Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

[gentoo-user] xterm color change

315 views
Skip to first unread message

Francisco J. A. Ares

unread,
May 25, 2004, 5:00:14 PM5/25/04
to
Hi all

How do I change the default color scheme for xterm? Is there any
configuration file that I am missing?

TIA

Francisco

--
gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Gabriel Ebner

unread,
May 25, 2004, 5:10:10 PM5/25/04
to
Hello,

Francisco J. A. Ares wrote:
> How do I change the default color scheme for xterm?

Either set X resources or supply command line arguments, xterm(1) has more
on that.

Gabriel.

--
Gabriel Ebner - reverse "ta.renbeleirbag@eg"


--
gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Pascal Bourguignon

unread,
May 25, 2004, 5:30:44 PM5/25/04
to

> I have the same question.  Is there a way of making xterm a certain
> color perminently.  I know it says you can set it when you do a man
> xterm but i dont know where.  My last xterm was white on black .. but
> now its black on white and i would like to have the black background
> again.
> -- gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Either you configure it in ~/.Xresources (there's an option to
have it use "reverse video" where background color is used for
foreground and vice-versa).

Or you could do like I do: I have a script named pjb-xterm that will
select a color scheme (using command-line options to xterm) depending
on the host where it's running, the host where the X server is running,
the user (root is in red, when vanilla user would be yellow :-), etc.

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com/


--
gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Pascal Bourguignon

unread,
May 25, 2004, 5:40:10 PM5/25/04
to

On May 25, 2004, at 19:52, Francisco J. A. Ares wrote:

> Hi all
>
> How do I change the default color scheme for xterm? Is there any
> configuration file that I am missing?

I use: xterm -fg green -bg black -cr yellow -bc
Do you need anything else?
You could also specify colors in ~/.Xresources, check: man xterm

Francisco J. A. Ares

unread,
May 25, 2004, 6:10:13 PM5/25/04
to
Nope! That's enough ;-)

Gonna look into Xresources too!

Thanks a lot you all!!

Francisco

Pascal Bourguignon wrote:

>
> On May 25, 2004, at 19:52, Francisco J. A. Ares wrote:
>
>> Hi all
>>
>> How do I change the default color scheme for xterm? Is there any
>> configuration file that I am missing?
>
>
> I use: xterm -fg green -bg black -cr yellow -bc
> Do you need anything else?
> You could also specify colors in ~/.Xresources, check: man xterm
>
>

--
gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Chris Woods

unread,
May 25, 2004, 6:20:19 PM5/25/04
to
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Danyelle Kelso wrote:
|
| I have the same question. Is there a way of making xterm a certain
| color perminently. I know it says you can set it when you do a man
| xterm but i dont know where. My last xterm was white on black .. but
| now its black on white and i would like to have the black background again.

Well, there are basically 2 ways to get xterm to open with the same settings
every time by default.

The easiest is to figure out exactly what command-line args are required to
produce the desired behavior, and create either an alias in your shell for it,
or create a shortcut using whatever is the standard means for doing so in your
Window Manager.

A more complicated and steeper of learning-curve mechanism is to learn about X
Resources. If you look in /etc/X11/app-defaults, you will see a bunch of plain
text files, one each for several X applications. These files set the default
"resources" for these apps. In there you'll see XTerm and XTerm-color - you'll
probably want to refer to XTerm-color. You'll need to create a file in your
home directory called .XDefaults, and in there place overrides for each of the
resources you want to change for xterm.

This is old-school X app configuration stuff. There are more "modern" variants
of xterm that provide a more user-friendly configuration mechanism. I
personally use gnome-terminal, and once set, the configuration changes are
permanent until I change them.

Of these, if you don't want to use an xterm alternative, I really suggest
using the alias/shortcut mechanism. The whole X Resources thing is pretty
complicated in both its syntax and its semantics.

- --

~ Chris Woods || the....@comcast.net
~ ICQ 21740987 || AIM gnarrlybob
~ YIM cjwoods || Jabber Gnar...@jabber.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFAs8Udcv1XM0B+gpsRAuctAJ99PPS10E99f8gUSQC+3HxjRkvtZgCfRVg+
0dBGTgIh1KWMPtOPwK9ETnY=
=WMkF
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--
gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Phil Sexton

unread,
May 25, 2004, 7:40:09 PM5/25/04
to
On Tue, 2004-05-25 at 17:21, Danyelle Kelso wrote:
> Hello,
> Francisco J. A. Ares wrote:
> > How do I change the default color scheme for xterm?
> >Either set X resources or supply command line arguments, xterm(1) has
> more
> >on that.
> Gabriel.
> --
> Gabriel Ebner - reverse "ta.renbeleirbag@eg"
> --
> gento...@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
> I have the same question. Is there a way of making xterm a certain
> color perminently. I know it says you can set it when you do a man
> xterm but i dont know where. My last xterm was white on black .. but
> now its black on white and i would like to have the black background
> again.
> -- gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

I put this in my .bashrc file.

