Terminals should generate the 256-color palette

7 days ago

Terminals should generate a 256-color palette from the user's base16 theme to overcome the limitations of the default 16-color palette.
The 256-color palette offers more range than base16 and less overhead than truecolor, but its default theme has readability and contrast issues.
Generating the 256-color palette from base16 colors allows for a more expressive color range without added complexity or configuration files.
The 256-color palette consists of 16 base colors, a 6x6x6 color cube, and a 24-color grayscale ramp.
The default 216-color cube has issues with interpolation and saturation, leading to readability problems.
Using LAB colorspace for interpolation ensures consistent brightness across hues.
A provided Python function demonstrates how to generate a 256-color palette from base16 colors using LAB interpolation.
Adopting this approach would make the 256-color palette a more viable and attractive option for terminal programs.

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