# Shellcolor

Looking up ANSI color codes is difficult and time consuming - realistically, who knows what `"\033[31;1;4mHello\033[0m"`
means off the
top of their head<sup>1</sup>?

`shellcolor` provides an easy way of styling text in CLI scripts. It uses memorable flags like `--bg` and `--bold` to
provide style to text.

## Getting the ASCII output

If you need to see the ASCII output for compatibility with another program, you can pipe it into another file, and copy
it from there.

```shell
shellcolor --bg red hello > hi.txt    
```

## Experimental format support

While applying styles to text is great, it would be better to be able to interleave styles throughout the text. If we
attempt to style a single string in multiple ways, we'd get some ugly text like this

```shell
echo "$(shellcolor --bg black --fg red "hello there,") $(shellcolor --fg green --bold "General") $(shellcolor --fg bright_white --underline Kenobi)"
```

In an effort to make it more approachable, there is a flag called `--format` which will allow for a BBCode-like syntax.
It's currently pretty primitive (as in, doesn't handle nesting well), but something like this will get you close without
requiring a series of subshells.

```shell 
shellcolor --format "[color=red]Hello there,[/color] [bold]General[/bold]"
````

## Man page

```text
Translates CSS colors to ANSI escape sequences

USAGE:
    shellcolor [OPTIONS] <TEXT>

ARGS:
    <TEXT>    The text to display

OPTIONS:
        --bg <bg>      Set background color (e.g., red, green, blue, or 0-255 for 256-color mode)
        --blink        Set text to blink
        --bold         Set text to bold
        --fg <fg>      Set foreground (text) color (e.g., red, green, blue, or 0-255 for 256-color
                       mode)
        --format       Formats the text with a BBCode-like syntax. For example, "Hello
                       [color=red]World[/color]! This is a [bold]Bold[/bold] text."
    -h, --help         Print help information
        --hidden       Hide text (but it can be selected/copied)
        --reverse      Reverse background and foreground colors
        --underline    Set text to underline
    -V, --version      Print version information

```

---

1: It is the string "Hello", with red text, bolded, and underlined.