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Date:	Fri, 23 Apr 2010 02:37:52 -0400
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Subject:	Is 256 colors possible with cmd.exe?
From:	Alex Leigh <leigh AT hcs DOT harvard DOT edu>
To:	cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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Hi everyone,

I've been using mintty with Cygwin but I'm finding myself running
Windows console programs that don't work with mintty, and it's
sometimes a hassle to juggle two terminal programs. I would like to
try to switch back to the cmd.exe based Cygwin shell, and I can live
without things like termios support, but I need 256 color support for
vim color schemes. So my question is, is it possible to get 256 colors
with Cygwin running on top of cmd.exe? I found something in this
mailing from 2005 where someone said that cmd.exe only supports 16
colors, but I'm hoping that perhaps that has improved in the 5 years
time since, however unlikely it may be.

If this is not possible, then does anyone have any advice on ways to
have compatibility with both Unix terminal features including 256
color and Windows console programs within a single terminal app? The
only solution of this sort I've found is conin.exe from the developers
of mintty. It does provide half the solution in that it allows input
to be piped from mintty to Windows console programs, but unfortunately
it's not possible to see the output from those programs.

Thank you very much for any help.
Alex

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