[SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

nikinbaidarr · 2021-07-26 16:46:03

My problem is fairly simple. I use Xterm where the blue colored output of

ls

is really unreadable on a black background (I want to stick with black for my background), especially when I am leaning back on my chair. By default, the output is in blue so one way i could get around this issue is if I changed this default blue color to a completely different color like cyan or something else.

But I want to change the contrast of the blue color itself. I tried to change it by putting

Xterm.vt100.color4: CornflowerBlue

in my

~/.Xresources

file. That didn't work!

I also tried to change the vt100.color4 value in the file

/usr/share/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color

but that didn't have any effect either. However, in the later file it was written that Xresouces gets its color values from a file name "rgb.txt" but I cannot seem to find this file in my system.

Is there any other way that I could possibly change the default blue color to some lighter shade of blue?

Last edited by nikinbaidarr (2021-08-05 09:19:29)

cameo · 2021-07-26 17:06:07

You may (re-)check your ~./Xresources for typos.
And did you merge it at all?

nikinbaidarr · 2021-07-27 14:39:27

cameo wrote:

You may (re-)check your ~./Xresources for typos.
And did you merge it at all?

I don't think I have any typos in my Xresources. And yes I have it mergerd. I have other configs in my Xresources which are working file. Its just that blue color bit that giving a headache.

Last edited by nikinbaidarr (2021-07-27 14:39:55)

cameo · 2021-07-27 17:02:53

nikinbaidarr wrote:

I don't think I have any typos in my Xresources.

Never say that – occasionally stuff won't work if there's just a missing line feed at the end of a config file or a trailing comment after a value or command, for example.

nikinbaidarr wrote:

Its just that blue color bit that giving a headache.

Well, I hardly use xterm, but what if you replace the alias color name with its RGB hex value in correct xterm syntax?

Last edited by cameo (2021-07-27 17:50:43)

seth · 2021-07-27 20:24:43

I don't think I have any typos in my Xresources. And yes I have it mergerd.

xrdb -q

Also you might see color 12.

=> http://terminal.sexy/

nikinbaidarr · 2021-07-31 13:47:07

xrdb -q
Also you might see color 12.

This isn't working. I have even tried to change the color in the app-defaults directory. Is it just me who having this issue?

seth · 2021-07-31 13:49:19

The output of "xrdb -q" is hardly "nor working".
So
a) what is the output, and
b what is "not working"?

the color in the app-defaults directory

What?

nikinbaidarr · 2021-07-31 14:28:13

seth wrote:

The output of "xrdb -q" is hardly "nor working".
So
a) what is the output,

The output of "xrdb -q" is basically the contents of my ~/.Xresources which is

1 XTerm.termName: xterm-256color
2 XTerm.vt100.locale: true

3 XTerm.vt100.foreground: grey
4 XTerm.vt100.background: black
5 XTerm.vt100.color4: Cornflower Blue
6 XTerm.vt100.color12: Cornflower Blue

7 XTerm.vt100.faceName:  Source Code Pro Medium:size=10

8 XTerm.vt100.alternateScroll:  true

I've added the line numbers just for better readability.

b) what is "not working"?

What isn't working is lines 5 and 6 of my ~/.Xresources file. Everything else in my .Xresources works as expected. In my .xinitrc I have

 [[ -f ~/.Xresources ]] && xrdb -merge -I$HOME ~/.Xresources

.

But I thought there was some problem with the merging so what I meant in the

app-defaults

part was that I have edited a file in the /usr/share/X11/app-defaults directory. Precisely I have edited the file "XTerm-color" in there becuase I am on Xterm. I changed

Xterm.VT100.color4 blue3

into

Xterm.VT100.color4 Cornflower Blue

I
But that isn't working either. All that I want to do is make the outputs in blue color, a bit more readable but nothing seems to work.

seth · 2021-07-31 14:37:44

Try to be less specific:

XTerm*color4

Also: printcolors.sh (to ensure you're looking at the right color)

#!/bin/sh

if [ "$1" = "256" ]; then
    for fgbg in 38 48 ; do # Foreground / Background
        echo "\\e[${fgbg};5;<number>m"
        for color in {0..255} ; do # Colors
            # Display the color
            printf "\e[${fgbg};5;%sm  %3s  \e[0m" $color $color
            # Display 16 colors per lines
            if [ $((($color + 1) % 16)) == 0 ] ; then
                echo # New line
            fi
        done
        echo # New line
    done
else
    for x in 0 1 4 5 7 8; do
        for i in {30..37}; do
            for a in {40..47}; do
                printf "\e[$x;$i;$a""m\\\e[$x;$i;$a""m\e[0;37;40m "
            done
            echo
        done
    done
    echo
fi

nikinbaidarr · 2021-07-31 14:48:25

seth wrote:

Try to be less specific:
XTerm*color4

Yeah this did it. I changed my ~/.Xresources file and did a reboot and now it is working. Thank you so much man you pushed me to do this. They should mention this in the documentation.

seth · 2021-07-31 15:19:43

man xterm wrote:

VT100 Widget Resources
The following resources are specified as part of the vt100 widget (class VT100). They are specified by patterns such as “XTerm.vt100.NAME”.
If your xterm is configured to support the “toolbar”, then those patterns need an extra level for the form-widget which holds the toolbar and vt100 widget. A wildcard between the top-level “XTerm” and the “vt100” widget makes the resource settings work for either, e.g., “XTerm*vt100.NAME”.

Though the toolbar is disabled in the archlinux build. *shrug*

Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2021-07-26 16:46:03

[SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#2 2021-07-26 17:06:07

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#3 2021-07-27 14:39:27

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#4 2021-07-27 17:02:53

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#5 2021-07-27 20:24:43

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#6 2021-07-31 13:47:07

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#7 2021-07-31 13:49:19

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#8 2021-07-31 14:28:13

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#9 2021-07-31 14:37:44

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#10 2021-07-31 14:48:25

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

#11 2021-07-31 15:19:43

Re: [SOLVED] Xterm: Changing colors from Xresources has no effect

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