Setting X program and window colors

One of the easiest ways to customize your workstation environment is to change the default colors of the applications you use. For example, instead of always seeing black letters on a wheat-colored background, you can choose to reverse them and see wheat letters on a black background, or even change them to yellow letters on a pink background (if you dare).

Three ways to alter the default colors

1. Specify them from the command line.
   Most programs support some kind of command line color variables. This means that when you start a program from the prompt you can specificy the colors you want to use. See Command line color manipulation.
   
2. Alter your ".Xdefaults" file.
   By entering the appropriate values, you can change the default colors for applications. See Xdefault color manipulation.
   
3. Customize them from within programs that support the alteration of colors.
   Crisp, for example, allows you to change the color of just about everything, from text color to button color. These directions won't be covered here since they're program-specific. See either the tutorial, the internal help or the Unix manual pages on the specific program whose colors you want to alter.

Three useful Unix color utilities

1. The Unix command showrgb displays 738 color names and their RGB (red, green. blue) values (but not the actual color). Useful, for instance, if you want a quick way to get the values for one of the 120 shades of grey. See showrgb.
   
2. A way to list color names and colors, xco is useful for tracking down that perfect shade of magenta. See xco.
   
3. A graphical color mixer, xcoloredit allows you to mix the primary colors red, green and blue, as well as by hue, saturation and value. See xcoloredit.

Currently xco and xcoloredit exist in the "goodies" locker, whose path is "/afs/eos.ncsu.edu/project/goodies". To use these utilities, you'll need to add the "goodies" locker. For information on the add command see add.

Last modified June 15, 2005 by cawalker