Terminals should generate the 256-color palette
Terminals should generate the 256-color palette from the user’s base16 theme. If you’ve spent much time in the terminal, you’ve probably set a custom base16 theme. They work well. You define a handful of colors in one place and all your programs use them. The drawback is that 16 colors is limiting. Complex and color-heavy programs struggle with such a small palette. The mainstream solution is to use truecolor and gain access to 16 million colors. But there are drawbacks: Each truecolor program needs its own theme configuration. Changing your color scheme means editing multiple config files. Light/dark switching requires explicit support from program maintainers. Truecolor escape codes are longer and slower to parse. Fewer terminals support truecolor. The 256-color palette sits in the…
