Hi Kyle, et al., Thanks for the constructive feedback. With your help, I first started looking into my ncurses implementation. I cleaned things up best I could and then downloaded and installed ncurses v5.6 compiled with 256 color support. That alone did not resolve my issue; but I do believe it helped.
The rxvt terminfo file I was using came with my terminal emulator and was supposed to support 256 colors, but it appears there is some issue with that file. I tried setting my TERM var to xterm-256color. That appears to have done the trick! I can now use the colorN technique to access all 256 colors. I'm one happy camper :) Thanks again for all the help. -- Mun On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 04:42 PM PST, Kyle Wheeler wrote: KW> On Monday, January 29 at 07:18 PM, quoth cga2000: KW> >> As you can see, when parsing something like "color34", *col becomes KW> >> 34, and is checked against the value of COLORS. COLORS is a value KW> >> defined by ncurses and slang. KW> > KW> >Yes, but wouldn't these libraries obtain the value of COLORS from KW> >the terminfo entry pointed to by the process's TERM environment KW> >variable? KW> KW> Yes and no. If the library only supports up to 16 colors (for KW> example), then it can accurately set COLORS for xterm, vt100, and KW> xterm-16color, but not for xterm-256color. KW> KW> >But then .. where did this rxvt terminfo entry that specifies 256 KW> >colors come from .. ?? I thought that would be part of the curses KW> >package and should therefore by in sync' with the librar{y|ies} .. ? KW> KW> Hmm, could be he hand-modified his own rxvt terminfo in an attempt to KW> get 256 colors working. Other than that, I don't know. I *can* tell KW> you that the default rxvt on Solaris doesn't do 256 colors, though. KW> KW> ~Kyle KW> -- KW> Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and I am KW> sure...we both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our KW> Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to KW> ourselves. KW> -- Thomas Jefferson to P.H. Wendover, 1815