notcurses/TERMS.md

1.7 KiB

Terminals and TERM

With the wrong environment settings, programs can't properly control your terminal. It is critical that the TERM environment variable be correct for your shell, and that the terminfo database entry keyed by this variable be up-to-date. Furthermore, for 24-bit TrueColor, it is necessary to either use a -direct variant of your terminfo entry, or to declare COLORTERM=24bit. The latter instruct Notcurses to use 24-bit escapes regardless of advertised support. If you define this variable, and your terminal doesn't actually support these sequences, you're going to have a bad time.

The following have been established on a Debian Unstable workstation.

Terminal Recommended environment Notes
Linux console TERM=linux 8 (512 glyph fonts) or 16 (256 glyph fonts) colors max.
FBterm
kmscon TERM=xterm-256color No RGB color AFAICT, nor any distinct terminfo entry.
XTerm TERM=xterm-256color COLORTERM=24bit Must configure with --enable-direct-color. TERM=xterm-direct seems to have the undesirable effect of mapping low RGB values to a palette; I don't yet understand this well. The problem is not seen with the specified configuration.
XFCE4 Terminal TERM=xfce COLORTERM=24bit No xfce-direct variant exists
Gnome Terminal TERM=gnome COLORTERM=24bit
Konsole TERM=konsole-direct
Alacritty TERM=alacritty COLORTERM=24bit
Kitty TERM=kitty-direct
Sakura TERM=vte-256color COLORTERM=24bit
st TERM=st-256color COLORTERM=24bit
GNU Screen TERM=screen-256colors Must be compiled with --enable-256color.
tmux