Why are xterm colors different than gnome-terminal colors?

Question

In my work environment I use xterm, and sometimes gnome-terminal. I like gnome terminal, but some of the colors are much harder to read than those of my xterm.

I am wondering

• why the colors display differently in the two terminals?
• what configuration file or setting governs these colors?
• how to copy my xterm colors to be used in gnome-terminal?

If it makes a difference, when I query the $TERM variable, both windows report xterm.

See xterm on the left, and gnome-terminal on the right. Note especially the 4th row, which is yellow on the xterm, and more orange on the gnome-terminal.

Answer 1

Both terminals are pretending to be xterms, which are pretending to be DEC terminals. They both use the same character escape sequences to say "switch to Bold Red" or whatever. But what "Bold Red" looks like is open for interpretation.

You'd probably have to open the preferences for both Terminals, and check the color number values for both, and copy as appropriate. I'm not sure how to dump the colors in XTerm (i'm sure it's compiled in XResources), but at least you could take this sceenshot, open it in an editor, such as Gimp, and see what the colors are. Then change your Gnome terminal colors to match.