X11 Colors

You can specify colors when you use Emacs with the MIT X Windowing system.

I dislike the default colors and specify my own.

Here are the expressions in my .emacs file that set values:

;; Set cursor color
(set-cursor-color "white")

;; Set mouse color
(set-mouse-color "white")

;; Set foreground and background
(set-foreground-color "white")
(set-background-color "darkblue")

;;; Set highlighting colors for isearch and drag
(set-face-foreground 'highlight "white")
(set-face-background 'highlight "blue")

(set-face-foreground 'region "cyan")
(set-face-background 'region "blue")

(set-face-foreground 'secondary-selection "skyblue")
(set-face-background 'secondary-selection "darkblue")

;; Set calendar highlighting colors
(with-eval-after-load 'calendar
  (set-face-foreground 'diary   "skyblue")
  (set-face-background 'holiday "slate blue")
  (set-face-foreground 'holiday "white"))

The various shades of blue soothe my eye and prevent me from seeing the screen flicker.

Alternatively, I could have set my specifications in various X initialization files. For example, I could set the foreground, background, cursor, and pointer (i.e., mouse) colors in my ~/.Xresources file like this:

Emacs*foreground:   white
Emacs*background:   darkblue
Emacs*cursorColor:  white
Emacs*pointerColor: white

In any event, since it is not part of Emacs, I set the root color of my X window in my ~/.xinitrc file, like this^[1]:

xsetroot -solid Navy -fg white &

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1. I also run more modern window managers, such as Enlightenment, Gnome, or KDE; in those cases, I often specify an image rather than a plain color. ↩︎