I've read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termcap and see gnu.org/software/termu but I'm looking for a summary of which TERM=foo names do/add what.
Also, it seems like "TERM=screen screen -d -r" seems pretty fancy. Italics, even!? Page up/down works, color respecting my prefs TBD.
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It seems some TERM=foo values respect the ~16 colors in my terminal profile preferences, and some TERM=bar values must support larger palettes (or arbitrary colors), and then I have no control over them.
Or I don't know where/how to control them.
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There are 256 and even 24-bit color palettes. You generally need to configure the applications using them. Most applications don't make use of it by default without explicitly configuring them to do it.
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The easiest solution is picking a broadly supported theme and configuring it everywhere. You probably don't want to disable the broader color palette support since it allows syntax highlighting, etc. to have more color classes.
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256 color support is very common / standard to include, 24-bit color support on the other hand is much less common. Some themes for Vim and Emacs don't make the assumption that the terminal is configured with the same color scheme so they avoid using the 16 color palette.
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So you can end up with mismatches even with the same theme if the Emacs / Vim version of the theme is made for the 256 color palette exclusively without assuming the terminal palette is correct. You'd need to fix the theme yourself in that case or use someone else's take on it.
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If I want to force 16 colors (but still have PgUp/Down + bold + the italics I just today saw), would I then have to make my own termcap name/file? Or do some features imply the existence of other features/levels?
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infocmp -1 xterm > xterm
infocmp -1 xterm-256color > xterm-256color
You can diff those to see the difference between 16 and 256 color support. Some terminals like xterm-256color support 24-bit color escape codes but round it to the 256 color palette.
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So, you can use infocmp to decompile the correct terminfo file for your terminal, modify it and compile / install it to your home directory with the `tic` command. The home directory takes precedence over the global database so you shouldn't need to change TERM.
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Make sure to user `tic -x` so it doesn't wipe out extensions.
The way this stuff works is that instead of hard-wiring escape codes, applications / libraries are supposed to use the terminfo escape codes, which are templated to take parameters. The whole thing is horrible mess.
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