Re: colors in emacs

[Bijan Soleymani <bijan@psq.com>]

"Evan Kirkland" <captain_wormhole@hotmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
> 
> I was wondering where I can configure emacs so that I can have a
> different color background, other than white?

This is from the emacs manual under the section about command-line
arguments, in the node about window colors:

"
Window Color Options
====================

   On a color display, you can specify which color to use for various
parts of the Emacs display.  To find out what colors are available on
your system, type `M-x list-colors-display', or press `C-Mouse-2' and
select `Display Colors' from the pop-up menu.  If you do not specify
colors, on windowed displays the default for the background is white
and the default for all other colors is black.  On a monochrome
display, the foreground is black, the background is white, and the
border is gray if the display supports that.  On terminals, the
background is usually black and the foreground is white.

   Here is a list of the command-line options for specifying colors:

`-fg COLOR'
`--foreground-color=COLOR'
     Specify the foreground color.  COLOR should be a standard color
     name, or a numeric specification of the color's red, green, and
     blue components as in `#4682B4' or `RGB:46/82/B4'.

`-bg COLOR'
`--background-color=COLOR'
     Specify the background color.

`-bd COLOR'
`--border-color=COLOR'
     Specify the color of the border of the X window.

`-cr COLOR'
`--cursor-color=COLOR'
     Specify the color of the Emacs cursor which indicates where point
     is.

`-ms COLOR'
`--mouse-color=COLOR'
     Specify the color for the mouse cursor when the mouse is in the
     Emacs window.

`-r'
`-rv'
`--reverse-video'
     Reverse video--swap the foreground and background colors.

   For example, to use a coral mouse cursor and a slate blue text
cursor, enter:

     emacs -ms coral -cr 'slate blue' &

   You can reverse the foreground and background colors through the
`-rv' option or with the X resource `reverseVideo'.

   The `-fg', `-bg', and `-rv' options function on text-only terminals
as well as on window systems.
"

If you are using emacs on GNU/Linux or any other unix-like system then
you can set this permanently in your .Xresources file. This is also
described in the emacs manual:

In the same section about command-line arguments
in the node about X resources.

Hope that helps,

Bijan