

      That, sir, is an insult to the ZX Spectrum. As far as I know, it had eight colours instead of the four they like to use (white, black, eye-strain grey and the sort of blue that suicidal teenagers paint their entire rooms with)

  17. stephanh

    console window != cmd.exe

    I would like to observe that this has nothing to do with cmd.exe, except in so far that cmd.exe is a console Windows program, and will therefore pop up a console when being executed (and when it isn't invoked from a parent which already has a console).

    It has also nothing to do with DOS: cmd.exe is perfectly normal Windows application, just one which happens to request a console. (I should note that automatically getting the console window is the *only* difference between console and non-console .EXE's in Windows: a console application can still create additional "normal" windows, and basically do whatever a non-console .EXE can do.)

  18. Pompous Git Silver badge

    Take Command

    Doesn't anybody use JP Software's Take Command anymore?

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    masochists....

    why torture yourselves....do it properly... msys bash

  20. RealBigAl

    about time

    this'll make me ditch my Linux desktop and go back to Windows...

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: about time

      Damn you. Now I need a new keyboard.

  21. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Coat

    Although edit will remain as s**t as ever no doubt.

    Color wise do I give a rats behind?

    No.

  22. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Holy fuck , I was unaware that you could have multiple colours showing at once.

    How did you do that?

  23. Spanners Silver badge
    Alert

    Is this "embrace" or "extend"?

    The stage after this is "extinguish".

  24. nil0

    Nethack

    Hurrah!

    This should help me stop falling in the water and bumping into unnoticed floating eyes.

  25. FlamingDeath Silver badge
    Coat

    Hang on a moment, M$ on a number of occasions have told us that their new (insert version here) OS, was built from the ground up and is the most secure operating system in the world.

    Someone should explain to Microturd what "built from the ground up" means

    They should also explain to them that you can't claim "most secure" to untested code that has not yet stood the test of time

    Mine is the coat with the by-default disabled firewall in the pocket

    1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

      "was built from the ground up " did they really say that?

      cos its immediately apparent , looking at the filenames / structure / location / keyboard shortcuts / wmi interface etc etc

      that it isnt!

  26. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

    I'm lost. CMD.EXE never had any colours did it, or am I missing something? It's just black and off-white. O

    1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

      Open one and type "color e" into it . Or even "color /?"

      How they got that multi colour thing in the "before" pic i dont know

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

        no ,really I want to know

        anyone?

    2. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      Try this from your command prompt. It'll work even under Windows 10

      set prompt=$e[4;34;47m$d$e[1C$e[1C$t$e[1C$e[0;34;47m$p$g

      (ANSI.SYS is built in)

  27. Lars Johansson

    Solarized Command Prompt Theme

    Am I the only one who uses the Solarized Command Prompt theme(s) for CMD and PowerShell?

    They'r nice - try them...

  28. Baldrickk

    Resizeable

    Any chance of them making it resizeable by dragging the window around?

    No?

    ah well, I run Cygwin for more than just that anyway

    1. This is my handle

      Re: Resizeable

      This works on Windows 10! Also, you can cut & paste without half-dozen clicks (highlight; <Ctrl>-<Ins> ; move cursor; <Shift>-<Ins>). What doesn't work is <Ctrl>-<Mouse-Wheel-{UP,DOWN}> to adjust the font-size for old, tired eyes. For that, you still need cygwin. :-(.

  29. Ralph the Wonder Llama
    Joke

    Green on black...

    ...because MATRIX.

  30. Lord_Beavis
    Linux

    True Command Lines

    Start with [username]@[systemname]:~$ with a green font on a black background.

    1. Spamfast

      Re: True Command Lines

      Green on black on a nice Falco glass TTY was the best. Some even had three RS-232 ports so you could switch between sessions on three different System V servers or stream S-records through to your Pentica Mime 600 in-circuit emulator with a suitable escape sequence. Once I'd discovered Emacs I was in heaven! :-)

      I'll hobble over to the coat rack ...

