---
** [tickets:#140] 24 bit (true color, 16 million of them) color support **
**Status:** open
**Created:** Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:39 AM UTC by Anton Kochkov
**Last Updated:** Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:39 AM UTC
**Owner:** nobody
There is current state of true color support in tmux:
<https://www.mail-archive.com/tmux-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg04720.html>
Have a workaround though: you can use tmux_escape option if you want true color
in shell run under tmux. No true color in tmux statusline though.
But still missing full support. Attaching small summary of true color support
in different terminal emulators (you can see bunch of them already supported
it) and some console programs, like vim and emacs.
Colors in terminal
==================
It's a common confusion about terminal colors... Actually we have this:
* plain ascii
* ansi escape codes (16 color codes with bold/italic and background)
* 256 color palette (216 colors+16gray + ansi) (colors are 24bit)
* 24bit true color (888 colors (aka 16 milion)
The 256 color palete is configured at start, and it's a 666 cube of
colors, each of them defined as a 24bit (888 rgb) color.
This means that current support can only display 256 different colors
in the terminal, while truecolor means that you can display 16 milion
different colors at the same time.
Truecolor escape codes doesnt uses a color palete. It just specifies the
color itself.
Here's a test case:
```
printf "\x1b[38;2;255;100;0mTRUECOLOR\x1b[0m\n"
```
* or http://github.com/robertknight/konsole/tree/master/tests/color-spaces.pl
* or https://git.gnome.org/browse/vte/tree/perf/img.sh?h=vte-0-36
Keep in mind that it is possible to use both ';' and ':' as parameters
delimiter.
According to Wikipedia[1], this is only supported by xterm and konsole.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_color
Here are terminals discussions:
==============================
Now **supporting** truecolor
------------------------
* [st](http://st.suckless.org/) (from suckless) -
http://lists.suckless.org/dev/1307/16688.html
* [konsole](http://kde.org/applications/system/konsole/) -
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107487
* [iterm2](http://www.iterm2.com/) -
https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/issues/detail?id=218
* all [libvte](http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/vte/) based terminals
(since 0.36 version) - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=704449
* **libvte**-based [Gnome
Terminal](https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-terminal/stable/)
* **libvte**-based [sakura](http://www.pleyades.net/david/projects/sakura)
- https://bugs.launchpad.net/sakura/+bug/1202564
* **libvte**-based
[Terminator](http://gnometerminator.blogspot.com/p/introduction.html)
* **libvte**-based [Lilyterm](http://lilyterm.luna.com.tw/)
* **libvte**-based [ROXTerm](http://roxterm.sourceforge.net/)
* **libvte**-based [evilvte](http://www.calno.com/evilvte/)
* **libvte**-based [Termit](https://github.com/nonstop/termit)
* **libvte**-based [Tilda](https://github.com/lanoxx/tilda)
* **libvte**-based [stjerm](https://github.com/stjerm/stjerm)
* **libvte**-based [tinyterm](https://code.google.com/p/tinyterm)
* **libvte**-based [GTKTerm2](http://gtkterm.feige.net/)
Parsing ANSI color sequences, but approximating them to 256 palette:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
* xterm (though doing it wrong: "it uses nearest colour in RGB colour space,
with a usualfalse assumption about orthogonal axes"
* [mlterm](https://sourceforge.net/projects/mlterm/) -
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=31828705
Note about colour differences: a) RGB axes are not orthogonal, so you cannot
use sqrt(R^2+G^2+B^2) formula, b) for colour differences there is more correct
(but much more complex)
[CIEDE2000](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference#CIEDE2000) formula
(which may easily blow up performance if used blindly) [2].
[2] https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/793#issuecomment-48106948
**NOT supporting** truecolor:
-----------------------------
* [urxvt](http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html) -
http://lists.schmorp.de/pipermail/rxvt-unicode/2013q3/001826.html
* [Terminlogy](https://www.enlightenment.org/p.php?p=about/terminology) (E17) -
https://phab.enlightenment.org/T746
* [mrxvt](https://sourceforge.net/projects/materm) -
https://sourceforge.net/p/materm/feature-requests/41/
* [aterm](http://www.afterstep.org/aterm.php) -
https://sourceforge.net/p/aterm/feature-requests/23/
* [mintty](https://code.google.com/p/mintty/) (Cygwin and MSYS) -
https://code.google.com/p/mintty/issues/detail?id=431
* [fbcon](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/fb/fbcon.txt) (from linux
kernel) - https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79551
* FreeBSD console - https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=191652
Here are another console programs discussions:
============================================
* mutt - http://dev.mutt.org/trac/ticket/3674
* mc - http://www.midnight-commander.org/ticket/3145#comment:1
* s-lang library - http://lists.jedsoft.org/lists/slang-users/2014/0000001.html
* ncurses library -
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2013-10/msg00007.html
* mcabber -
https://bitbucket.org/McKael/mcabber-crew/issue/126/support-for-true-color-16-millions-colors
* emacs -
http://emacs.1067599.n5.nabble.com/RFC-Add-tty-True-Color-support-td299962.html
* vim - https://bitbucket.org/ZyX_I/vim/commits/branch/24-bit-xterm
* tig - https://github.com/jonas/tig/issues/227
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