.Xdefaults preferences in emacs 21.4.1

[Rob McMillin]

I'm re-asking this because it seems like the first time I asked all I 
got was crickets chirping...

As a result of upgrading to Fedora Core 5, I also inherited the 21.4
release of emacs. The problem with this seems to be that the .Xdefaults
file (set in the XENVIRONMENT environment variable) is no longer heeded
as it was in the 21.3 release.  Questions:

1) I've been over the new Info pages and it doesn't seem to
mention .Xdefaults as a source of configuration data anymore that I can
see.  Am I missing something here?

2) If there is no way for this to work, how can I easily convert
my .Xdefaults file (as lines in my .emacs file, say) so it sets up my
emacs session colors to the way it used to be?

Thanks for any help.