Text color being the same as background on SSH with xterm-256color

[Pyppe]

Hi!

I use theme = Dracula+. When running echo '{"foo":null}' | jq -c . locally I can see the null (even if the contrast is not optimal):

However, when running the same when on SSH-server (I assume my SetEnv TERM=xterm-256color is the culprit) the null becomes invisible (same color as background):

Any tips how I could have a better user experience on SSH connections?

[00-kat]

I doubt it's xterm-256color's fault, since:

$ echo '{"foo":null}' | faketty jq -c . | cat -v
^[[1;39m{^[[0m^[[1;34m"foo"^[[0m^[[1;39m:^[[0m^[[0;90mnull^[[0m^[[1;39m}^[[0m^M
$ echo '{"foo":null}' | TERM=xterm-256color faketty jq -c . | cat -v
^[[1;39m{^[[0m^[[1;34m"foo"^[[0m^[[1;39m:^[[0m^[[0;90mnull^[[0m^[[1;39m}^[[0m^M

that doesn't seem to change jq's output.

[Pyppe]

Thanks. I think you're right

I'm not terminal expert; would you happen to have any tips I could try to debug further when on remote server? (preferably without installing any additional packages)

[00-kat]

You could try a similar command to what I ran:

script --quiet --return --command 'echo '\''{"foo":null}'\'' | jq -c .' /dev/null | cat -v

and compare the outputs.

script is a part of util-linux which is preinstalled on most Linux distributions, so you almost certainly won't have to install anything for this.

[Pyppe]

On Ubuntu over SSH:

^[[1;39m{^[[0m^[[34;1m"foo"^[[0m^[[1;39m:^[[0m^[[1;30mnull^[[0m^[[1;39m^[[1;39m}^[[0m^M

On macOS (with command script -q /dev/null sh -c 'echo '\''{"foo":null}'\'' | jq -c .' | cat -v):

^[[1;39m{^[[0m^[[1;34m"foo"^[[0m^[[1;39m:^[[0m^[[0;90mnull^[[0m^[[1;39m}^[[0m^M

[00-kat]

I assume Ubuntu's jq is older, since you have identical output to me on macOS, but this is the part that's important:

30mnull

on Ubuntu, and

90mnull

on macOS.

Those aren't the same colours; 90 is light grey while 30 is dark grey.

And indeed, on my system with Dracula+, something like

printf '\033[30mfoo\033[0m \033[90mbar\033[0m\n'

reproduces it.

The foreground for 30 seems to be #21222c, and the background seems to be #212121, which are way too close to notice a difference in colour.

I have no idea what the correct colour is meant to be, but something like

palette = 0=#545454

would be a workaround (that hex code is what 90 is set to).

The themes actually aren't Ghostty's; they're taken from https://github.com/mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes. You should raise this issue there (I can't check if there's an existing one since I seem to be getting spurious 403s from GitHub right now).

[Pyppe]

Thanks so much! 🫶

I opened an issue at mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes#566