Re: terminfo entries for color wrong/incorrect.

[Thomas Dickey]

On Sat, May 13, 2017 at 02:56:06PM -0700, L A Walsh wrote:
> I wanted to find numbers of colors supported by various term-emulators
> on my system.
> 
> When I tried xterm and ones listed for full color, most returned '8',
> with a few @ 256, but none returned full color (2^24 = 16 * 1024 * 1024).
> 
> Also none of the linux entries returned more than 16, but the
> linux console supports, at least 256 at a time (out of a 24-bit pallete).

Perhaps in a framebuffer.  Not in the regular console.

However - see

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/316878/solarized-colorscheme-in-fbterm/316912#316912
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/341539/distros-that-when-run-w-o-the-gui-have-a-default-term-xterm-256color/341619#341619

X running on a Linux console isn't running _in_ the console any more.
It has switched the video modes to allow drawing graphics instead of
characters.
 
> I tried xterm as well, but it returned 8, when I can run an
> xterm-colors.pl program that shows 216 colors (attached @ end).

sounds like a problem with the script :-)
 
> So how what's up... why are values from terminfo showing such limited
> values?

terminfo shows a particular working configuration -- it never did, probably
never will "guess" what colors your terminal could do.  You would select
a given terminal description to tell applications how to use that
configuration.

In particular, Linux console has no way to tell you how many colors it
can support.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

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