24-Bit True Color Support in macOS Terminal

I performed a search to see if there had been any commentary regarding a means to enable full 24-bit color support in the macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Terminal application. I did come across the conversation Terminal.app true/24-bit color: how to log feature request? discussing the same issue back a couple months ago; however, it appears closed to new replies.

Before anyone comments... yes... as in the referenced thread, I am aware that you as a user can selectively map whatever color you wish to one of the 16 ANSI colors within the Profiles section of the Preferences... dialog. However, that is just creating a color palette for use within the terminal. Terminal is still restricted to a 16-color or 256-color palette. A good discussion can be found here: XVilka/TrueColour.md. And an example of a useful CLI application that makes use of full color support within a terminal is pastel.

I wanted to comment that not only does the macOS not properly support 24-bit color, but apparently iTerm2 (Build 3.3.4) does not properly support it either. There was commentary that it does as of version 3, but when I use pastel's colorcheck, I see color banding in the output. It's possible that this banding is an artifact or error from pastel itself and not iTerm2; but, other terminals with 24-bit color support do display the pastel colorcheck correctly.

Interestingly, the integrated terminal within Microsoft's Visual Studio Code does appear to fully support 24-bit color; as does Alacritty. While Hyper does not. Those are the only other alternative terminal applications that I have direct experience with. I'm not sure if it will get much, if any, traction but I did submit a feature request to Apple.