These functions tell the curses library to set the default colors or to use the terminal's default colors instead of using the default colors for curses applications (which are white foreground on black background).
The function
assume_default_colors(
fore,
back) sets the default colors to foreground color
fore and background color
back. If a value of -1 is used for a color, then the terminal default color is used for that color.
The function
use_default_colors() sets both the foreground and background colors to the terminal default colors. This is equivalent to
assume_default_colors(
-1,
-1).