On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> From: Warren Harris <warrenharris@google.com>
> Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2011 13:46:57 -0800
> Cc: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>, 7943@debbugs.gnu.org
>
> All I can say is the current behavior is quite annoying when more than 8
> colors are available. Many colors have very low contrast against the grey90
> background

But that's the most white color that your terminal can produce.
xterm.el doesn't _tell_ the terminal what color to produce for
"white", it only _documents_ (sort of) what that color is, in terms of
RGB components.

I don't think so. The terminal is perfectly "brightwhite" before emacs starts. This is definitely an emacs bug.
 

> and there's no way I can see to set the background to brightwhite.

I don't think you can, not for the background.  But I'm not an expert
on xterm.

I know that older emacs version didn't have this problem either. BTW, this is a bug when using Apple Terminal, not xterm. xterm seems to work fine (whether the TERM is 'xterm' or 'xterm-color').
 

> I guess I can try and hack my xterm.el

I don't see how you can, but let us know if you find a way.

I'm closing this bug.  Feel free to reopen if you find a way of making
your white "whiter".

The idea was to replace "white" with the correct values, 255 255 255.

Warren