Color enum — 16 terminal colors

Terminality represents terminal colors as the Color scoped enum defined in terminality:Color. It covers the standard 16-color palette supported by every VT-100-compatible terminal: one transparent sentinel, eight standard colors (including two grays), and their eight bright counterparts. You use Color values when setting foreground and background properties on controls and when issuing SetFore / SetBack commands inside RenderOverride.

Color values

Enumerator	Value	Description
`Color::TRANSPARENT`	`-1`	No color — inherits or leaves the cell color unchanged.
`Color::BLACK`	`0`	Standard black.
`Color::DARK_BLUE`	`1`	Standard dark blue.
`Color::DARK_GREEN`	`2`	Standard dark green.
`Color::DARK_CYAN`	`3`	Standard dark cyan.
`Color::DARK_RED`	`4`	Standard dark red.
`Color::DARK_MAGENTA`	`5`	Standard dark magenta.
`Color::DARK_YELLOW`	`6`	Standard dark yellow (often rendered as olive/brown).
`Color::LIGHT_GRAY`	`7`	Standard light gray (the default foreground on many terminals).
`Color::DARK_GRAY`	`8`	Bright black — dark gray.
`Color::BLUE`	`9`	Bright blue.
`Color::GREEN`	`10`	Bright green.
`Color::CYAN`	`11`	Bright cyan.
`Color::RED`	`12`	Bright red.
`Color::MAGENTA`	`13`	Bright magenta.
`Color::YELLOW`	`14`	Bright yellow.
`Color::WHITE`	`15`	Bright white.

The numeric values map directly to the Windows console attribute indices and to the standard ANSI 256-color palette entries 0–15, so they are portable across platforms Terminality supports.

Using colors on controls

Most controls expose four Property<> fields that accept Color:

Property	Description
`ForegroundColor`	Text color when the control is not focused.
`BackgroundColor`	Fill color when the control is not focused.
`FocusedForegroundColor`	Text color while the control holds keyboard focus.
`FocusedBackgroundColor`	Fill color while the control holds keyboard focus.

Assign them with the property assignment operator, which automatically triggers the appropriate invalidation:

auto* label = init<Label>([](Label* l)
{
    l->ForegroundColor        = Color::WHITE;
    l->BackgroundColor        = Color::DARK_BLUE;
    l->FocusedForegroundColor = Color::BLACK;
    l->FocusedBackgroundColor = Color::CYAN;
    l->Text = L"Hello, Terminality!";
});

Using colors in RenderOverride

Inside RenderOverride you obtain a RenderStream from context.BeginText() and pipe color commands into it with SetFore and SetBack:

void RenderOverride(RenderContext& context) override
{
    auto rin = context.BeginText();

    rin << SetBack(Color::BLACK);
    rin << SetFore(Color::LIGHT_GRAY) << message_.Timestamp;

    rin << SetFore(Color::CYAN);
    rin << " " << message_.Text;
}

SetFore changes the foreground (glyph) color; SetBack changes the background (cell fill) color. Both commands take effect for all characters written to the stream after the command.

Real example — MessageBubble rendering

The test application’s MessageBubble control uses focus state to swap the color scheme and the message’s isAuthor flag to tint the message body:

void RenderOverride(RenderContext& context) override
{
    auto rin = context.BeginText();
    if (focused_)
    {
        rin << SetBack(Color::WHITE);
        rin << SetFore(Color::DARK_GRAY) << message_.Timestamp;
    }
    else
    {
        rin << SetBack(Color::BLACK);
        rin << SetFore(Color::LIGHT_GRAY) << message_.Timestamp;
    }

    // Author messages appear in cyan; received messages in yellow
    rin << SetFore(message_.isAuthor ? Color::CYAN : Color::YELLOW);
    rin << " " << message_.Text;
}

This pattern — check focused_, then branch on Color values — is the standard idiom for focus-aware custom rendering in Terminality.

Framework

Engine

Core Types

Color enum — 16 terminal colors

Color values

Using colors on controls

Using colors in RenderOverride

Real example — MessageBubble rendering

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Framework

Engine

Core Types

Documentation Index

​Color values

​Using colors on controls

​Using colors in RenderOverride

​Real example — MessageBubble rendering

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Color values

Using colors on controls

Using colors in RenderOverride

Real example — MessageBubble rendering