CODEWITHSUNDEEP
emacscolorselisp
Ron
Ron

Reputation: 2019

Emacs: disable theme background color in terminal

I'd like to have emacs not to have a background color when I open a frame in the terminal. I'm using a terminal with a translucent background, and characters with a background color are not "see-through". TERM is set to "xterm-256color".

How do I get emacs to use the default background color (no color at all), when the frame is not graphical?

Edit: I've got it, sort of:

(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path "~/.emacs.d/themes")
(load-theme 'my-awesome-theme t)

(defun on-frame-open (frame)
  (if (not (display-graphic-p frame))
    (set-face-background 'default "unspecified-bg" frame)))
(on-frame-open (selected-frame))
(add-hook 'after-make-frame-functions 'on-frame-open)

I put the above code in my init file, but only suppresses the background when opening an emacsclient in a terminal, and not emacs itself (i.e. only when invoked with emacsclient -t and not when invoked with emacs). Adding an extra (unless window-system (set-face-background 'default "unspecified-bg" (selected-frame))) doesn't work and only confuses graphical frames.

Any ideas on why this might happen?

Upvotes: 21

Views: 11622

Answers (3)

pdg137
pdg137

Reputation: 3761

There are already two answers to this question, one using window-setup-hook, which is called on startup, and another using after-make-frame-functions, which is called when a new frame is made, including after invoking emacsclient. To cover all possible cases, I found that I needed to do it this way:

(defun set-background-for-terminal (&optional frame)
  (or frame (setq frame (selected-frame)))
  "unsets the background color in terminal mode"
  (unless (display-graphic-p frame)
    (set-face-background 'default "unspecified-bg" frame)))
(add-hook 'after-make-frame-functions 'set-background-for-terminal)
(add-hook 'window-setup-hook 'set-background-for-terminal)

Note that I am only using selected-frame if necessary; it seems that in client mode, the hook is called before the frame is selected, so it is important to use the frame argument in that case.

Upvotes: 5

Shahab Shahsavari Alavidjeh
Shahab Shahsavari Alavidjeh

Reputation: 51

I tried the method that was suggested in this answer but I had no luck getting it to work. this snippet works for me though

(defun on-frame-open (&optional frame)
  "If the FRAME created in terminal don't load background color."
  (unless (display-graphic-p frame)
    (set-face-background 'default "unspecified-bg" frame)))

(add-hook 'after-make-frame-functions 'on-frame-open)

Although it has a setback, if the terminal has a different background settings than the theme I use (dark vs. light), default theme faces are being used which may not seem good on the light or dark background. but in my case which both terminal and theme are dark it works fine.

Upvotes: 5

Latanius
Latanius

Reputation: 2653

(defun on-after-init ()
  (unless (display-graphic-p (selected-frame))
    (set-face-background 'default "unspecified-bg" (selected-frame))))

(add-hook 'window-setup-hook 'on-after-init)

Combined with the code in your edit, it worked nicely for me for both emacsterms and newly started emacsen. As for why window-setup-hook: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Startup-Summary.html

(neither of the earlier hooks seemed to work except for this one.)

Upvotes: 35

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