    2. K.o.R

      Re: True Command Lines

      Use set prompt=%username%@%computername%:$P$S$$$S then.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bah

    Oooh, colors! Have those idiots figured out most of us have monitors that can display more than 80 columns? Maybe make the window resizable by dragging the border?

    At least they acknowledge CMD, Powershell has been getting all the attention.

    1. david 12 Silver badge

      Re: Bah

      >Have those idiots figured out most of us have monitors that can display more than 80 columns?<

      Yes. Have they figured out how to make idiots stop complaining about the absence of features that have been there for years? No.

  32. SouthernLogic

    Slowly turning up the heat

    Microsoft wants to get rid of CMD. As the first step in that direction they are changing the CMD color scheme to match its successor powershell.

    Then end of cmd and the reign of powershell just takes another forced update.

    Are you ready?

    Or will you "bash" the whole idea?

  33. earl grey
    Facepalm

    so they fixed it?

    To use CTL-C and CTL-V? Have i been sleeping in the tip?

    Anyway, monitors are really great lizards, so this whole thing is a tip-o-the-hat to our lizard overlords.

    And the chocolate is that nasty Nestle's stuff. So not really.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thats all

    "Yup, that's all. Colours. No new syntax. Nothing cloudy. Just colours."

    But ... but ... but ... how about a proper set of ledgible fixed pitch fonts, how about the ability to actually re-size the terminal window like any sane terminal? how about a sane copy/paste mechanism?

    Basically, make the bloody thing like PuTTY please.

    1. stephanh

      Re: Thats all

      You want mintty then, which is literally putty with the networking bit ripped out.

  35. billdehaan

    New! Improved! Still works!

    This reminds me of the kerfuffle back in the late 1980s, when half-height floppy drives first came out. Suddenly, portables (think laptops that weighed over a stone) could have two floppy drives! At the same time!

    Still, some fretted. Would there be any problems switching from a full-height drive to a half-height? This was not helped at all when some companies brazenly started advertising that their software worked on systems with the half-height drives. This, of course, got people worried that their competitor's software wouldn't, and it took a while before people realized that a floppy drive was a floppy drive, regardless of how high it was.

    So, MS is changing the colour? Well, I've not started a CMD console in years; everything is done within JPSoft's excellent TCC (and freeware TCC/LE) replacements. If an instance of cmd.exe must be run, the tabbed cmder console is much better...

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh great, some of the text are just near impossible to see on some backgrounds now

    Did the Insider chumps who 'do testing' and 'give feedback' to Microsoft ever consider the possibility that some of us might be colour blind?

    You think it's cute, funny or trendy to willy-nilly do a 'makeover' of CMD.EXE without giving thought to greater ramifications?

    Sheer idiocy from Microsoft these days. Case in point: Skype.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Oh great, some of the text are just near impossible to see on some backgrounds now

      "Did the Insider chumps who 'do testing' and 'give feedback' to Microsoft ever consider the possibility that some of us might be colour blind?"

      I do not believe that MS act on feedback from Insiders so I don't think it is fair to blame them.

      Actually, I'm not sure what motivates most of what MS do these days. If they really wanted to improve the appearance of Windows on modern monitors, perhaps they could finish implementing High DPI support in all the applets that ship with a vanilla installation. (Until fairly recently, nearly all the MMC snap-ins for the "old" Control Panel were blurry shit at >125% mag. They've address the most commonly used ones in recent builds but not all. Given how easy it is to add the relevant manifest entry, and given how that's all you need to do if you learned your Windows programming from Mr Petzold, this is frankly embarrassing.)

  37. jelabarre59

    Shiny

    Ooohhh, a reworked command window. I'm all excited now, and all set to return to running Windows.....

    Or not.

  38. Luiz Abdala

    Ultima VIII Pagan..

    I remember this game used a specific font, and depending on how the game crashed back to DOS...

    ... the prompt would inherit said font. Sorta.

    Anybody cares for a command prompt with the equivalent of today's Small Font, size 16, in PURPLE?

