Emacs: P2 Color Me LightlyDepressed.

Now that we have some color theory under our belt, let's calibrate Emacs's concept of color with the reality of the terminal's.

First we have to get the real colors being displayed. I'm using gnome-terminal which has a built in color picker. If you're using a terminal that doesn't have it's own color picker, fire up "emacs -nw", do "M-X list-colors-display", then use something like "xmag" or gimp to get the color values.

My Color List.

From a gnome-terminal, select "Edit/Current Profile" from the menu. From the "Default" screen, click on the "Colors" tab. At the bottom of the screen you should see 2 rows of 8 colors. The first row is the 8 colors that make up the terminal's pallet. Left most is entry 0, right most is 7. The second row are the colors you get when you print the first row using "bold". Gnome-terminal has a 3rd row of colors that are the first row in "dark" mode, but you can't edit them.

If Emacs was smarter about terminal colors you could tell it about all 3 rows of colors and it could use "bold" and "dark" version to increase the chance of it's making a good color choice. Alas, were stuck with our one row of 8 colors.

Click on each color in order, and write down their Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values. For example, the 4th color in my pallet is kind of brown, with yellow below it. It's RGB value is 170/85/0, so pallet entry 3 is 170/85/0.

This is my list:

  0    0   0   0
  1  170   0   0
  2    0 170   0
  3  170  85   0
  4    0   0 170
  5  170   0 170
  6    0 170 170
  7  170 170 170

Once you have all 8 values, ask Emacs (in a terminal) for help on the variable "color-name-rgb-alist" (C-hv color-name-rgb-alist). The help should list all the color names that Emacs knows and their RGB values.

Scan the list for colors that match the gnome-terminal colors. If you find a *perfect* match, put the color's name besides it's color in your list. Only use the name if it's a perfect match. 0/0/0 was the only match for me. I labeled color 0 "Black".

For the rest of the colors, give them descriptive names that are not in color-name-rgb-list. The last thing we need is 1 name for 2 colors.

Here's my final list.

  Black            0    0   0   0
  Brick            1  170   0   0
  Greeny           2    0 170   0
  Brownish         3  170  85   0
  Naval            4    0   0 170
  DarkishMagenta   5  170   0 170
  NeonPee          6    0 170 170
  LightlyDepressed 7  170 170 170

Now we have to get the colors into Emacs. It turns out that that's pretty easy.

RCS

First, make a backup of your ~/.emacs, just to be safe. As an aside, because this series isn't nearly long enough, consider using RCS to backup any config files that you hand edit. Under Emacs RCS is trivial to set up and use. It's saved my monkey boy butt more times than I care to remember.

To set up RCS for your ~/.emacs, make a directory called ~/RCS. Then load your ~/.emacs file into Emacs. Hit C-xvv. That's it. You're done. Your ~/.emacs is now write protected and checked into ~/RCS. To check out your file so you can edit it, load it into Emacs and hit C-xvv.

Back to work.

Edit your ~/.emacs, and add the following code. If your ~/.emacs has a custom-set-variables or custom-set-faces function, place this code before either. Obviously you should use your own colors and names for the my-tty-color-define-8 commands.

  ;; Code for handling term based Emacs.
  (defun my-tty-color-define-8 (name index rgb8)
    "Set the tty pallet using 8 bit rgb values."
    (tty-color-define name index
         (mapcar (lambda (x) (+ x (* x 256))) rgb8)))

  (if (and (not window-system) (= 8 (length (tty-color-alist))))
      (progn
  (tty-color-clear)
  (my-tty-color-define-8 "Black" 0 '(0 0 0))
  (my-tty-color-define-8 "Brick" 1 '(170 0 0))
  (my-tty-color-define-8 "Greeny" 2 '(0 170 0))
  (my-tty-color-define-8 "Brownish" 3 '(170 85 0))
  (my-tty-color-define-8 "Naval" 4 '(0 0 170))
  (my-tty-color-define-8 "DarkishMagenta" 5 '(170 0 170))
  (my-tty-color-define-8 "NeonPee" 6 '(0 170 170))
  (my-tty-color-define-8 "LightlyDepressed" 7 '(170 170 170))))

Save your ~/.emacs file and exit. Restart with "emacs -nw" Type "M-x list-colors-display". You should see your color names listed with the colors.

This might not seem like much of an achievement, but you've actually taken a pretty big step.

To check our your results, create a file called color_test.el in Emacs (-nw). It should put you into "Emacs Lisp" mode automatically. Now type in this program:

  ;; Comments are in 'comment-face'.
  ;; defun and defvar are in keyword-face.
  (defun function-name-face (&optional is-in-type-face)
    "string-face `constant-face' string-face"
    :builtin-face
    (error "warning-face"))
  (defvar variable-name-face)

  ;; To see the "doc-face" go into "perl-mode".
  =pod
    This should be in doc-face.
  =cut

The program itself doesn't work. It's not even syntactically valid. All it exists for is you show all various "faces" that Emacs uses when coloring code.

To see doc-face, use "M-x perl-mode".

How do you like them colors? If you're happy happy, then you can skip post 3 of this series. If, however, you're like me and think that Red is a horrible color for comment text, then await with baited breath the last installment of the Emacs color saga.