Documentation followup to the last change

* doc/emacs/cmdargs.texi (General Variables):
* etc/NEWS: Document the COLORTERM environment variable.
(Bug#41846)

2 files changed, 14 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/doc/emacs/cmdargs.texi b/doc/emacs/cmdargs.texi
index 2c131165244..3dd1fe9a308 100644
--- a/doc/emacs/cmdargs.texi
+++ b/doc/emacs/cmdargs.texi
@@ -495,7 +495,14 @@ variables to be set, but it uses their values if they are set.
 @item CDPATH
 @vindex CDPATH@r{, environment variable}
 Used by the @code{cd} command to search for the directory you specify,
-when you specify a relative directory,
+when you specify a relative directory.
+@item COLORTERM
+@vindex COLORTERM@r{, environment variable}
+If this variable is set to the value @samp{truecolor}, it tells Emacs
+to use 24-bit true color on text-mode displays even if the terminfo
+database is not installed.  Emacs will use built-in commands to
+request true color by RGB values instead of the missing terminfo
+information.
 @item DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
 @vindex DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS@r{, environment variable}
 Used by D-Bus when Emacs is compiled with it.  Usually, there is no
diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index 4c93e31346b..5a46e7165e3 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -61,6 +61,12 @@ It was declared obsolete in Emacs 27.1.
 
 * Startup Changes in Emacs 28.1
 
+** Emacs can support 24-bit color TTY without terminfo database.
+If your text-mode terminal supports 24-bit true color, but your system
+lacks the terminfo database, you can instruct Emacs to support 24-bit
+true color by setting COLORTERM=truecolor in the environment.  This is
+useful on systems such as FreeBSD which ships only with 'etc/termcap'.
+
 
 * Changes in Emacs 28.1