On 16.04.25 15:05, Ranjan Maitra via Mutt-users wrote: > I tried using `xterm -bg "#ffffff" -fg '#000000' -e mutt`` and that does help > some, however, I am not sure if there is a better preferred way.
Better? Dunno, but for nigh on 40 years now, I've had eye-friendly light-on-dark in mutt, vim, etc. (Is the colour choice because it mimics the slate grey blackboards we had at school?¹) $ xterm -fg yellow -bg darkslategrey -cr red -e mutt That way the colours for mutt, a moment ago, remain effective now while I compose this post in vim, invoked as mutt's editor. There's over 700 named colours in rgb.txt: $ locate rgb.txt /etc/X11/rgb.txt /usr/share/X11/rgb.txt OK, some mutt-specificity is useful, so in .muttrc I also have: # Colours color bold red default color index black default ~D color body blue default [\-\.+_a-zA-Z0-9]+@[\-\.a-zA-Z0-9]+ color body brightblue default (https?|ftp)://[\-\.,/%~_:?&=\#a-zA-Z0-9]+ #color body yellow default ^[^>|].* # highlight TOFU protection: color body black default ^\\[---.* color body brightgreen default "^#v[-+]" color hdrdefault green default color header yellow default ^Subject color indicator brightgreen default color message black default color quoted yellow default color signature green default color status black default color tree green default # Fix brightred-on-black thread markers from /etc/Muttrc.d/colors.rc : color normal green default # Index & pager. # Fix the blue-on-black from /etc/Muttrc.d/colors.rc : color tilde green default On the other hand, a wheat3 background serves rather well for black-text PDFs: /usr/bin/xpdf -geometry 1200x900+5+0 -z width -papercolor wheat3 xxx.pdf It's what works for you which deserves to persist - I've needed to cut the eye-watering glare of white backgrounds; a muted semi-greenscreen display does that for me. Erik ¹ Yup, we wrote with pens with metal nibs, repeatedly dipping them in our desk's porcelain inkwell with a glass marble on top to essentially eliminate evaporation. Them wuz the days.
