By framing this is a matter of patches getting merged, you imply that there is nothing else in the way. In fact, there is no proper terminfo support for true color[1], nor even a standard, canonical way to detect true color support. All that exists now is an encoding convention which has promising adoption but which is by no means uncontroversial[2]. When you couple the portability issue with the increased memory footprint and the lack of a clear and compelling use-case, it is not surprising that this is not a priority for emacs developers.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.gnu.org&#x2F;archive&#x2F;html&#x2F;bug-ncurses&#x2F;2013-10&#x2F;msg00007.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.gnu.org&#x2F;archive&#x2F;html&#x2F;bug-ncurses&#x2F;2013-10&#x2F;msg00...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.schmorp.de&#x2F;pipermail&#x2F;rxvt-unicode&#x2F;2013q3&#x2F;001834.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lists.schmorp.de&#x2F;pipermail&#x2F;rxvt-unicode&#x2F;2013q3&#x2F;001834...</a>