How to enable xterm 256 colors in ConEmu

• Vim note
• xterm 256 color mode requirements
  • Example 1: Vim
  • Example 2: 256colors2.pl
  • Example 3: scroll console to the bottom
• TechInfo

Vim note

NB If ‘Inject ConEmuHk’ is off, you can still use ANSI in vim (or any other application) if you run them via ConEmuC.exe but not directly. For example, run vim from bash.

conemuc -c C:/GIT/share/vim/vim73/vim.exe 1.cpp

Of course, you may omit full path to vim.exe if it may be found in %PATH% environment variable.

NB ConEmu will disable scroll buffer automatically, when vim.exe is started. For any other application - you must do it yourself.

xterm 256 color mode requirements

• Options must be turned on
  • ‘TrueMod (24bit color) support’ on Colors page
  • ‘ANSI and xterm sequences’ on Features page
  • ‘Inject ConEmuHk’ on Features page (required for second level programs)
• Turn off scrolling (extended attributes works only in the ‘work’ area - the bottom of the console)
• Cygwin and Msys applications do not pass ANSI to terminal. At all. More information here.
  • As workaround for cygwin and msys you may use cygwin/msys terminal connector.

Example 1: Vim

vim.exe -cur_console:h0 <Vim arguments here>

Example 2: 256colors2.pl

Script 256colors2.pl must be executed from cmd.exe as following:

256colors2.pl -cur_console:h0

Example 3: scroll console to the bottom

When you run not ‘fullscreen’ application (not Far/Vim/Hiew/…), you may scroll console to the bottom (^[ must be replaced with real ESC symbol, ASCII code \x1B):

echo ^[[99999;1H

TechInfo

ANSI escape sequences are processed when console program uses functions: WriteConsoleA, WriteConsoleW or WriteFile. For example:

cmd /c type "Colors-256.ans"

Text output with current extended attributes (xterm 256 color) is possible with WriteConsoleOutputCharacterA and WriteConsoleOutputCharacterW functions.