mutt @1.4.2.3_2 now using ncurses @6.0 lost color rendering

[dcrossley@…]

After the mutt/ncurses upgrade a couple of days ago, there is now no colour in the mutt displays.

Activate the previous @1.4.2.3_1 and all is okay.

Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.5 TERM=xterm-256color mutt +imap+ssl

[neverpanic (Clemens Lang)]

Are you sure mutt doesn't support colors? It may just be the case that the defaults have changed. Try :source /opt/local/share/doc/mutt/samples/colors.linux to set a color scheme.

[dcrossley@…]

I had already tried to go back to a minimal configuration and basic colours. So i did it again today. I could not find that colors.linux file in /opt/... so got it directly from source control for the mutt-1-4-stable branch in the contrib directory. However it exhibits the same trouble. Everything is white-on-black.

One interesting observation: In the "index" screen, the "indicator" does have its proper colours. In the "pager" screen only, the "status" has its proper colours. Then i got a completely fresh minimal muttrc using ​http://muttrcbuilder.org/ (many thanks). However, the same trouble.

Then i commented-out absolutely all color definitions, and started bringing them back one-by-one.

Aha, found the culprit. It is the definition for "color normal".

If that is commented-out, then all colours show properly! If it is defined as anything (e.g. "default default", or "green black") then it causes all others (except "indicator" and "status") to chuck a wobbly.

[neverpanic (Clemens Lang)]

Replying to dcrossley@…:

I had already tried to go back to a minimal configuration and basic colours. So i did it again today. I could not find that colors.linux file in /opt/... so got it directly from source control for the mutt-1-4-stable branch in the contrib directory.

Sorry for that confusion, I'm using mutt-devel, where I had seen a similar configuration problem, and mutt-devel ships this file.

Aha, found the culprit. It is the definition for "color normal".

If that is commented-out, then all colours show properly! If it is defined as anything (e.g. "default default", or "green black") then it causes all others (except "indicator" and "status") to chuck a wobbly.

Thanks for diving into this. To me, this sounds like a bug in mutt. We should probably report it to the developers of mutt, and possibly check the source for indications why this happens.

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

mutt has been replaced by neomutt.