xterm background colour used to be black, now white

On Sat, 29 Aug 2009, Gavin McCullagh wrote:

> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: xterm
>
> Since upgrading my Acer Aspire One to Karmic, my xterms always have a
> white background.
>
> Looking at /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color, it appears it should be
> black:
>
> ! Set the default text foreground and background colors.
> *VT100*foreground: gray90
> *VT100*background: black

There's missing information (since this update is likely to be mixed in
with other changes):

a) what was the previous version of xterm used?

b) if you install the previous version of xterm in the current
environment, does it still behave properly?

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

The problem started when I first upgraded to Ubuntu Karmic. That was a month or so back.

The jaunty version is 241-1ubuntu1. The current version is 243-1ubuntu1

gavinmc@teenie:~$ apt-cache policy xterm
xterm:
  Installed: 243-1ubuntu1
  Candidate: 243-1ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 243-1ubuntu1 0
        500 http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     241-1ubuntu1 0
        500 http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages

I downgraded and it made no difference, the xterms are still white:

gavinmc@teenie:~$ apt-cache policy xterm
xterm:
  Installed: 241-1ubuntu1
  Candidate: 241-1ubuntu1
  Package pin: 241-1ubuntu1
  Version table:
     243-1ubuntu1 6000
        500 http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
 *** 241-1ubuntu1 6000
        500 http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

On Sat, 29 Aug 2009, Gavin McCullagh wrote:

> I downgraded and it made no difference, the xterms are still white:

A packager may have made changes to the X resources which would show up in
the output from "xrdb -query".

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

gavinmc@teenie:~$ xrdb -query
Xcursor.size: 18
Xcursor.theme: Human
Xcursor.theme_core: true
Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.hinting: 1
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
Xft.rgba: rgb

Not sure I see anything there....

On Sat, 29 Aug 2009, Gavin McCullagh wrote:

> gavinmc@teenie:~$ xrdb -query
> Xcursor.size: 18
> Xcursor.theme: Human
> Xcursor.theme_core: true
> Xft.antialias: 1
> Xft.dpi: 96
> Xft.hinting: 1
> Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
> Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
> Xft.rgba: rgb
>
> Not sure I see anything there....

nor I - no foreground or background strings there.

But that's one of the places I'd look, since #241 comes up with the wrong
color. The other would be the output of

  appres XTerm
  appres UXTerm

which would list _most_ of the resource settings seen by xterm and uxterm
respectively. (If it doesn't show up there, it's harder to isolate -
that's when I give up on the packaged binary and compile xterm with
debugging traces, so I can see what resources it has ;-).

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

UXTerm is an interesting one to check. I switched over to it and it gets the black background as expected. I'm not starting to wonder if that's what I might have been using before. Maybe xterm has always been white.

I'll attach the output of the two appres commands. It appears that uxterm is the only one that has the settings.

That should have read:

"I'm now starting to wonder if that's what I might have been using before."

On Sun, 30 Aug 2009, Gavin McCullagh wrote:

> UXTerm is an interesting one to check. I switched over to it and it
> gets the black background as expected. I'm not starting to wonder if
> that's what I might have been using before. Maybe xterm has always been
> white.

X's default background for xterm is white; Debian sets it to black.
Redhat and some others leave it as white. (I generally prefer black,
since color contrasts work better against black).

>
> I'll attach the output of the two appres commands. It appears that
> uxterm is the only one that has the settings.
>
> ** Attachment added: "appres.uxterm"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/30995239/appres.uxterm
>
> --
> xterm background colour used to be black, now white
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/421261
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to xterm
> in ubuntu.
>

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

> X's default background for xterm is white; Debian sets it to black.
> Redhat and some others leave it as white. (I generally prefer black,
> since color contrasts work better against black).

I prefer black too. I guess the issue here is, what colour does Ubuntu want it to be for an xterm and a uxterm? I would have thought that /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color having these lines:

  ! Set the default text foreground and background colors.
  *VT100*foreground: gray90
  *VT100*background: black

suggests that black is what's intended. If that's the case we have a bug. I'm a little unsure now though, maybe they just want xterm's to be white by default and the above doesn't apply for some reason.

