Adjusting term faces in the new Emacs 24.3

Question

How can I adjust the term face in the new Emacs to get the same control that was possible with ansi-term-color-vector?

One of the new features in Emacs 24.3 seems to be that it revamps the mechanism to control the face of term buffers, i.e.:

The variables term-default-fg-color and term-default-bg-color are now deprecated in favor of the customizable face term.

You can customize how to display ANSI terminal colors and styles by customizing the corresponding term-color-COLOR, term-color-underline and term-color-bold faces.

Mickey from Mastering Emacs comments the following:

If, like me, you customized ansi-color-names-vector to change the default term colours I suggest you switch to using the faces now. The good news here is you can, should desire to, change more than just the colours for each ANSI Color: there’s nothing stopping you from forcing a different font for certain colours

Like Mickey, I was also using ansi-color-names-vector to make sure that the color of my term buffers looked well on dark themes (e.g. tango-dark)

(setq ansi-term-color-vector [unspecified “black” “red3” “lime green” “yellow3” “DeepSkyBlue?3” “magenta3” “cyan3” “white”])

But this now results in an error:

"error in process filter: Invalid face; unspecified" 

In an attempt to use the new face term, when I go to M-x describe-face term, I see the following:

[] Font Family
[] Font Foundry
[] Width
[] Height
[] Weight
[] Slant
[] Underline
[] Overline
[] Strike-through
[] Box around text
[] Inverse-video
[] Foreground
[] Background
[] Stipple
[x]  Inherit

But how do I adjust these settings to get the same effect I achieved using ansi-term-color-vector?

Update

I am still unable to fix the colors. Here is the menu that I get for M-x customize-theme tango-dark:

And here is an example of one of the colors/faces in a terminal that are hard to see:

                             

Skirling

Answer 1

This worked for me in Emacs 24.3.1 to set the colors of term and ansi-term. Just change the colors to your preferred values (with the background adjusted accordingly).

;; term
(defface term-color-black 
  '((t (:foreground "#3f3f3f" :background "#272822"))) 
  "Unhelpful docstring.")
(defface term-color-red
  '((t (:foreground "#cc9393" :background "#272822"))) 
  "Unhelpful docstring.")
(defface term-color-green
  '((t (:foreground "#7f9f7f" :background "#272822"))) 
  "Unhelpful docstring.")
(defface term-color-yellow
  '((t (:foreground "#f0dfaf" :background "#272822"))) 
  "Unhelpful docstring.")
(defface term-color-blue 
  '((t (:foreground "#6d85ba" :background "#272822"))) 
  "Unhelpful docstring.")
(defface term-color-magenta 
  '((t (:foreground "#dc8cc3" :background "#272822"))) 
  "Unhelpful docstring.")
(defface term-color-cyan
  '((t (:foreground "#93e0e3" :background "#272822"))) 
  "Unhelpful docstring.")
(defface term-color-white
  '((t (:foreground "#dcdccc" :background "#272822"))) 
  "Unhelpful docstring.")
'(term-default-fg-color ((t (:inherit term-color-white))))
'(term-default-bg-color ((t (:inherit term-color-black))))

;; ansi-term colors
(setq ansi-term-color-vector
  [term term-color-black term-color-red term-color-green term-color-yellow 
    term-color-blue term-color-magenta term-color-cyan term-color-white])

Bloodyminded

Answer 2

In Emacs 24.3 you'll need to adjust the following faces:

   ;; term
   `(term-color-black ((t (:foreground ,zenburn-bg
                                       :background ,zenburn-bg-1))))
   `(term-color-red ((t (:foreground ,zenburn-red-2
                                       :background ,zenburn-red-4))))
   `(term-color-green ((t (:foreground ,zenburn-green
                                       :background ,zenburn-green+2))))
   `(term-color-yellow ((t (:foreground ,zenburn-orange
                                       :background ,zenburn-yellow))))
   `(term-color-blue ((t (:foreground ,zenburn-blue-1
                                      :background ,zenburn-blue-4))))
   `(term-color-magenta ((t (:foreground ,zenburn-magenta
                                         :background ,zenburn-red))))
   `(term-color-cyan ((t (:foreground ,zenburn-cyan
                                       :background ,zenburn-blue))))
   `(term-color-white ((t (:foreground ,zenburn-fg
                                       :background ,zenburn-fg-1))))
   '(term-default-fg-color ((t (:inherit term-color-white))))
   '(term-default-bg-color ((t (:inherit term-color-black))))

This code is from the latest version of Zenburn. Personally I feel that the new way of customising the faces is an improvement over the use of the obscure vector.

Sorption

Thanks. Any thoughts or pointers on how I could do this for a theme like tango-dark? (i.e. how can I find out the different colors supported by my theme? such as zenburn-bg-1, etc. but for tango-dark) – Skirling

Just do a M-x describe-theme tango-dark and see the colour definitions in tango-dark-theme.el. – Sorption

Thanks @Bodzhidar. I am sure you are right that I could follow your steps to fix this problem, but unfortunately I can't figure out how to make it work for tango-dark. It looks like tango-dark already sets ansi-color-names-vector to a given set of colors in tango-dark.el (see the code here: http://fossies.org/unix/misc/emacs-24.3.tar.gz:a/emacs-24.3/etc/themes/tango-dark-theme.el). Moreover, these colors seem to look fine when I look up M-x describe-theme tango-tark (see the images I posted in the OP), but for some reason they don't work well in terminals. – Skirling

Another thing I don't understand is why your background colors in zenburn (the ones you defined above) are different for each term-color (shouldn't they be set to inherit the background color of the terminal?) – Skirling

For each color you need a ligher foreground version and a darker background version. That's how the faces were defined in term.el(it's not something I inventited for zenburn) itself. Nothing in term actually uses those faces directly, they are just used to derive other faces. – Sorption

Pasting this at the right place in the theme.el file worked. I had to remove ansi-color-names-vector and ansi-term-color-vector manually from .emacs.d/init.el. Running customize-group on term recreates them, then it breaks again and I must remove the lines once more. I am on emacs 25.0.50.2. – Decembrist

Answer 3

I would suggest M-x customize-group RET term RET
as the easiest entry point to customizing those colours.

Ossification