Spacemacs's default theme works quite well in the terminal. Of course, when you are mapping a theme designed for a colorspace with millions of colors to one with 256 colors, there might some issues, but that is to be expected.
If even trying a different theme is too much of an effort for you, why in God's name are you wasting your time on an editor whose main USP is customizability?
Because I had no idea Emacs is about that when I started (loooooong ago, almost 20 years ago) and by the time I found out I was already burned out. Sigh.
But I'll make time to migrate away, seems like it's time.
Well okay, fair enough but it doesn't actually solve the problem. Modern terminals can render basically all colors your DE / display supports so I am not sure why there isn't a check for that and utilize the feature if it's there.
For your possible inspiration: Emacs in iterm2/tmux with 24-bit color, and a bunch of fancy icon sets mapped into the private use area running LSP mode looking a large Python code base[0].
(I need to learn how Emacs manages its windows; Mostly I have one Treemacs buffer open on the left, then a single large editor window with Olivetti mode on the right.)
If you have xterm-mouse-mode set it's pretty easy to size windows with your mouse. I just create the splits with the usual emacs window commands and then move things around with my mouse until I have things just right.
1. (macOS + inside terminal) isn't a common workflow for emacs contributors, or perhaps for people with that workflow working with 256 colors isn't an issue
2. people who want that workflow who care about having 24 bit colors didn't bother to file a bug report (did you?)
Bitter pill, but I hope it helps: as a beginner to an ecosystem, if you are going to be opinioniated about having an unusual workflow, you are always going to run into problems. If you are running Emacs locally, just run it in GUI mode, that's what most people do.
I do run Emacs in GUI mode and it's embarrassingly slow due to various factors I gradually managed to pinpoint:
1. 5K retina display (other Mac owners seem to share the experience)
2. A font with a lot of graphemes (those without emoji seem to render faster)
3. The synchronous nature of LSP; I still don't get it why LSP can't work asynchronously in Emacs -- it does in VIM.
Hence me asking about terminal mode where it also works rather confusingly to me (I mean the colors).
> (macOS + inside terminal) isn't a common workflow for emacs contributors
As a guy who worked on OSS before -- and wants to do it again -- I am never feeling entitled to other people's work. I just wonder why those scenarios are supported in the first place (if no contributors are interested in making them work well).
> as a beginner to an ecosystem, if you are going to be opinioniated about having an unusual workflow, you are always going to run into problems
Fair enough and I don't think it's a bitter pill at all, I appreciate the feedback. But again, I am wondering why the supposedly first-class option (GUI) is also having problems. :(
> 2. people who want that workflow who care about having 24 bit colors didn't bother to file a bug report (did you?)
I wouldn't even know where to begin. The whole community and ecosystem seem extremely foreign to me and I never even got as far as to find a bug report template (admittedly I didn't try very hard). There's just something... alienating about this community, especially Emacs devs. Maybe I am wrong, I hope I am wrong but, just an accumulated feeling.
In any case, the reason I am getting a bit ticked off is that Emacs is supposedly hugely popular. I'd expect a 5K screen and some richer fonts to not trip it but perhaps you're right that macOS isn't a focus.
Actually never mind, those commands don't know anything about true colors (> 256). I think you want to check for $COLORTERM according to https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728 ?
You'll need to make sure that your terminal actually supports the variety of colors that emacs is emitting and that your terminal palette matches your emacs GUI color palette. Emacs can't magically switch your terminal from a 16-color mode to 256-colors, or change the palette.
I also meant I barely changed it, nothing more. Hence why I was baffled that switching to terminal mode lost like half the syntax coloring. :|