problem with gnome terminal

[Mark Manning]

This is not a bug report, my problem is not related to ncurses or its
use but you might have information that could help me fix my issue. In
fact, Im not using libncurses in my application at all because my
application is a forth compiler.  I have basically created my own
curses library in forth that can pretty much do most of the things
that ncurses can do but which takes up only 4k of code space.

I am not however catering to all the quirks of every terminal type in
existence. E.G. if there is no format string for an SGR in some
terminal's terminfo I dont have any glue code that says "well i know
what its format string is".  I am also not doing sub windowing (though
that would be trivial to implement).

My problem is that i know that for SETAF and SETAB color 0 is black, 1
is red, 3 is green etc. and herein lies the problem!.  This is an
absolute truth in every terminal I have thus far used EXCEPT gnome
terminal.  For some obscure reason the gnome development team has
decided that color 0 shall be dark gray and color 15 shall be black.
This BOGGLES the mind!

Now, what I dont want to start doing is gordian knot code that says
"Well it seems were using gnome terminal here so lets fudge the colors
to accommodate".  What I would like to know is - without knowing im
specifically running within a gnome terminal how can i know the values
of each color.  For all I know there are other terminals that I have
not yet encountered that also have this problem.

It would be nice if people like the gnome developers didnt do absolute
bullshit like this just so they can say "were different" - it would be
nice if they didnt force developers like yourself and I into creating
duct tape code so our applications looked consistent across every
terminal type.  If only we lived in utopia :)

How does ncurses handle this? did you go for the duct tape solution
with special glue code to "fix" the gnome terminal bogosity?

Also, WHY oh why do the people who create the terminfo database always
neglect to include a format string for SGR?  This basically forces me
to output an SGR0 and then reinstate all the attributes I didnt want
to reset which is forcing me into taking the absolute slowest path!

I have an aversion to creating my own terminfo database or adding glue
code that "knows" what all these missing format strings are for all
terminals.

  Mark Manning.