gettext: The TERM variable
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1 9.11.2 The environment variable ‘TERM’
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1 The environment variable ‘TERM’ contains a identifier for the text
1 window’s capabilities. You can get a detailed list of these
1 cababilities by using the ‘infocmp’ command, using ‘man 5 terminfo’ as a
1 reference.
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1 When producing text with embedded color directives, ‘msgcat’ looks at
1 the ‘TERM’ variable. Text windows today typically support at least 8
1 colors. Often, however, the text window supports 16 or more colors,
1 even though the ‘TERM’ variable is set to a identifier denoting only 8
1 supported colors. It can be worth setting the ‘TERM’ variable to a
1 different value in these cases:
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1 ‘xterm’
1 ‘xterm’ is in most cases built with support for 16 colors. It can
1 also be built with support for 88 or 256 colors (but not both).
1 You can try to set ‘TERM’ to either ‘xterm-16color’,
1 ‘xterm-88color’, or ‘xterm-256color’.
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1 ‘rxvt’
1 ‘rxvt’ is often built with support for 16 colors. You can try to
1 set ‘TERM’ to ‘rxvt-16color’.
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1 ‘konsole’
1 ‘konsole’ too is often built with support for 16 colors. You can
1 try to set ‘TERM’ to ‘konsole-16color’ or ‘xterm-16color’.
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1 After setting ‘TERM’, you can verify it by invoking ‘msgcat
1 --color=test’ and seeing whether the output looks like a reasonable
1 color map.
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