Terminal that supports the ANSI italic escape code?

Question

I would like to replace GVim with Vim in the terminal. One of the nice things about GVim is that it is able to display text using italics.

Vim allows setting an ANSI escape code for italics (\e[3m), but this does not work in Gnome Terminal. Is there a terminal emulator that supports the ANSI escape code for italics?

No, I'm not :) Some sources mention it as a valid code though, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code — Ton van den Heuvel, Oct 29 '10 at 11:43
That Wikipedia page shows `\e[3m` (3 rather than 2) which agrees with `tput -T rxvt-unicode sitm|hexdump -C`. — Dennis Williamson, Oct 29 '10 at 18:55

score 17 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 12 '20 at 13:48

17

I've tested a number of terminal emulators with echo -e "\e[3mfoo\e[23m" as suggested here. I went through the Arch wiki list, testing emulators in the official repositories.

Support italics

konsole 15.04.3
rxvt-unicode 9.21
tilda 1.2.4
xterm 318
gnome-terminal 3.16.2
pantheon-terminal 0.3.1.1
yakuake 2.9.9
roxterm 3.1.3
sakura 3.3.0
termite 10
mlterm 3.3.8
terminix 1.0.0
terminator 1.91
xfce4-terminal 0.8.5.1

Do not support italics

guake 0.7.2
lxterminal 0.2.0
rxvt 2.7.10
terminology 0.8.0
lilyterm 0.9.9.2
mate-terminal 1.10.1
xfce4-terminal 0.6.3
KiTTY 0.64.0.4
PuTTY 0.65 Beta

edited Jun 12 '20 at 13:48

Community

1

answered Aug 18 '15 at 01:25

Sparhawk

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Note that many terminal emulators are based on the [VTE terminal emulator library](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications#VTE-based). vte2 (for gtk 2) is obsolete now, only those emulators based on the current vte3 implementation (e.g. gnome-terminal). For guake, gtk3 bindings and hence italics support, are targeted for [milestone 0.8.4](https://github.com/Guake/guake/milestones/0.8.4) – kba Feb 15 '16 at 13:54
1

@kba Yes, good point. My terminal of choice, terminator, is supporting italics in the development version, which is based on vte3. – Sparhawk Feb 15 '16 at 21:38

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 05 '13 at 09:46

11

GNOME Terminal (3.6.1) supports italics via \e[3m.

edited Jun 05 '13 at 09:46

mpy

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answered Jun 05 '13 at 08:54

osirisgothra

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score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 29 '10 at 17:11

6

rxvt-unicode

answered Oct 29 '10 at 17:11

ak2

3,675
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17

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 27 '22 at 05:01

2

I will add some modern terminals.

Alacritty (macOS, Linux, Windows)
iTerm2 (macOS)
kitty (macOS, Linux)
wezterm (macOS, Linux, Windows)

They all have support for italic text.

answered Jan 27 '22 at 05:01

jdhao

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Terminal that supports the ANSI italic escape code?

4 Answers4

Support italics

Do not support italics

Linked