On Sun, 30 Aug 2009, Gavin McCullagh wrote:

>> X's default background for xterm is white; Debian sets it to black.
>> Redhat and some others leave it as white. (I generally prefer black,
>> since color contrasts work better against black).
>
> I prefer black too. I guess the issue here is, what colour does Ubuntu
> want it to be for an xterm and a uxterm? I would have thought that
> /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color having these lines:
>
> ! Set the default text foreground and background colors.
> *VT100*foreground: gray90
> *VT100*background: black
>
> suggests that black is what's intended. If that's the case we have a
> bug. I'm a little unsure now though, maybe they just want xterm's to be
> white by default and the above doesn't apply for some reason.

yes - I would think so, too. That is working as intended on my
Debian/testing using fvwm2. Usually the reason for it failing to work
would be some conflicting resource, e.g,. having reverseVideo set, or
having some color definitions set.

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

Just for your information xterm have white background on my Jaunty install (and on my vbox karmic as well).

On Jaunty I am using xterm version 241-1ubuntu1 and on Karmic I am using version 243-1ubuntu1.

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 23:28:51 -0000, Gavin McCullagh wrote:

> gavinmc@teenie:~$ xrdb -query
> Xcursor.size: 18
> Xcursor.theme: Human
> Xcursor.theme_core: true
> Xft.antialias: 1
> Xft.dpi: 96
> Xft.hinting: 1
> Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
> Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
> Xft.rgba: rgb
>
> Not sure I see anything there....
>
This is missing '*customization: -color', which should be set by
/etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common.

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009, Julien Cristau wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 23:28:51 -0000, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
>
>> gavinmc@teenie:~$ xrdb -query
>> Xcursor.size: 18
>> Xcursor.theme: Human
>> Xcursor.theme_core: true
>> Xft.antialias: 1
>> Xft.dpi: 96
>> Xft.hinting: 1
>> Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
>> Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
>> Xft.rgba: rgb
>>
>> Not sure I see anything there....
>>
> This is missing '*customization: -color', which should be set by
> /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common.

I see - overlooked that. It could have been set in his .Xdefaults,
though, which would have shown up in the appres listings.

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

Please fix. Still happening to me with up to date Karmic. xterms come up white, even though:

john@localhost:/etc/X11/Xresources$ cat x11-common
! $Id$

! load color-specific resources for clients that have them
#ifdef COLOR
*customization: -color
#endif

! make Xaw (Athena widget set) clients understand the delete key
! this causes problems with some non-Xaw apps, use with care
! *Text.translations: #override ~Shift ~Meta <Key>Delete: delete-next-character()

and /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color contains:

! Set the default text foreground and background colors.
*VT100*foreground: gray90
*VT100*background: black

Any chance to fix this before karmic release?

This would appear to be a regression of bug 26144. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/26144

If you run "xterm -class XTerm-color" you get the correct colors.

That sounds correct (it's not due to a change in xterm's sources, but in how the system is
configured).

White color is awfull...
please corect this bug :-)
I have no idea of how correct it...
but I can test patchs...

Hmm, not sure how to go about fixing this. I can confirm the behavior. We're not doing anything in the xterm packaging to make it white rather than black in Ubuntu. Maybe something elsewhere in the system is causing it to show up white but I can't tell what that would be. Afaik we don't have a preference in Ubuntu whether to have it black or white, and are going to just take whatever upstream and debian feel to be the best default.

Can anyone confirm that on current versions of debian it is colored correctly? If so, then if anyone can spot what in Ubuntu is causing it to be different, explain here and we can try to fix that.