    1. Wisteela

      Re: Ultima VIII Pagan..

      Reminds me of DOS font changing utils.

  39. martinusher Silver badge

    BASH works better....

    If you have Cygwin installed then you can just use Bash commands directly from the Windows command shell. The Windows shell isn't really worth a damn, its usable for trivial things, but you can't write worthwhile scripts in it and anything you do is incompatible with the rest of the world so installing Cygwin gives you a degree of flexibility that outstrips anything MSFT has to offer, including their Linux on Windows support.

    (Cygwin?? A lot of professional development toolsets are Linux based, they either use a third party language (Eclipse / Java) or Cygwin. Applications developers won't necessarily see this but if you work with embedded products or hardware you're essentially only using Windows because IT/Corporate policy demands it.)

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What is Windows? Sounds innovative

    1. hplasm
      Coat

      What is Windows? Sounds innovative

      A product that is a Transparent Ripoff...

  41. cutterman

    You guys 'n gals realise that it has been possible to change all the colors, font and size of the console window since XP at least (and possibly '98)? Just right click on windows title and select the the Properties dropdown - color away (avoid black-on-black etc. . . .).

    All MS has added is a few newer tweaks, none of which are that earthshaking, and made a whole new fuss about it, as though they'd given us all something new.

    And yes, behavior IS different between PowerShell and Command Shell.

    Mac

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      I think this article is about a different set of colours. (Otherwise Microsoft, who presumable are perfectly aware of the feature you refer to, wouldn't be making an announcement about it.) I think this article is talking about the colours used by arbitrary console programs (is this the old VGA palette?) rather than the ones used by CMD.EXE.

      1. stephanh

        No, configuring console colors was and is not specific to CMD.exe. It really seems MS is bragging here about how they changed the default colors of an application.

  42. david 12 Silver badge

    They did port one of the unix shells over. They called the system "xenix". DOS was more popular.

    1. stephanh

      Xenix was not just a shell, it was a true UNIX™ port. Obviously it required a much heftier machine than DOS, but it was itself the most-widely-used UNIX for a while.

      Note that in MS DOS 2.0, Microsoft introduced a lot of UNIX compatibility features (directories, file descriptors, a primitive form of redirection). At the time MS saw Xenix as the long-term successor of DOS.

      Later they changed that to OS/2, and ultimately they decided to go for it alone with Windows NT.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Xenix.

        Xenix was actually licensed by Microsoft from AT&T in 1979. It was the exact same bog standard PDP11 Version 7 Unix that I had access to at UCB. Microsoft never actually coded anything[0] for Xenix, rather they sub-licensed the AT&T source code to third parties, who did the actual coding and porting.

        For example, it was SCO who ported it to the IBM PC's 8086/8088 architecture in roughly 1983. Yes, the very same machine that shipped with MS-DOS. Most of us yawned[1] ... although looking back, it was a pretty good hack by SCO![2] Hindsight's 20/20 ...

        The name Xenix came about because Ma Bell couldn't (or didn't want to) let them use the UNIX name. The claim for jealousy guarding the trademarked UNIX name was because MaBell was regulated and wasn't allowed to get into the retail trade, although that always rang a trifle hollow to me.

        Before SCO's port was released, there was a TRS-68000 version, a Zilog Z8001 port, and an Altos 8086 version (not necessarily in that order, my mind is concatenating time). There were several others. Microsoft didn't write any of them, rather the third-party companies in question did the coding.

        A version of SCO Xenix is available for the download here: ftp://www.tuhs.org/UnixArchive/Distributions/Other/Xenix/ ... Don't blame me for the www in that URL.

        [0] Unless you consider adding Redmond copyright crap to a few header files "coding".

        [1] Those of us working on BSD at the time looked on Xenix as BSD's somewhat insane & slightly neurotic little brother.

