Description of problem: When starting XEmacs for the first time after logging in, I have to load .Xdefaults by hand in order for my color settings to be applied. All of the other programs that I use a GTK applications, so I don't know if this affect other programs or not. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): XFree86-4.3.0-33 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Make sure that there are lines like emacs*Background: DarkSlateGray emacs*Foreground: Wheat in your .Xdefaults 2. Log out and restart X 3. Log back in 4. 'xemacs ~/.Xdefaults' Actual results: The colors used by xemacs are not correct
Xdefaults was deprecated about 4 years ago. We included support for Xdefaults for an additional few OS releases as a backward compatibility convenience, however Xdefaults support has been removed from XFree86 upstream and from Red Hat Linux for a couple of years now, replaced with Xresources instead. If you require assistance transitioning to Xresources, please consult the XFree86 mailing list for help.
It turns out the real problem was related to a recent change in the sorting method that xrdb uses (from where I don't know). I had a symlink to .Xresources from .Xdefaults because I used to have to share my home directory with a several other *nix variants and old habits die hard. The lines that brought things to my attention were emacs*Background: gray80 emacs*Foreground: black These used to work until at least RH 9 and I think (but won't swear to) severn 1. Because .Xresources is merged and somewhere upstream the background was being set for Emacs*, when the sorting method changed, my settings wern't being applied. xrdb -load would work because options were being replaced. Changing the lines in .Xresources to Emacs*Background: gray80 Emacs*Foreground: black fixed the problem.