XTerm versus GNU Screen 256 Color tinted Darker

Roger <[email protected]> Wed, 25 Aug 2021 17:35:51 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.gnu.screen.user
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

This issue is an on-going color mismatch between XTerm and GNU Screen.  I use 
GNU Screen atop of XTerm.

For the past many years, 10-20 years or so, I've noticed the blue fonts within 
GNU Screen would be extremely dark at times, while XTerm's blue fonts are very 
readable.  I've finally traced this color problem to GNU Screen's:

file: ~/.screenrc
termcapinfo xterm 'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E[38;5;%dm'

Once the above line within ~/.screenrc is implemented/activated, a darker color 
cast or a darker tint is applied to all fonts within GNU Screen, and fonts are 
noticeably darker than XTerm's font colors, making blue fonts within GNU Screen 
unreadable.

I've compared the active termcap attributes using VI within both terminals (eg.  
:set termcap), and can see a default AB=[4%p1%dm/ AF=[3%p1%dm for XTerm, while 
GNU screen's AB/AF contain some very lengthy strings/values.  Oddly, XTerm 
works at 256 colors when using 256colors2.pl script.  Trying to apply similar 
termcap strings or even commenting the AF/AB termcap line within GNU Screen's 
.screenrc completely disables 256 color.

For the past 10-20 years, I've merrily boosted the brightness of the dark blue 
fonts by redefining those colors using .Xresources/.Xdefaults.  Since I've 
finally narrowed the problem down, would be nice to finally get a handle on 
this apparent problem!

Seems nVidia discrete GPU's are more so affected by this (blue) font darkness, 
than my Intel Xe integrated GPU Dell laptop, likely using similar/same screenrc 
settings and XTerm configurations/scripts.

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