RE: Changing the Background and foreground colors in Emacs

[Drew Adams]

    > I've been very frustrated trying to locate information on changing the
    > background color in Emacs. Currently it is set to White text
    on a Black
    > background. I'd much prefer the reverse -- Black text on white
    > background. I've looked through the manuals and there doesn't
    seem to be
    > anything listed about changing that. I've studied the
    settings and there
    > doesn't seem to be anything obvious there either.
    >
    > I'm using Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) although this happened with 5.10
    > (Breezy). I was not able to get this resolved there either.

    It's not obvious, but it's there. Emacs uses the term "faces" for
    fonts, font colors and such.

Yes and no.

Not just faces, for what the question was: frames too have foreground and
background colors. Depending on the version of Emacs, these frame parameters
might also be accessible via the `default' face.

In Emacs versions that don't have a face named `default', if you want to
change the default appearance of all frames, then change the values of the
frame parameters `foreground-color' and `background-color' in
`default-frame-alist'. Command `list-faces-display' will tell you if a
`default' face is defined.