Re: can 256color be recognized automatically?

[Chris Jones]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 06:57:38PM EDT, Christian Ebert wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> $ screen -v
> Screen version 4.01.00devel (FAUd87a0d8) 2-May-06
> 
> that's latest from git repo, and latest ncurses(w) + xterm.
> 
> At the moment I have to set explicitly
> 
> term "screen-256color"

> to get 256 colors working. Otherwise $TERM stays simply "screen",
> even when called from an xterm-256color environment.

> Sometimes, albeit rarely I switch to Apple's Terminal.app
> (nsterm-16color), and I'd like to get screen-16color there
> without having to set it explicitly.
> 
> Is this possible? What am I doing wrong?

Maybe you could use a wrapper that tests the underlying terminal's color
capability & sets the $TERM environment variable?

ncl=$(tput colors)

case "$ncl" in
  '16')
    TERM=screen /usr/local/bin/screen
    ;;
  '256')
    TERM=screen-256color /usr/local/bin/screen
    ;;
esac

Totally untested, only to clarify the above.

CJ