I was getting slightly annoyed that the hardstatus didn't support 256 colors and I saw it as a feature of the 4.1.0 ??/??/???? release date, didn't see anything on the devel listings for it so I decided to patch it myself, the patch is over here at http://github.com/shawncplus/patches. The first 3 files are unnecessary changes but they're in git patch format so they all have to be applied in sequence. I've provided some more implementation details for the post over here: http://forrst.com/posts/256_Colors_in_GNU_Screen_Hardstatus-zON
Just looking for comments/suggestions/derision/etc.