Re: xterm-256color and face colors

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:51:33 -0800 (PST), Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> wrote:
>Giorgos Keramidas <address@hidden> writes:
>> The version of Emacs I am currently running is ``GNU Emacs 23.1.90.1
>> (i386-unknown-freebsd9.0, GTK+ Version 2.18.4) of 2009-12-11 on kobe'',
>> built from a Git snapshot a couple of days ago.
>>
>> A recent update to FreeBSD synchronized our termcap database entries for
>> "xterm*" terminals with the one in xterm's source distribution.  This
>> was the first step towards making Emacs really support more than 8 color
>> cells in xterm windows under FreeBSD.
>> ...
>> Trying `M-x customize-face RET font-lock-string-face RET' shows that
>> strings should be using "LightSalmon" as their color, but the sample
>> text near the color definition uses no color at all.  The screenshot
>> attached as "emacs-23-xterm-256color-string-face.png" shows this,
>> and is also available online at:
>>
>>   
>> http://people.freebsd.org/~keramida/emacs-xterm256/emacs-23-xterm-256color-string-face.png
>
> This looks like a problem with xterm or the termcap/terminfo settings.  Emacs
> things that there are 256 colors, but when it tries to use them they
> don't work correctly.
>
> Check if xterm is compiled with 256 colors support, there's a script in
> the xterm sources called 256colors2.pl, run it and see if you can get
> many colors displayed.

Hi Dan,

Thanks!  Running the vttests/256colors.pl script from the source of
xterm itself shows that indeed this is an xterm problem with my local
xterm package.  I'll rebuild my xterm with the WITH_256_COLOR=1 option,
check again and report back :)