bug#7771: 23.1; can't turn off font-lock-mode globally

["K. Richard Pixley" <rich@noir.com>]

On 20110102 21:34, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> It's not a question of preference.  I literally cannot discern the
>> characters on the screen when font lock is on.
> Here are the known cases for this kind of problem:
> - Your screen's colors are off-base.  Some possible cases are if you're
>    running within an xterm whose color palette is more limited than usual
>    or is somehow different from what Emacs expects.
> - Emacs mis-identifies your background color and chooses the
>    light-background set of colors rather than the dark-background set
>    (or vice-versa).
>    In this case, customizing frame-background-mode may help.
> - Your vision is impaired.
>
> I assumed you were in the third case, but maybe not.
I'm probably in both of the last two and also a fourth.

I'm still setting emacs colors in Xdefaults having put some time 
investment into making that work some years ago.  It hadn't occurred to 
me that they might be interacting.

The fourth category is cognitive.  I am not neuro-typical.  Most color 
schemes just seem annoying to me.  Thunderbird's use of color works for 
me, eg, but M-x grep, M-x compile, and all of the font locked editing 
modes I've seen do not.  Color coding is difficult for me.  Numbers are 
much easier.

I'll try to find some time later this week to invest in coming up to 
speed with what's available now.  Maybe I can help.

--rich