Comment by kccqzy

The word “should” is way too strong. It’s ultimately just a personal preference. For me I would prefer a two-tier approach.

There are different programs inside the terminal that I would prefer to have different color treatment. A full-fledged editor like emacs should have full 24-bit color support because I have already configured it to have my preferred color schemes and I prefer to switch themes inside emacs. On the other hand, almost all other TUI programs should not be permitted to use more than the traditional 16 colors. I haven’t configured them myself so I don’t trust them to make good choices.

In other words different terminal capabilities for different programs.