xterm phenomena

[Harry Putnam]

"David A. De Graaf" <dad at datix.2y.net> writes:

> On Mon, Aug 19, 2002 at 07:31:57AM -0700, Harry Putnam wrote:
>> I'm a recent inductee to xfce.  I'm noticing a phenomena with xterms
>> in my current setup.
>> 
>> I use .Xdefaults to set the parameters for xterms to
>> -bg black -fg khaki -fn 10x20
>> 
>>    [...]
>>    xterm*font:    10x20
>>    xterm*fullCursor: true
>>    xterm*reverseWrap:   true
>>    xterm*titleBar:      false
>>    xterm*background: black
>>    xterm*foreground: khaki
>>    [...]
>
> 	[ snip color complaints about ncftp }
>
> Harry:
> Elsewhere you asked why the palette changes you made never took
> effect.  I think the two lines above, setting 
> 	xterm*background: black
> 	xterm*foreground: khaki
> may be the cause of both problems.

Good try and pretty close too.  It turned out to be a setting in my
own .Xdefaults:
  *vt100BD: black
RedHats default is white.

Somehow that gets overwridden in a gnome/sawfish desktop and you don't
see the problem.  However in Xfce, like a good wm should, it obeyed
what it found in .Xdefaults.  Turned Bold characters black rendering
them invisible on my black xterm.

Like you noticed, Rh sets some defaults for xterm.  
For example another var has to be set before the one above even works
 *VT100*colorBDMode:     on

And this one, which is ok with me, that turns certain things in man
pages yellow
  *VT100*colorUL: yellow

example:  man ls:
The line
 
 SYNOPSIS
       ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...

OPTIONS and FILE are yellow, SYNOPSIS is WHITE.

All this can be learned by running the handy little app, cleverly
named `appres'

Like:  `Appres XTerm'

You might have guessed, to learn the above stuff I got some outside
help from Thomas Dickey himself (author of xterm).  He always seems
willing to explain things.

I hope some of this information is helpfull to someone else.