Question: Does it make sense to support outputting arbitrary colors?

[ldionne]

Would it make sense to allow outputting arbitrary colors specified by a hex color code? I'm not sure whether that can even be implemented (i.e. whether terminals even support it), so this is more a question than a feature request at this point.

[agauniyal]

@ldionne yes it is possible but not with the current code. But again not a lot of code will change for its implementation since much of the code is common. Another function which takes hex as args will do but will have to be tested on lots and lots of terminals again.

Here is the community-maintained list of terminals for such feature - https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728

The problem is not every vt100 family terminal supports such feature, but if there's demand I can work on same. And I'm willing to accept PRs for the same too 😄

[ldionne]

Thanks for the answer.

Don't consider this a feature request; I just wanted to know if it made sense, and if so bring it to your attention because it's an obvious generalization of being able to output predefined colors only.

[agauniyal]

I'll work on a separate function under the same namespace and test it on a few machines in next few days. If everything works out, I'll release a newer version of rang with said feature.

[agauniyal]

@ldionne So I've tested a prototype that supports both 256 colors and 24 bit truecolor(rgb mode) but the problem that remains is - there is no way to test if a terminal emulator supports it or not. Some of them do, but we still cannot hardcode them with $TERM or termcap/terminfo because they managed to support it after certain version which they might or might not expose via env variables. Though windows 10 support is quite good 👌

tldr; it works but there is no way to know if certain terminal supports it or not, windows 10 works.