gnome-theme-manager changes xdvi, emacs etc!

When I change the theme in gnome-theme-manager the background also changes in xdvi and then menu color in emacs changes. How do I make xdvi and emacs (and most likely other programs) independant of gnome-theme-manager?

Don’t use gnome-theme-manager? You can probably override its effect by explicitly stating your preferences in ~/.XDefaults.

Bear in mind that if you change this whilst X is running, you must issue the following command:

xrdb -merge ~/.XDefaults

– Thomas Adam

I don’t have an -.Xdefaults file (I use Ubuntu) but I guess I can just make one? And then it should be possible to disable gnome-themes for xdvi and emacs?

I have no idea what gnome-themes-manager does – judging from your description, it seems to just alter the properties of a program’s resource setting. I would have expected it to only affect GTK programs — but since you mention xdvi, this cannot be the case.

The only way a program’s background colour (as you have described it there) can be altered is the manipulation of its resource. The file ~/.Xdefaults (sometimes symlinked to ~/.Xresources, and vice versa) holds properities of resources. So for instance, to set the foreground colour of xlogo, I might add an entry into ~/.Xdefaults
thus:

xlogo*foreground: red

If I then run:

xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults

and run ‘xlogo’, the colour will have been set.

Search these forums for xrdb, xdefaults, or similar – you’ll find examples there, as well as the following:

linuxgazette.net/119/tag/4.html

(in part, anyway.)

– Thomas Adam

thank you I can override the gnome-theme-manager for these program in the .Xdefaults file.

I have just installed nedit and it is gray. I have tried to set it to white in my .Xdefaults file but nothing changes, do you by change know which file controls the appearance for nedit?

Yes – Nedit is written using the motif widget set – so you can use ~/.Xdefaults, again.

See: nedit.org/technotes/looks-1.php

– Thomas Adam

thanks again!