How do I tell Emacs that my background is white (tty)?

[Fredrik Staxeng]

I like my xterms to have black text on white background, but Emacs
uses yellow as foreground colour, which is almost unreadble. Can I tell
Emacs that my backgroud is white?

[Ellen Taylor]

Post by Fredrik Staxeng
I like my xterms to have black text on white background, but Emacs
uses yellow as foreground colour, which is almost unreadble. Can I tell
Emacs that my backgroud is white?

Just tell Emacs to use black as the foreground color using 'set-foreground-color'.

[Fredrik Staxeng]

Post by Ellen Taylor

Post by Fredrik Staxeng
I like my xterms to have black text on white background, but Emacs
uses yellow as foreground colour, which is almost unreadble. Can I tell
Emacs that my backgroud is white?

Just tell Emacs to use black as the foreground color using 'set-foreground-color'.

Thank you for taking time to reply, but unfortunately emacs still uses
yellow foreground. I tried to find out how many colors emacs thinks my
xterm has, but (terminal-parameters) doesn't say, and (frame-parameters)
gets truncated.

[Fredrik Staxeng]

Post by Fredrik Staxeng

Post by Ellen Taylor

Post by Fredrik Staxeng
I like my xterms to have black text on white background, but Emacs
uses yellow as foreground colour, which is almost unreadble. Can I tell
Emacs that my backgroud is white?

Just tell Emacs to use black as the foreground color using 'set-foreground-color'.

Thank you for taking time to reply, but unfortunately emacs still uses
yellow foreground. I tried to find out how many colors emacs thinks my
xterm has, but (terminal-parameters) doesn't say, and (frame-parameters)
gets truncated.

It seems that using (set-terminal-parameter nil 'background-mode 'light)
and setting TERM=xterm-256color gives more readable colors.

I find that black, red and blue gives readable text on white background,
magenta is worse but readable, green and cyan are marginal, and yellow
is unreadable.

[Joerg Mertens]

Post by Fredrik Staxeng
Thank you for taking time to reply, but unfortunately emacs still uses
yellow foreground. I tried to find out how many colors emacs thinks my
xterm has, but (terminal-parameters) doesn't say, and (frame-parameters)
gets truncated.

Try M-x list-colors-display

Regards

[Teemu Likonen]

Post by Fredrik Staxeng
I like my xterms to have black text on white background, but Emacs
uses yellow as foreground colour, which is almost unreadble. Can I
tell Emacs that my backgroud is white?

There are certain variables for changing frame parameters, including
colors. I just copy my settings; you can probably pick the idea from
this. I use default colors but white background in X Window System
frames and dark background in text terminal frames (usually Xterm, 256
colors).


(setq initial-frame-alist nil
default-frame-alist nil
window-system-default-frame-alist
'((x (menu-bar-lines . 1)
(tool-bar-lines . 0)
(vertical-scroll-bars . right)
(left-fringe . 8)
(right-fringe . 8)
(foreground-color . "black")
(background-color . "white")
(background-mode . light)
(font . "Monospace-11"))
(nil (menu-bar-lines . 0)
(foreground-color . "white")
(background-color . "black")
(background-mode . dark))))

[Fredrik Staxeng]

Post by Teemu Likonen

Post by Fredrik Staxeng
I like my xterms to have black text on white background, but Emacs
uses yellow as foreground colour, which is almost unreadble. Can I
tell Emacs that my backgroud is white?

There are certain variables for changing frame parameters, including
colors. I just copy my settings; you can probably pick the idea from
this. I use default colors but white background in X Window System
frames and dark background in text terminal frames (usually Xterm, 256
colors).

I found out that font-lock-variable-face uses yellow foreground
regardless of background when emacs thinks the terminal has 8 colors.

[Dan Espen]

Post by Fredrik Staxeng
I like my xterms to have black text on white background, but Emacs
uses yellow as foreground colour, which is almost unreadble. Can I tell
Emacs that my backgroud is white?

If you are using xterm, the colors are adjustable.
In my X resources I have:

XTerm*color3: Yellow

For a white background, I'd recommend something like:

XTerm*color3: Brown

Check the xterm man page for full details.

[Fredrik Staxeng]

Post by Dan Espen

Post by Fredrik Staxeng
I like my xterms to have black text on white background, but Emacs
uses yellow as foreground colour, which is almost unreadble. Can I tell
Emacs that my backgroud is white?

If you are using xterm, the colors are adjustable.
XTerm*color3: Yellow
XTerm*color3: Brown
Check the xterm man page for full details.

Thanks, that might be a better solution than using TERM=xterm-256color.