First, note that this is not a Cygwin-specific issue. It is an
Emacs-in-a-terminal issue, so perhaps it should not be
mentioned at all in Cygwin-specific documents. It's similar
to the "backspace" issue (or default fonts or default
colors) in rxvt -- it leads to a better default user
experience. But that is a judgement call for an
experienced package maintainer, or a vote of
the user community.
> I tried your suggestion and couldn't see that it improved anything.
Whether you see any changes in font (bold versus non-bold),
colors, underlining, and other screen capabilities will depend
on what your terminal emulator's default TERM value is and
on what type of file you are viewing. If terminal's default
capabilities match the capabilities in the Emacs's terminal
capability that you have selected for the types of files that
you are editing, then you may not see any difference.
One item that can be changed from what I wrote
previously is the contingency of the 'terminfo'
package. Because that package is included in
the Base category, we should be able to assume
that it is always installed.
So, it should be possible to tell all users that
they can start Emacs as follows:
$ env TERM=Eterm-256color emacs -nw ...
You will likely see differences if you compare
that invocation of Emacs with this one:
$ env TERM=rxvt-cygwin-native emacs -nw ...
Some differences that I can see (in rxvt):
1. In Info mode, the Info menu (Next, Prev, Up, etc.)
is highlighted for 'Eterm-256color', but
not for 'rxvt-cygwin-native'.
2. The mode line is displayed highlighted
similarly to the Info menu (regardless of whether
in Info mode).
3. The font of keywords in assorted languages
(shell-script, Emacs Lisp, C) is non-bold (easier
for me to read) in 'Eterm-256color', but is
'bold' in 'rxvt-cygwin-native'.
> My reading of the documentation is that eterm-color
> is intended to be used by emacs when it does terminal
> emulation via 'M-x term'.
No, when Emacs is run in terminal (text-only, non-X-windows)
mode, it will use whatever terminal capability is in effect,
not only in `term-mode'. See, for example,
M-: (info "(emacs) Remote Host")
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