[the_af]

> a lot of programs I use have varying levels of colour-by-default, but I don't want that. What I want is to have them all off, except the ones that actually add value.

Your use case seems perfectly valid to me, but how would NO_COLOR help you? Wouldn't it suppress all color in all programs when it's set? Assuming everyone gets on board, of course.

[mbrumlow]

Yeah that seems to be what he wants!

He can then selectively enable color on the programs he wants by simply unsettling the NO_COLOR variable before execution of the program.