Re: support for true-color terminals

[Charles Strahan <charles@cstrahan.com>]

On Fri, Mar 11, 2016, at 04:26 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Charles Strahan <charles@cstrahan.com>
> > Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 20:48:54 -0500
> > 
> > A while back, there was an effort to add support for true-color
> > terminals (by which I mean terminals supporting 16777216 simultaneous
> > colors):
> > 
> > http://emacs.1067599.n5.nabble.com/RFC-Add-tty-True-Color-support-td299962.html
> > 
> > I've contacted Rüdiger, asking if he wouldn't mind if I pick up from
> > where he left off, and he said that was fine as he's been too busy to
> > work on this.
> > 
> > I've attached to this email the patch that I'm using, based on his work.
> > Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
> > 
> > This is my first (attempted) contribution to Emacs, and I'm very new to
> > the code base, so there might be some silly mistakes that I'm unaware
> > of. If we can get this polished enough for inclusion, I'd be more than
> > happy to assign copyright.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> First, I suggest that you start the legal paperwork rolling right now,
> because without that, discussing such a non-trivial change would be
> rather pointless.  If you agree, I will send you the form off-list.

Yes, I agree - thank you. I'll get the paperwork filled out as soon as I
can.

> As for the patch: my first comment is about the changes in
> tty_look_up_color and in map_tty_color -- why are these needed?  The
> sheer number of the supported colors doesn't necessarily require any
> changes in the basic design of TTY color support, so I'm not sure what
> was the motivation for these changes.
> 
> Also, why do we need the 'true-color' option introduced in
> tty-colors.el? why isn't 'auto' enough for supporting this terminal?

I'll try to answer your questions in the next day or two when my
schedule frees up.

-Charles