Open Radar

 
Please update the terminfo definitions that ship with OS X. This can be done by bringing in a newer ncurses package or selectively updating the definitions.

Steps to Reproduce:
Terminal.app supports the "dim" capability for half-bright text output. Terminal.app identifies itself by default as "xterm-256color".
The "xterm-256color" definition shipped with current MacOS Sierra betas, however, does not allow that capability to be used:

1. Type into the terminal under a profile with system defaults (terminal declared as xterm-256color):
echo this text is normal; tput dim; echo this text is dimmed
2. Launch a new terminal after modifying Terminal.app settings under Advanced -> Terminfo -> Declare terminal as to "dtterm"
3. Type into a new terminal window under the profile with the modified settings above:
echo this text is normal; tput dim; echo this text is dimmed

Expected Results:
The output in both cases should consist of one line with normal intensity text followed by a line with half-intensity text.

Actual Results:
Only the TERM=dtterm Terminal window will behave correctly. 

This is because in the particular version of ncurses shipped with OS X, the xterm profiles are not blessed with a "dim" capability. 


Version:
10.12 Beta (16A254g)

Notes:
# Notes regarding TERM/Terminfo on MacOS

It is not the case that dtterm is a better TERM default for Terminal.app. 

However, it likely is the case that another option present, nsterm, is a better default. This is a terminfo ruleset that is tailored specifically to terminal.app (which the terminfo author believes to derive in lineage back to NSTerm). With a newer version of ncurses installed (e.g. through Homebrew: `brew install ncurses; brew link --force ncurses`) nsterm provides a better experience than even xterm-256color because it contains a newer nsterm terminfo which attempts to define the exact capabilities that exist in Terminal.app as of El Capitan, a better match than xterm-256color. The terminfo that ships with MacOS is today too moldy as of present to yield a good experience here, unfortunately.

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