Terminal 24-bit color and italics

December 15, 2020 One-minute read

terminal • linux

Create a xterm-24bit.terminfo file in your home directory containing:

xterm-24bit|xterm with 24-bit direct color mode and italic text,
    use=xterm-256color,
    sitm=\E[3m,
    ritm=\E[23m,
    setb24=\E[48;2;%p1%{65536}%/%d;%p1%{256}%/%{255}%&%d;%p1%{255}%&%dm,
    setf24=\E[38;2;%p1%{65536}%/%d;%p1%{256}%/%{255}%&%d;%p1%{255}%&%dm,

Note: make sure to have a newline (LF) at the end of file otherwise it will error!

Run the following command to compile it:

tic -x ~/xterm-24bit.terminfo

Start using it by enabling it in your ~/.bash_profile:

export TERM=xterm-24bit

Fix your ssh issues with:

alias ssh="TERM=xterm ssh"

Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to set your language env variables to .UTF-8, so all characters display correctly:

export LC_ALL=en_GB.UTF-8
export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
export LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8

To use with tmux, configure it via:

set -g default-terminal "xterm-24bit"
set -g terminal-overrides ',xterm-24bit:Tc'

Now, if only this was available by default… that would be great!