On Fri, 8 Jan 2010, Bryce Harrington wrote:

> Hmm, not sure how to go about fixing this. I can confirm the behavior.
> We're not doing anything in the xterm packaging to make it white rather
> than black in Ubuntu. Maybe something elsewhere in the system is
> causing it to show up white but I can't tell what that would be. Afaik
> we don't have a preference in Ubuntu whether to have it black or white,
> and are going to just take whatever upstream and debian feel to be the
> best default.
>
> Can anyone confirm that on current versions of debian it is colored
> correctly? If so, then if anyone can spot what in Ubuntu is causing it

I'm always running Debian/testing, and haven't seen the colors go awry.
("xrdb -query" might show a stray resource).

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 11:36:52PM -0000, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Jan 2010, Bryce Harrington wrote:
>
> > Hmm, not sure how to go about fixing this. I can confirm the behavior.
> > We're not doing anything in the xterm packaging to make it white rather
> > than black in Ubuntu. Maybe something elsewhere in the system is
> > causing it to show up white but I can't tell what that would be. Afaik
> > we don't have a preference in Ubuntu whether to have it black or white,
> > and are going to just take whatever upstream and debian feel to be the
> > best default.
> >
> > Can anyone confirm that on current versions of debian it is colored
> > correctly? If so, then if anyone can spot what in Ubuntu is causing it
>
> I'm always running Debian/testing, and haven't seen the colors go awry.
> ("xrdb -query" might show a stray resource).

bryce@chideok:~/src/xterm/barẹfoo$ xrdb -query
Xcursor.size: 16
Xcursor.theme: redglass
Xcursor.theme_core: true
Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.dpi: 94
Xft.hinting: 1
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
Xft.rgba: rgb
bryce@chideok:~/src/xterm/barẹfoo$

Julian's comment #15 seems to be the best clue (though why it would
be set for uxterm and not xterm, I don't know).

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

Well, I'm out of clue. I don't see where we have anything different from debian for the Xresources for this. I don't have a ~/.Xdefaults, and the x11-common resource file is the same as from debian.

On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Bryce Harrington wrote:

> Well, I'm out of clue. I don't see where we have anything different
> from debian for the Xresources for this. I don't have a ~/.Xdefaults,
> and the x11-common resource file is the same as from debian.

If I had something like that where I could test it, I'd see if I could use
strace to show which files were opened on startup. iirc, a setting from
xrdb wouldn't show up in this way, but resource settings would.

(For this purpose, xterm runs fine without setgid, in case that
interferes).

something like

  strace -tfo foo.out xterm

would show that. (I expect it to be large - compressed attachments are
nice ;-). Tweaking uxterm to get the same information can be done by
editing the last line of the script.

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

On Sat, Jan 09, 2010 at 02:09:14AM -0000, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Bryce Harrington wrote:
>
> > Well, I'm out of clue. I don't see where we have anything different
> > from debian for the Xresources for this. I don't have a ~/.Xdefaults,
> > and the x11-common resource file is the same as from debian.
>
> If I had something like that where I could test it, I'd see if I could use
> strace to show which files were opened on startup. iirc, a setting from
> xrdb wouldn't show up in this way, but resource settings would.
>
> (For this purpose, xterm runs fine without setgid, in case that
> interferes).
>
> something like
>
> strace -tfo foo.out xterm
>
> would show that. (I expect it to be large - compressed attachments are
> nice ;-). Tweaking uxterm to get the same information can be done by
> editing the last line of the script.

Here is strace from xterm and uxterm.

On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Bryce Harrington wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 09, 2010 at 02:09:14AM -0000, Thomas Dickey wrote:
>> On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Bryce Harrington wrote:
>>
>>> Well, I'm out of clue. I don't see where we have anything different
>>> from debian for the Xresources for this. I don't have a ~/.Xdefaults,
>>> and the x11-common resource file is the same as from debian.
>>
>> If I had something like that where I could test it, I'd see if I could use
>> strace to show which files were opened on startup. iirc, a setting from
>> xrdb wouldn't show up in this way, but resource settings would.
>>
>> (For this purpose, xterm runs fine without setgid, in case that
>> interferes).
>>
>> something like
>>
>> strace -tfo foo.out xterm
>>
>> would show that. (I expect it to be large - compressed attachments are
>> nice ;-). Tweaking uxterm to get the same information can be done by
>> editing the last line of the script.
>
> Here is strace from xterm and uxterm.

ok (nothing unexpected there - based on the report). On my machine,
running fvwm2, "xrdb -q" gives

*customization: -color
Kinput2*CcWnn.ccdef: ccdef.kinput2.egg
XLock*logoutButton: -1

(I checked also that none of my files would be setting the resource).

