Automatic ANSI Color Level Detection & Downgrade #

• Make write exactly match the ansicolor package method
• Added AnsiColorLevel enum (none, basic, ansi256, trueColor) with a supports() method for checking capability tiers.
• Added ansiColorLevel — a mutable global that auto-detects the terminal's color capability from environment variables (COLORTERM, TERM_PROGRAM, TERM, NO_COLOR, FORCE_COLOR, WT_SESSION, KONSOLE_VERSION, VTE_VERSION, etc.).
• Automatic downgrade: RGB and 256-color methods now automatically downsample to the best supported level — true color falls back to 256-color (via rgbToAnsi256), 256-color falls back to the nearest basic ANSI color, and AnsiColorLevel.none produces identity (passthrough) closures.
• Dispatch is resolved once at first access via lazily-initialized top-level final function variables — zero per-call branching overhead, matching the library's "branch-on-creation" design philosophy.
• Platform detection: IO platforms inspect stdout.supportsAnsiEscapes and environment variables; web defaults to trueColor.

Documentation #

• Achieved 100% dartdoc coverage (1236/1236 API elements).
• Added library-level doc comments to all three entry points (quectocolors.dart, small.dart, supports_ansi_color.dart) and the ansipen.dart barrel.
• Added doc comments to all style fields (reset, bold, dim, italic, underline, overline, inverse, hidden, strikethrough, blink, rapidBlink, superscript, subscript) in QuectoPlain, QuectoColors, and QuectoColorsOnStrings.
• Added doc comments to all dynamic color methods (ansi256, bgAnsi256, onAnsi256, underlineAnsi256, rgb, bgRgb, onRgb, underlineRgb) in both QuectoPlain and QuectoColors.
• Added class-level doc comments for QuectoColors and QuectoPlain.
• Added doc comments to AnsiPen class, constructor, all color/style methods, and all deprecated compatibility symbols.
• Added "Terminal Color Level Detection" section to README with enum table, usage examples, detection logic, and public symbols reference.
• Updated ChalkDart comparison table: "Color level downsampling" now "Yes".

• Added blinking and rapidBlinking aliases for blink and rapidBlink.

• Simplified import structure to three entry points: quectocolors.dart (everything), small.dart (core only), and ansipen.dart (AnsiPen compat). Removed redundant basic.dart, extras.dart, and css.dart — Dart's tree-shaker strips unused code, so the full import has no binary size penalty.
• Rounded out compatibility with ChalkDart:
• Added blink (SGR 5), rapidBlink (SGR 6), superscript (SGR 73), and subscript (SGR 74) to QuectoPlain, QuectoColors, and the string extensions.
• Added on* aliases for all bg* background colors on QuectoPlain, QuectoColors, and the string extensions: onBlack, onRed, onGreen, onYellow, onBlue, onMagenta, onCyan, onWhite, onGray/onGrey, and all bright variants.
• Added onAnsi256() and onRgb() method aliases.
• Style aliases: normal (reset), underlined (underline), overlined (overline), invert (inverse).
• brightXYZ foreground aliases: brightRed, brightGreen, brightYellow, brightBlue, brightMagenta, brightCyan, brightWhite, brightBlack.
• brightXYZ background aliases: bgBrightRed..bgBrightBlack and onBrightRed..onBrightBlack.
• visible: returns the string when ANSI is enabled, empty string when disabled.
• Hex color methods: hex(), onHex(), bgHex() — set foreground or background from hex values ('#FF0000', 'FF0000', '#F00', 0xFF0000).
• ANSI string extensions utilities: stripAnsi, ansiLength, lengthWithoutAnsi.

• Explain quecto and fix import version in README.md

Initial release of QuectoColors — a high-performance ANSI terminal color styling library for Dart with correct nested color support.

Core Architecture #

• All-static design using pre-computed static final closures for zero per-call allocation on the standard 16 ANSI colors and text styles.
• createStyler() central factory that builds closures with pre-cached close code bytes, pre-warmed StringBuffer, and unrolled codeUnitAt() ESC scanning for fast nested color detection and re-injection.
• Close code length branching (4 vs 5 chars) resolved at closure creation time, not per-call.

Color Support #

• 16 standard ANSI colors — foreground, background, and bright variants (black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, gray/grey).
• Text styles — bold, dim, italic, underline, overline, inverse, hidden, strikethrough, and reset.
• 256-color xterm palette — ansi256(), bgAnsi256(), underlineAnsi256() for foreground, background, and colored underlines.
• 16M true color RGB — rgb(), bgRgb(), underlineRgb() for full 24-bit color.
• 149 CSS/X11 named colors — generated foreground, background, and underline color methods for all CSS/X11 named colors (e.g., cornflowerBlue, onTomato, onAliceBlueUnderline). Names that conflict with ANSI builtins are suffixed with X11 (e.g., greenX11).
• rgbToAnsi256() utility — convert arbitrary RGB values to the nearest xterm 256-color index.

API Styles #

• String extensions ('text'.red, 'text'.bold.bgBlue) — the most concise API, delegating to QuectoColors statics.
• Static methods (QuectoColors.red('text')) — useful for storing stylers in variables and passing as function references.
• AnsiPen fluent interface (AnsiPen()..red()..bold) — compatible with the ansicolor package's AnsiPen API including rgb(), gray()/grey(), xterm(), down, up, write(), call(), and cascade (..) syntax. BUT UNLIKE the ansicolor package we properly support nesting of styles!

Plain Fast Path #

• QuectoPlain provides zero-scan stylers that skip ESC byte scanning entirely — pure '$openCode$string$closeCode' interpolation for ~3x speedup on long strings when nesting is not needed.

AnsiPen Compatibility #

• Drop-in replacement for the ansicolor package — change import 'package:ansicolor/ansicolor.dart' to import 'package:quectocolors/ansipen.dart'.
• Exports ansiColorDisabled, ansiEscape, ansiDefault, ansiResetForeground, ansiResetBackground, and deprecated aliases (color_disabled, ansi_esc, ansi_default).
• up/down getters and toString() override for inline '${pen}text${pen.up}' usage.

Platform Detection #

• Automatic ANSI support detection via Dart conditional imports (dart.library.io checks stdout.supportsAnsiEscapes, web assumes true).
• Global ansiColorDisabled toggle to disable all color output.

Nested Color Handling #

• When a nested style's close code appears inside an outer style, the outer style is automatically re-injected — ('Hello ${"world".blue}!').red correctly restores red after the blue text ends. Other Dart ANSI packages (ansicolor, colorize) do not handle this case.

Package Structure #

• Three import entry points:
  • quectocolors.dart — everything: core colors, styles, extras, and 149 CSS/X11 named colors.
  • small.dart — core only (QuectoColors, QuectoPlain, basic string extensions).
  • ansipen.dart — AnsiPen compatibility layer (import separately).
• Pure Dart package, no Flutter dependency.
• Inline SVG doc comments on all color fields for IDE color preview swatches.