bug#7943: white background is color #e5e5e5 in terminal window

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> Cc: <warrenharris@google.com>, <7943@debbugs.gnu.org>
> Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2011 13:50:43 -0800
> 
> > For compatibility with 8-color text terminals that cannot produce the
> > bright colors, IIRC.
> 
> My wondering is only about the _names_.  Why call a dark or dim red "red" or
> call a light gray "white"?

Because it would be confusing not to have a white color.

Colors can be specified by their names in Emacs, not just by their RGB
values.  By the time tty colors were added to Emacs, the names of the
8 ANSI colors supported by text terminals were already "common
knowledge", so we kept them.