My /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common file has this:

! $Id$

! load color-specific resources for clients that have them
#ifdef COLOR
*customization: -color
#endif

! make Xaw (Athena widget set) clients understand the delete key
! this causes problems with some non-Xaw apps, use with care
! *Text.translations: #override ~Shift ~Meta <Key>Delete: delete-next-character()

The resources for xterm assume that "*customization:color" is set, while
uxterm - because it borrows the XTerm resource file also is including
XTerm-color (to resolve some long-ago problem in getting the color
initialized).

If your "xrdb -q" doesn't show the resource, then the session manager (or
whatever) is not loading it. (In a quick read of the bug report, I don't
see which window manager is being used - KDE or GNOME, I suppose).

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

[Resetting to incomplete since we need a response from the original reporter on this].

The information that seems to be missing is,

> a) what was the previous version of xterm used?

I'm really not sure at this point to be honest.

> b) if you install the previous version of xterm in the current
> environment, does it still behave properly?

I've tried installing xterm packages from jaunty, intrepid and hardy. They all come up white. My guess is it's not part of the problem. I can't honestly recall when it started, but I can't imagine it was as far back as gutsy.

The only (upstream) thing that comes to mind is to make the include-structure of the uxterm
app-defaults files consistent with xterm. Doing that will make this user's windows both have
a white background. I'm doing that for patch #256.

I did notice that on my Debian/stable (sarge), that the "customization:color" is not set in

/etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common

(but my $HOME/.Xdefaults had long had the setting). I don't see a followup from Gavin to
tell if the setting is missing from his x11-common file.

The contents of /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common are

-----------------------------------------------
 ! $Id$

 ! load color-specific resources for clients that have them
 #ifdef COLOR
 *customization: -color
 #endif

 ! make Xaw (Athena widget set) clients understand the delete key
 ! this causes problems with some non-Xaw apps, use with care
 ! *Text.translations: #override ~Shift ~Meta <Key>Delete: delete-next-character()
-----------------------------------------------

I don't have a ~/.Xdefaults file

Strangely, today I upgraded to the latest lucid packages and now my uxterm is white as well.

On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, Gavin McCullagh wrote:

> Strangely, today I upgraded to the latest lucid packages and now my
> uxterm is white as well.

http://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.log.html#xterm_256

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

What's the difference between Debian and Ubuntu to cause Debian's xterm background to be black? Backgrounds are black on Jaunty, but not Karmic and not Lucid. A dirty work-around is to use this command "xterm -class XTerm-color" to spawn an xterm. What can I put in .Xresources to make an xterm always assume that it should use the XTerm-color class?

On Thu, 6 May 2010, frotz wrote:

> What's the difference between Debian and Ubuntu to cause Debian's xterm
> background to be black? Backgrounds are black on Jaunty, but not Karmic
> and not Lucid. A dirty work-around is to use this command "xterm -class
> XTerm-color" to spawn an xterm. What can I put in .Xresources to make
> an xterm always assume that it should use the XTerm-color class?

Debian sets the background color by a modification to
/etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm, combined with
the /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common file. That's been discussed, pointed
out where to look -

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

On Thu, 6 May 2010, Thomas Dickey wrote:

>> What's the difference between Debian and Ubuntu to cause Debian's xterm
>> background to be black? Backgrounds are black on Jaunty, but not Karmic
>> and not Lucid. A dirty work-around is to use this command "xterm -class
>> XTerm-color" to spawn an xterm. What can I put in .Xresources to make
>> an xterm always assume that it should use the XTerm-color class?
>
> Debian sets the background color by a modification to
> /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm, combined with
> the /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common file. That's been discussed, pointed
> out where to look

Looking at the links associated with this bug, I don't see anything about a resource setting that forces xterm to use XTerm-color as if it was specified on the command line.

