From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bob Proulx Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Changing Terminal (-nw) Base Colors Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:49:15 -0700 Message-ID: <20130121234915.GA16592@dismay.proulx.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1358812166 5355 80.91.229.3 (21 Jan 2013 23:49:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2013 23:49:26 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jan 22 00:49:45 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TxR7X-0004Yl-Vz for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:49:44 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:38432 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TxR7G-000769-PU for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:49:26 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:48749) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TxR79-000752-Ko for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:49:21 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TxR78-0002a1-CY for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:49:19 -0500 Original-Received: from joseki.proulx.com ([216.17.153.58]:46353) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TxR78-0002Zl-5I for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:49:18 -0500 Original-Received: from dismay.proulx.com (dismay.proulx.com [172.27.61.4]) by joseki.proulx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2AAE7211DA for ; Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:49:16 -0700 (MST) Original-Received: by dismay.proulx.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 95562D2059C; Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:49:15 -0700 (MST) Mail-Followup-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 216.17.153.58 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:88756 Archived-At: Burton Samograd wrote: > When I run emacs in -nw mode on a black (-rv) terminal, some of the > default text colors are very difficult to read, mostly in the blue > range. In certain cases I can modify a the individual color value, such > as in the eshell prompt, but I would like to perform a global > modification of the 'dark blue' color to be, say, bright yellow. I also use a light foreground on dark background. Several of the default emacs colors are difficult and some are impossible. Here are some of the modifications I make. Usually when I post something like this others tear the suggestions apart as being terrible. So beware. They work for me. ;; Disable dark blue on dark background in minibuffer. (set-face-foreground 'minibuffer-prompt nil) ;; Disable nasty highlighting in electric-buffer-mode. ;; We use eval-after-load to make this happen after ebuf-menu is loaded ;; as that's where the "bad" definition of electric-buffer-mode is located. (eval-after-load "ebuff-menu" '(defun electric-buffer-update-highlight ())) ;; Have *Buffer List* use old-style header. (setq Buffer-menu-use-header-line nil) > I've heard of but never used 'color themes' for emacs. Would these > help solve this problem? At one time one of the highlight modules had a way to specify whether the default colors were light or dark. I have lost the ability to set this. I have recently searched but it isn't immediately obvious. At one time crawling through the code I found where the elisp would try to determine the default Xresource values to automatically determine whether it is a light or dark background. I am guessing that even if that worked that your use of -rv on the command line would defeat that mechanism's ability to determine this automatically. Therefore I suggest setting these explicitly. XTerm*Foreground:White XTerm*Background:Black Or whatever is appropriate for you. It might even enable the emacs elisp to do the right thing automatically. Bob