
True Color support in various terminals and applications - xvilka
https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728
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guiambros
Why would I want that? Serious question.

Color support is important, but 256 has served me well for decades. Can't
think of a single program that would benefit from more colors. Unless, of
course, you're trying to watch ASCII-videos.

~~~
captainmuon
Some things I can think of:

\- Themes, its nice to have the same color scheme across your programs. You
can always redefine your 16 base colors in the terminal and map these to
syntax in your terminal program (e.g. vi), but it's cleaner to have the rgb
colors directly in your theme file, especially if you switch themes (I don't
do it too often, but I like to change colors every month or so to keep it
looking fresh)

\- If you code CSS, it would be nice to have preview of #336699 colors in your
editor. To implement that, you need real color support.

\- And, less important, for those who play nethack-style games it's probably
nice.

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VeejayRampay
Kind of a side rant but I've often wondered why Apple doesn't put more effort
into making Terminal.app better. Macs are rather popular amongst certain types
of developers and making their life easier is a nice way to make sure they'll
keep on using Macs.

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stuaxo
How do you add something like this to ANSI ?

I'd like to add annotations to regions of the screen about which file /
directory a region mentions.

In this way an aware terminal could let you open files by right clicking in
the terminal, or change directory etc.

You could even run a program under the shell to check which files were opened
and annotate areas if they are mentioned.

~~~
kps
Read ECMA-48¹, which is the free (as in beer) printing of the ‘ANSI’ terminal
controls standard. If you want to supply text (like a file name), you'd
probably use an OSC command _ESC ] Ps ; Pt ST_ with a _Ps_ that no one else is
using. To mark the start and end of a region, you'd probably use a pair of
control sequences (CSI) analogous to START / END OF SELECTED AREA, from a
private use range.

(The true-color sequence comes from an ITU recommended extension / future
version, T.416². It would be interesting for the OP site to list which
terminals support the full proposal, including CMY an CMYK specifications, as
well as RGB.)

¹ [http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-
ST...](http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-
ST/Ecma-048.pdf) ²
[http://handle.itu.int/11.1002/1000/2546-en?locatt=format:pdf](http://handle.itu.int/11.1002/1000/2546-en?locatt=format:pdf)

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WildUtah
Wait, we're settling for 24-bit color? With HDMI and modern image and video
formats supporting 10-bit and 16-bit channels, I need a terminal that can
support Deep Color.

True HD color with 64-bit depth, including a 16-bit alpha channel, is the
minimum future programmers will demand to syntax highlight our source code and
identify monsters in Nethack.

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rwinn
iTerm 2 is supposed to have support but I'm not having any luck
([https://www.dropbox.com/s/xvl46l7ti9sqv9o/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/xvl46l7ti9sqv9o/Screenshot%202014-07-06%2016.00.08.png))

~~~
gnachman
It's only in the nightly builds

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cmaxwe
why?

Seems completely unnecessary to me.

~~~
coldtea
Terribly useful to me. For one, I can have vim themes that match my other
styles in other programs.

(Not to mention we should have drawing support implemented IN the terminal by
now).

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Flimm
Yes! We need a website that encourages terminals and applications to use 24bit
colour.

~~~
captainmuon
Sarcasm? I find it sometimes hard to tell around here.

But seriously, I like the meta-idea of putting up a site to promote a
technology; with a list of compliant apps for users, and information how to
implement it for the developers. I'm thinking about making a site that
catalogues DPI aware software for windows (like Macs "Retina"), because its
annoying how many programs don't support high DPI screens properly, and its
notoriously hard to do for developers.

~~~
Flimm
Actually, I wasn't being sarcastic.