        [2] Last time I posted something along these lines, I asked if anyone could remember who ported Xenix to Apple's Lisa. Turns out it was SCO ... I have a copy, my Lisa looks a lot happier running a un*x than the OS she came with. (Don't worry, all you purists, I have the stock software for her, too.)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Xenix.

          Thanks for the clues-- I knew it was a MS thing (or a SCO thing?) and it made me guess they are addicted to the letter X (Xbox, DirectX, ActiveX, etc). Bender says he prefers the term extortion because the X makes it sound cool. But essentially everything I 'knew' about Xenix I learned from a strange bit of early-WWW fiction, which now seems oddly appropriate...

          I had a nice, relaxing Christmas. I drank beer. I ate sleeping pills. I played with my crayons.

          I used the 'old' colors...the new colors are part of the plot against me.

          I made Christmas gifts for my friends, with scissors and paper, like we used to do at the 'Home,' only with real scissors, not like those crummy plastic ones Mrs. Prudence made us use. I sent all my friends some of those cut-out dolls that you open up and there's ten or twelve of them in a row that you can string around your Christmas tree.

          They didn't have heads. Mrs. Prudence always threw my cut-out dolls away if they didn't have heads and made me take extra medicine...and punished me. But now I'm not in the 'Home' anymore, and I can make them without heads, or arms, or legs, or anyway that I want.

  43. Wisteela
    Linux

    Linux

    This reminds me of the colour choices in Linux terminals.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Maybe by 2021 they'll give the option to put the scroll bar on the right side OR the left side, or have no scrollbar at all, or resize to something other than 80 columns, or hide the menubar, or hit F11 to go to utter full-screen mode and back-- like I can now, without even a lien on my soul.

  44. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Amber appears brighter...

    It was done at the request of the Home Office...

    The Home Office said (in talking to Microsoft), anything to make Amber look a little brighter on screen, regards Tech, was no bad thing and sorely needed.

  45. GrapeBunch
    Windows

    Several times a week.

    It's easy to change the size of the Command Prompt screen. Go into Properties and change the font (size).

    I also use TCC/LE. In part, I like it for the pdir command:

    pdir g:\2017 /s /(dy-m-d zm fpn) >> j:\2017.txt

    that sort of thing, in batch files, to have up-to-date listings, in a format of my choice, of offline files.

    At best, they're making one thing better, while making a whole bunch of other things slightly worse. Typical. For example, I like the colour bright yellow. An earlier poster liked it against blue, I like it against deep red / maroon. That's what I use when editing text files with ConTEXT 0.98.3 (the later version would occasionally lose its mind, for me). In the article, the line with bright yellow against all backgrounds looks washed out in comparison to the Old Way.

    With old monochrome monitors, I think the determinative factor in usability may have been the quality of the equipment rather than the chosen colour. I had a Televideo green monitor, rock-solid, never suffered eyestrain. Made me feel like a real programmer (psssst, don't look at the CODE!). Amber screens (whether black text on amber or amber text on black) tended to give the impression of fleetingness, like an inaudible buzz. Yet you could use the same colours now on an LED without that impression. Even worse were the "paper white" screens I encountered. To get the paper white colour required more complex technology, but that didn't remove the pressure of meeting a price point, so they tended to use a cheaper version of that technology. Today, we're all accustomed to paper white, few complain about it except in darkened rooms. It was the application of technology that stank, not the concept.

  46. Luiz Abdala
    Windows

    Speaking of which...

    Can I read El Reg on white fonts with a black blackground?

    Like the good'ol days of the Mosaic era, where all the sites had Arial 12 yellow fonts over black?

    (A bit of BBS era nostalgia as well.)

    Any scripts out there to fuzz around straight on the raw HTML code?

  47. cutterman

    Hrg Nenad (yup, that;s his name!) at www.softwareok.com does a lovely ColorConsole app that has lots and lots of neat tricks to it.

    I never had trouble with the old console and knew all the switches by heart. Use'ta love writing batch files that batch files aren't supposed to be able to do.

    But what do I care? I installed bash on Windows 10 and am back in familiar territory.

    Mac

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