By default bold is indicated by colour, so non-bold text is displayed in light grey and bold text is displayed in bright white (and similarly in other colours). If you change the setting to ‘The font’ box, bold and non-bold text will be displayed in the same colour, and instead the font will change to indicate the difference. If you select ‘Both’, the font and the colour will both change.
Some applications rely on ‘bold black’ being distinguishable from a black background; if you choose ‘The font’, their text may become invisible.
4.12.4 ‘Attempt to use logical palettes’
Logical palettes are a mechanism by which a Windows application running on an 8-bit colour display can select precisely the colours it wants instead of going with the Windows standard defaults.
If you are not getting the colours you ask for on an 8-bit display, you can try enabling this option. However, be warned that it's never worked very well.
4.12.5 ‘Use system colours’
Enabling this option will cause PuTTY to ignore the configured colours for ‘Default Background/Foreground’ and ‘Cursor Colour/Text’ (see
section 4.12.6
), instead going with the system-wide defaults.
Note that non-bold and bold text will be the same colour if this option is enabled. You might want to change to indicating bold text by font changes (see
section 4.12.3
).
4.12.6 Adjusting the colours in the terminal window
The main colour control allows you to specify exactly what colours things should be displayed in. To modify one of the PuTTY colours, use the list box to select which colour you want to modify. The RGB values for that colour will appear on the right-hand side of the list box. Now, if you press the ‘Modify’ button, you will be presented with a colour selector, in which you can choose a new colour to go in place of the old one. (You may also edit the RGB values directly in the edit boxes, if you wish; each value is an integer from 0 to 255.)
PuTTY allows you to set the cursor colour, the default foreground and background, and the precise shades of all the ANSI configurable colours (black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and white). You can also modify the precise shades used for the bold versions of these colours; these are used to display bold text if you have chosen to indicate that by colour (see
section
4.12.3
), and can also be used if the server asks specifically to use them. (Note that ‘Default Bold Background’ is not the background
colour used for bold text; it is only used if the server specifically asks for a bold background.)
4.13 The Connection panel
The Connection panel allows you to configure options that apply to more than one type of connection.
•
4.13.1 Using keepalives to prevent disconnection
•
4.13.2 ‘Disable Nagle's algorithm’
•
4.13.3 ‘Enable TCP keepalives’
•
4.13.4 ‘Internet protocol’
•
4.13.5 ‘Logical name of remote host’
4.13.1 Using keepalives to prevent disconnection
If you find your sessions are closing unexpectedly (most often with ‘Connection reset by peer’) after they have been idle for a while, you might want to try using this option.
Some network routers and firewalls need to keep track of all connections through them. Usually, these firewalls will assume a connection is dead if no data is transferred in either direction after a certain time interval. This can cause PuTTY sessions to be unexpectedly closed by the firewall if no traffic is seen in the session for some time.
The keepalive option (‘Seconds between keepalives’) allows you to configure PuTTY to send data through the session at regular intervals, in a way that does not disrupt the actual terminal session. If you find your firewall is cutting idle connections off, you can