X faces becoming "unspecified" with emacs -nw when creating an X11 frame (was: Re: emacs --daemon and X faces becoming "unspecified")

[Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu>]

Jonathan Rockway <jon@jrock.us> writes:

  > Hi all,
  > 
  > I've recently started using emacs --daemon + emacsclient -c as my
  > primary means of interacting with emacs.  Generally, it works great, but
  > I have noticed that I can no longer set the default face via custom.
  > 
  > In my custom-set-faces section, I have a line that looks like:
  > 
  > '(default ((default (:stipple nil :background "black" :foreground
  > "gray90" :inverse-video nil :box nil :strike-through nil :overline nil
  > :underline nil :slant normal :weight normal :height 72 :width normal
  > :foundry "bitstream" :family "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono")) (nil nil)))
  > 
  > The key is that "background" is black.  I do indeed get a black
  > background, but if I view the default face in custom, custom thinks the
  > background is "unspecified-bg".  If I change this to something else and
  > set or save the custom face, emacs goes into an infinite loop.  (I can
  > provide more details about this; C-g doesn't kill it, though.)
  > 
  > Everything else generally works OK, except occasionally I get
  > messages like ``Unable to load color "unspecified-bg" [6 times]'' in
  > *Messages*.  This doesn't seem to be causing any malfunction, though.

This looks like it's probably the same issue described in
bug #1078 at http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.bugs/24298

I can reproduce the problem with a simplified testcase.
Put this in /tmp/FACE.el:
(custom-set-faces
'(default ((default (:stipple nil :background "black" :foreground
"gray90" :inverse-video nil :box nil :strike-through nil :overline nil
:underline nil :slant normal :weight normal :height 72 :width normal
:foundry "bitstream" :family "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono")) (nil nil))))


emacs -Q -nw -l /tmp/FACE.el -f server-start

and then use

emacsclient -c

The *Messages* will have a few 
Undefined color "unspecified-bg"
messages.