Re: emacs -nw font-lock-mode colors non-ideal for rxvt?

[Miles Bader]

jidanni@deadspam.com (Dan Jacobson) writes:
> Just curious, do emacs -q -nw some_bash_script [thus invoking bash
> shell script mode] then M-x font-lock-mode.  I was using rxvt.
> 
> On a black background terminal:
> Do many of the words, especially the deep blue "export", "set"
> seem too dark to read?  when one invokes report-emacs-bug, is the
> "text follows this line" unreadable green on green?

Emacs has no way to know that you're on a black-background terminal
(there's no way to ask the terminal), and for a terminal type of
`rxvt', it assumes a white background, since that's the default.  Thus
it picks colors suited to a white background.

You can change this by customizing the variable `frame-background-mode'
and setting it to `dark'.  You can do so from the command line too, by
using:

   emacs -q -nw -eval "(setq frame-background-mode 'dark)"

[there really ought to be a nicer way to do this from the command line]

-Miles
-- 
97% of everything is grunge