Windows 7, crossterm, SetUnderlineColor error

[rigelminer]

Description

When using ratatui with crossterm backend on Windows 7, the application fails to render with an error Custom { kind: Other, error: "SetUnderlineColor not supported by winapi." }

To Reproduce

Render UI with ratatui 0.23.0 on Windows 7

Expected behavior

The UI renders successfully

Environment

• OS: Windows 7
• Terminal Emulator: cmd.exe
• Crate version: 0.23.0
• Backend: crossterm

Additional context

The error originates here https://github.com/crossterm-rs/crossterm/blob/master/src/style.rs#L251. SetUnderlineColor command is called in ratatui here: https://github.com/ratatui-org/ratatui/blob/main/src/backend/crossterm.rs#L167 <-- commenting out this line fixes the issue.
I'm not experiencing this problem with the original tui-rs as it doesn't call SetUnderlineColor.

Is there a way to make the code call SetUnderlineColor only when the underline color functionality is used? I promise not to use on Win 7 😄

[kdheepak]

Thanks for reporting! I'm using Ratatui on Windows and I'm surprised I didn't run into this yet. Does this happen for you when you style a cell a particular way or does it happen even if you apply no styling?

[rigelminer]

No worries!
I believe this is specific to Windows 7. Crossterm is probably using ansi for setting colours on newer versions of Windows.

Does this happen for you when you style a cell a particular way or does it happen even if you apply no styling?

Looks like it fails even when applying Style::default()

[joshka]

How is Windows 7 still a thing? LOL

The colored underline behavior was added recently with a feature flag behind crossterm. We might have to replace that with a "colored-underline" flag or something like that instead.

[rigelminer]

How is Windows 7 still a thing? LOL

Haha, I know right? Some of our users are running Windows 7. I had to install it myself to troubleshoot.

We might have to replace that with a "colored-underline" flag or something like that instead.

That would be great, thanks! The less intrusive the fix the better - otherwise it's not worth the effort, considering the issue is only present on Win 7. It's that unconditional SetUnderlineColor(CColor::Reset) call that's causing the problem.

[kdheepak]

You'll also run into the issue if you manually set underline color, right? For example this line:

https://github.com/ratatui-org/ratatui/blob/45413365146ede5472dc28e0ee1970d245e2fa02/src/backend/crossterm.rs#L156-L156

@joshka What do you think about change the following:

https://github.com/ratatui-org/ratatui/blob/45413365146ede5472dc28e0ee1970d245e2fa02/src/backend/crossterm.rs#L163-L169

to something like this instead:

        if let Err(e) = queue!(self.writer, SetUnderlineColor(CColor::Reset)) {
            log::error!("Unable to set underline color: {e}");
        }
        queue!(
            self.writer,
            SetForegroundColor(CColor::Reset),
            SetBackgroundColor(CColor::Reset),
            SetAttribute(CAttribute::Reset)
        )

[joshka]

That's going to spam logs hard - it's better to not do something when it can error than do it many times.

[sigmaSd]

I think you can raise issue/pr upstream (even though response will be slow) , usually unsupported apis are just ignored like here https://github.com/crossterm-rs/crossterm/blob/master/src/style.rs#L321

I think this case should be the same, it provably just wasn't noticed.

[rigelminer]

@sigmaSd Thanks. Raised the issue crossterm-rs/crossterm#831.

[icecat89]

man, i'm using even Windows 8.1 and steel have the same problem, i just wanted to make a simple “Hello World” TUI app...
in the Cargo.toml, the pakage and dependencies are like this:

[package]
name = "rata"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2021"

[dependencies]
ratatui = "0.27.0"

and then on the main.rs:

use std::io::{stdout, Result};

use ratatui::{
    backend::CrosstermBackend,
    crossterm::{
        event::{self, KeyCode, KeyEventKind},
        terminal::{disable_raw_mode, enable_raw_mode, EnterAlternateScreen, LeaveAlternateScreen},
        ExecutableCommand,
    },
    style::Stylize,
    widgets::Paragraph,
    Terminal,
};

fn main() -> Result<()> {
    stdout().execute(EnterAlternateScreen)?;
    enable_raw_mode()?;
    let mut terminal = Terminal::new(CrosstermBackend::new(stdout()))?;
    terminal.clear()?;

    loop {
        terminal.draw(|frame| {
            let area = frame.size();
            frame.render_widget(
                Paragraph::new("Hello Ratatui! (press 'q' to quit)")
                    .white()
                    .on_blue(),
                area,
            );
        })?;

        if event::poll(std::time::Duration::from_millis(16))? {
            if let event::Event::Key(key) = event::read()? {
                if key.kind == KeyEventKind::Press && key.code == KeyCode::Char('q') {
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    stdout().execute(LeaveAlternateScreen)?;
    disable_raw_mode()?;
    Ok(())
}

whenever i run it on the cmd, it makes the design but gives an error:

Error: Custom { kind: Other, error: "SetUnderlineColor not supported by winapi." }
error: process didn't exit successfully: target\debug\rata.exe (exit code: 1)

there is no option to exit from the app, it's directly loged out with this error

hope someone will find a solution for me))

[joshka]

QQ: do you have a full backtrace for the error? That would be helpful to understand how this is feature gated on winapi (and would enable us to perhaps do the same thing, either in Ratatui or crossterm. It's probably more crossterm than Ratatui that should ignore this.

To disable underline colors in your app use the following in your Cargo.toml (basically don't enable the underline-color feature). This was fixed in #570 which is mentioned above in the "closed as completed" link.

ratatui = { version = "0.27.0", default-features = false, features = ["crossterm"] }

[icecat89]

@joshka
So Tipeclly... I should desable the default-features ? And add crossterm?
The problem is not upp to this only...i tried also to make a simple counter app and the hole borders where like "???? " I think ratatui only support win10 and up...
Anyway... I'll try to do that now...maybee it's gonna be usefull...thank you

[joshka]

Hey, can you open another issue for any problems you're seeing with Windows 8 here. My guess for the borders is that your terminal is not using a font that has the symbols available. It's possible that Windows 8 works, but we don't really have any maintainers that regularly use Windows, so I wouldn't call it supported - merely tolerated ;)

I'd recommend grabbing a Windows 11 VM for your development purposes. See https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/. Obviously you know your reasons for using really old software, but it's not something I want to invest much time into generally. I hope you can appreciate that.

[icecat89]

@joshka
Hi man...thanks for respo,
Well it's a great idea to put a Windows 11 as VM, but the main reason of why I steel use windows8. 1 is cz my computer config can't be enough for better versions.. Here's my config :
Intel Celeron G1620 2.7Ghz
4GB ram DDR3 1600Mhz
Intel HD graphics 228MB
You get the point now? I'm actually suffer from this...
But thanks anyway

I also were trying to learn about ratatui for making a good TUI for my socks5 proxy project..its a Windows tool tunneling it over named pipes...
So I what to organize it well...
For named pipes I couldn't use rust cz I didn't find a better option (crate) to use it for tht...even Tokio support it... So I used cpp for tht...
Thanks for such kind words , I'll open an issue later on... )) thanks again