I love alias..

alias xterm='xterm -fg white -bg black -rightbar'

--
Phil
Our 2nd CD: http://www.cdbaby.com/naomisfancy
Naomi's Fancy performances: http://naomisfancy.virtualave.net/schedule.html


--
gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Ajai Khattri

unread,
May 25, 2004, 9:40:08 PM5/25/04
to
On Tue, 25 May 2004, Francisco J. A. Ares wrote:

> How do I change the default color scheme for xterm? Is there any
> configuration file that I am missing?

A good way of doing this is to name each instance of xterm that you launch
using the -name option. Then you can define X resources in your
.Xdefaults using the name to define "categories" of xterms with
different sets of preferences - cool huh? ;-)

--
Aj.
Sys. Admin / Developer

--
gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Ajai Khattri

unread,
May 25, 2004, 9:40:08 PM5/25/04
to
On Tue, 25 May 2004, Danyelle Kelso wrote:

> I have the same question.  Is there a way of making xterm a certain color perminently.  I
> know it says you can set it when you do a man xterm but i dont know where.  My last xterm
> was white on black .. but now its black on white and i would like to have the black
> background again.

Define X resources in your ~/.Xdefaults file, like this:

XTerm*cutNewline:false
XTerm*cutToBeginningOfLine:false
XTerm*cursorBlink:true
XTerm*cursorColor:white
XTerm*font:6x10
XTerm*reverseWrap:true
XTerm*rightScrollBar:true
XTerm*scrollBar:true
XTerm*visualBell:true
XTerm*reverseVideo:true

See the xterm man page for resource names.

Ajai Khattri

unread,
May 25, 2004, 9:40:08 PM5/25/04
to
On Tue, 25 May 2004, Pascal Bourguignon wrote:

> Or you could do like I do: I have a script named pjb-xterm that will
> select a color scheme (using command-line options to xterm) depending
> on the host where it's running, the host where the X server is running,
> the user (root is in red, when vanilla user would be yellow :-), etc.

Much better to do:

xterm -name vanilla_user
xtern -name root

And define named resources in your ~/.Xdefaults - no script required ;-)

al...@halogen-dg.com

unread,
May 26, 2004, 11:10:05 AM5/26/04
to
my config:

1. emerge terminus-font (usually required to add font path to XF86Config
manually)

2. nano ~/.Xresources and add:

XTerm.VT100*color0: black
XTerm.VT100*color1: red3
XTerm.VT100*color2: green3
XTerm.VT100*color3: yellow3
XTerm.VT100*color4: blue3
XTerm.VT100*color5: magenta3
XTerm.VT100*color6: cyan3
XTerm.VT100*color7: gray90
XTerm.VT100*color8: gray30
XTerm.VT100*color9: red
XTerm.VT100*color10: green
XTerm.VT100*color11: yellow
XTerm.VT100*color12: blue
XTerm.VT100*color13: magenta
XTerm.VT100*color14: cyan
XTerm.VT100*color15: white
XTerm.VT100*colorUL: yellow
XTerm.VT100*colorBD: white
XTerm.VT100*cursorColor: lime green
XTerm.VT100.background: black
XTerm.VT100.foreground: yellow3
XTerm.VT100.font: -*-terminus-medium-r-*-*-20-*-75-75-*-*-koi8-r
XTerm*activeIcon: true

3. xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

4. xterm

--
Alex V. Koval
http://www.halogen-dg.com/
http://www.zwarehouse.org/


--
gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Danyelle Kelso

unread,
May 28, 2004, 1:10:07 AM5/28/04
to
Im running fluxbox so what i did was change the fluxbox menu to reflect "
xterm -bg black -fg white"

--
gento...@gentoo.org mailing list

Moshe Kaminsky

unread,
May 28, 2004, 3:10:07 AM5/28/04
to
* Francisco J. A. Ares <francis...@altecvision.com> [25/05/04 23:57]:

> Hi all
>
> How do I change the default color scheme for xterm? Is there any
> configuration file that I am missing?

In addition to app-defaults, you may want to have a look at
xtermcontrol.

Moshe

>
> TIA
>
> Francisco
>
> --
> gento...@gentoo.org mailing list
>

--
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-- Douglas Adams

Moshe Kaminsky <kami...@math.huji.ac.il>
Home: 08-9456841

Andrew Farmer

unread,
May 29, 2004, 4:40:08 PM5/29/04
to
On 28 May 2004, at 00:02, Moshe Kaminsky wrote:
> * Francisco J. A. Ares <francis...@altecvision.com> [25/05/04
> 23:57]:
>> Hi all
>>
>> How do I change the default color scheme for xterm? Is there any
>> configuration file that I am missing?
>
> In addition to app-defaults, you may want to have a look at
> xtermcontrol.

Or Xdefaults/xrdb.

/* Andrew Farmer */

PGP.sig
0 new messages