title: ncurses and white-on-black
body: <p>I can't seem to get white-on-black to work in curses when in color mode. If I don't call <code>start_color</code>, I get white-on-black. As soon as I call <code>start_color</code>, things start outputting in grey-on-black.</p>
  
  <p>If you run this script:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import sys
  
  for i in xrange(30, 38):
      print '\x1b[0;' + str(i) + 'm' + str(i) + ': Shiny colors \x1b[1m(bright)'
  print '\x1b[0m...and this is normal.'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>...you'll probably see a lot of pretty colors. The one I want, and can't get, is the last line: '...and this is normal.' Asking for color pair 0 or asking for COLOR_WHITE, COLOR_BLACK gets me the non-bright #37 from the script.</p>
  
  <p>For reference, this is what I see in Gnome Terminal:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://rpi.edu/~wellir/random/colors.png">http://rpi.edu/~wellir/random/colors.png</a></p>
  
  <p>I'm programming in Python (using the curses library), so my code is something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import curses
  
  screen = curses.initscr()
  curses.start_color()
  curses.init_pair(1, curses.COLOR_WHITE, curses.COLOR_BLACK)
  screen.clear()
  screen.attrset(0)
  screen.addstr('Hello')
  screen.attrset(curses.A_BOLD)
  screen.addstr('Hello')
  screen.attrset(curses.color_pair(1))
  screen.addstr('Hello')
  screen.refresh()
  curses.napms(5000)
  curses.endwin()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>...which gets me 37, 37-bright, and 37.</p>