Re: Couldn't we enable 256 colors by default on TERM?

[Pádraig Brady]

On 05/30/2012 04:16 PM, Marc Deop wrote:
>  On Wednesday 30 May 2012 10:04:49 Pádraig Brady wrote:
> > I've some notes about 256 colors here:
> > http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/terminal_colours/#256
> >
>  
>  That information is mostly fine. There are some errors though (you say you set your TERM
> variable in your .bashrc...) 
Yes. If you follow the link to my .bashrc it further clarifies that
to handle all cases, the variable should be set earlier in ~/.profile
or system wide in /etc/profile.d/...

> > If you restrict yourself to local xterms
> > (of most varieties) you're fine.
> >
>  
>  Nowadays you'll be fine almost everywhere. Your system should not set the TERM
> variable to "xterm" or whatever if you are in a virtual terminal (that would
> happen if you set your TERM variable in your .bashrc for example...) 
Well that also happens if set in /etc/profile etc.
What you need to do I think is guard like:

$ cat /etc/profile.d/256color.sh
[ "$TERM" = 'xterm' ] && TERM=xterm-256color; export TERM

>  
> > However...
> >
> > 256 color doesn't work correctly on Linux virtual consoles.
> >
>  
>  Totally true 
Handled with the conditional above

> > Also since your $TERM is propagated to remote systems
> > when you ssh, if they don't support that you'll have issues.
> > For example sshing to debian systems (I've not tried newer releases)
> > will be problematic unless a package in installed there.
> > Also if I ssh to solaris then I need to reset TERM to "xterm"
> > for man pages to work correctly etc.
>  
>  IMHO this should be the other way around: for old systems where the 256 don't work
> you should manually set your TERM variable to something that would work and not the other
> way around 
This could be contentious.

However I notice (from searching the web) is that Mac OS X
Terminal's default $TERM value is xterm-256color since Lion 10.7.

What I'd do (I will do if you prefer) is to propose the feature at:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/18/FeatureList
That will both provide a todo list and allow voting on acceptance.

Also in the release notes we should have notes for workarounds
for older systems where you would have issues.
I notice ncurses-term is still 'standard' rather than 'required' in
debian.
Perhaps we could log a request for that to change?
Note that package is 6.6MB installed so maybe the 256 color support
could be merged back to ncurses-base ?

I just tried ubuntu 12.04 there and it also doesn't install ncurses-term.
I did the following to double check:
  $ TERM=xterm-256colors man ls
  WARNING: terminal is not fully functional

> > So it's one of those borderline things that is unfortunately
> > dependent on the users environment, so I'd be wary about
> > changing this default.
>  
>  I see no problem in setting the gnome-terminal (or konsole or whatever) to use 256 by
> default in a bleeding edge distro like Fedora. Again, we should change this settings when
> they do not work ;) 
There is still further issues to consider locally.
screen and vim settings would need to be tweaked also as per:
http://www.robmeerman.co.uk/unix/256colours

cheers,
Pádraig.