Re: Forcing emacs to not use 256 colors

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Tom Noonan II <tom@tjnii.com>
> Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 15:51:39 +0000
> 
> Good day:
> 
> I'm a long time emacs user and I'm used to the default 16 color syntax
> highlighting.  I recently upgraded my system which brought in 256 color
> support, and I find the new syntax highlighting colors distasteful.  I
> also dislike how the colors may be completely different depending on if
> I'm using a 16 color terminal or a 256 color terminal.  I'd like to
> force emacs to only use 16 color or less palettes.
> 
> I took a look at M-x customize-themes but that doesn't look like what I
> want.  That appears to be changing the overall theme, including
> foreground and background colors.  I want to force the default, non
> -256color behavior everywhere, not change the overall coloring.
> 
> I tried searching but the results are getting flooded out with posts on
> how to enable 256 colors.  Is there a way to disable these 256color
> specific syntax highlighting pallettes?  Or otherwise limit the color
> mapping to the various $TERM values?

Either (a) install and use a terminal emulator that supports only 16
colors, or (b) edit the terminfo database for your terminal emulator
to tell Emacs that only 16 colors are supported.

That said, I'm curious: why do you dislike more than 16 colors?  If
you don't like the default colors themselves, isn't it better to
customize the faces to use the colors you like?  That way, you will
not need to lie to Emacs about the number of supported colors, and the
customizations will work on any terminal.