On Sat, 8 May 2010, frotz wrote:

> On Thu, 6 May 2010, Thomas Dickey wrote:
>
>>> What's the difference between Debian and Ubuntu to cause Debian's xterm
>>> background to be black? Backgrounds are black on Jaunty, but not Karmic
>>> and not Lucid. A dirty work-around is to use this command "xterm -class
>>> XTerm-color" to spawn an xterm. What can I put in .Xresources to make
>>> an xterm always assume that it should use the XTerm-color class?
>>
>> Debian sets the background color by a modification to
>> /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm, combined with
>> the /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common file. That's been discussed, pointed
>> out where to look
>
> Looking at the links associated with this bug, I don't see anything
> about a resource setting that forces xterm to use XTerm-color as if it
> was specified on the command line.

setting "*customization:color" does this.

That's set in x11-common.

For some systems (without that detail), I do the same thing by putting the
setting in my $HOME/.Xdefaults; however not all sessions startup using
_that_ value. (But for Ubuntu, my understanding is that it should work
using the x11-common value - however other comments let me see that KDE
has added some additional breakage of X-resources which needs to be
explained).

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

Hi, is anyone working on this? It's really annoying 8-).

I ran uxterm under strace and it appears to only look for UXTerm and _NOT_ UXTerm-color resources. Since x11-common is responsible for making it use -color, I looked for uxterm opening that file in the strace, but it appears to ignore that file. If I manually xrdb -override that file, it works as expected.

In conclusion, the root bug seems to be that uxterm does not (or no longer) consults /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common Could this be a regression in Xt? Can this be fixed, maybe? Or is this an unintended side-effect of http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570447 ?

Thanks,
  Martin

On Wed, 19 May 2010, Martin Stolle wrote:

> Hi, is anyone working on this? It's really annoying 8-).

So far, Ubuntu ranks _last_ of all bug-tracking systems that I deal with,
for getting things done. Perhaps the package maintainers tend to assume
that all of the work is done in Debian.

> I ran uxterm under strace and it appears to only look for UXTerm and
> _NOT_ UXTerm-color resources. Since x11-common is responsible for
> making it use -color, I looked for uxterm opening that file in the
> strace, but it appears to ignore that file. If I manually xrdb
> -override that file, it works as expected.
>
> In conclusion, the root bug seems to be that uxterm does not (or no
> longer) consults /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common Could this be a
> regression in Xt? Can this be fixed, maybe? Or is this an unintended
> side-effect of http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=570447 ?

It could be similar, but this report is older than #570447

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

On my system, Debian squeeze, the resource files for xterm are:

/etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm
/etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color

xterm loads its resources from /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm, but if you add the line

XTerm*customization: -color

To your ~/.Xdefaults file, then xterm loads will load its resources from file /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color instead.

/etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color includes everything from /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm plus sets the colors to give you white text on black background (or whatever is defined in XTerm-color)

You can even put:
*customization: -color
in your ~/.Xdefaults and then all apps, not just xterm, will use the ???-color resource files.

Please note that xterm looks for ~/.Xdefaults-<hostname>, not ~/.Xdefaults:

ik5pvx@penny:~ $ strace xterm >pippo 2>&1
ik5pvx@penny:~ $ grep Xdefault pippo
open("/home/ik5pvx/.Xdefaults-penny", O_RDONLY) = 4

Setting "*customization: -color" in there solves this.
Another workaround is to:
cat /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm > ~/XTerm
and comment out the call to include XTerm at the beginning:
!#include "XTerm"

Pf

Figured this one out... Ubuntu's /etc/gdm/Xsession doesn't set SYSRESOURCES (and USRRESOURCES) before sourcing /etc/X11/Xsession.d/30x11-common_xresources, so /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common is never read.