help-gnu-emacs
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Changing the Background and foreground colors in Emacs


From: Tim X
Subject: Re: Changing the Background and foreground colors in Emacs
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:00:58 +1000
User-agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/22.0.50 (gnu/linux)

Hadron Quark <hadronquark@gmail.com> writes:

> Don Kauffman <dekauff@cox.net> writes:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> 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.  
>>
>> Thanks In Advance!!
>>
>> Don K. 
>>
>
> Google up color-theme. Its in emacs-goodies-el package.
>
> I prefer white/colour on a black background so in my .emacs I have:
>
> (color-theme-tty-dark)
>
>
> I agree, googling for things "colour" in emacs is a nightmare : its far
> from obvious and causes many nOObs issues. Far too many fiddly options
> available which are difficult to differentiates from the more important
> ones IMO.
>
> It's "faces" you need to look into.
>
> -- 

While I agree new users have problems with finding this information
because of the terminology being used, a very simple initial solution
that certainly works under X (which the Op is using - I'm not sure
about windows), is to do man emacs. In that man page under the section
for command line options, it outlines the -fg, -bg and -font command
line options. It also outlines the basic X resource value settings
(which is also probably where Ubuntu sets font and colours for emacs). 

Given that many many X programs use -fg, -bg and -font, I'm always
surprised when people don't just try this as a wild guess simply to
see if it works - its not like you will break anything if it doesn't.
Setting X resources is less intuitive, but certainly something anyone
using an X based system should be familiar with (man xrdb is a good
start). 

The one possible issue people may run into with command line and
Xresource settings is with window managers like KDE that impose a
"theme" across the board and which make it necessary to do window
manager configuration changes in order to change application defaults
for many apps. This is a real "gotcha" that many get frustrated by
(and also one of the reasons I like to run a very minimal environment
without out too many indirect/side effect influences from overly
"helpful" applications. 

Tim
-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]