Change font color in Emacs ansi-term mode

Question

I am using Emacs 24.5.1 In ansi-term mode, the font color of folder is quite unreadable (I am wearing a pair of anti-blue light glasses), well, I hope to get rid of this color, because of the same reason.

(Blue color is almost invisible through the anti-blue glasses)

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can change colors of both the term and ansi-term modes by customizing the term group. The steps are as follow:

• First, run the command customize-group by typing M-x customize-group

• And then type the term group

Now, you are free to change the color of the ansi-term mode. For example, to change the color of folders, in my Emacs setting, I can chang it by modifying the Term Color Green face option.

Answer 2

term-mode tries to be just like other terminals, like xterm, which have the same problem. I like dark backgrounds, which means the standard blue color is hard to see. I solved this for all terminals by customizing the colors of the terminal apps that I use regularly.

# set up colors for ls
function set_up_dircolors() {
    local dircolors=dircolors
    if ! $is_GNU ; then
        dircolors=gdircolors
    fi

    if is_command $dircolors ; then
        if [ ! -e $HOME/.dircolors ] ; then
            $dircolors --print-database > $HOME/.dircolors
        fi

        eval $($dircolors --sh $HOME/.dircolors)
    fi
}
set_up_dircolors

export GREP_COLORS="ms=01;32:mc=01;32:sl=:cx=:fn=35:ln=32:bn=32:se=36"

is_GNU is a (hacky) test to see if I'm on BSD or not, roughly bash --version | grep -i bsd.

Here's the ~/.dircolors config file:

# Configuration file for dircolors, a utility to help you set the
# LS_COLORS environment variable used by GNU ls with the --color option.
# Copyright (C) 1996, 1999-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
# Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
# are permitted provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.
# The keywords COLOR, OPTIONS, and EIGHTBIT (honored by the
# slackware version of dircolors) are recognized but ignored.
# Below, there should be one TERM entry for each termtype that is colorizable
TERM Eterm
TERM ansi
TERM color-xterm
TERM con132x25
TERM con132x30
TERM con132x43
TERM con132x60
TERM con80x25
TERM con80x28
TERM con80x30
TERM con80x43
TERM con80x50
TERM con80x60
TERM cons25
TERM console
TERM cygwin
TERM dtterm
TERM eterm-color
TERM gnome
TERM gnome-256color
TERM jfbterm
TERM konsole
TERM kterm
TERM linux
TERM linux-c
TERM mach-color
TERM mlterm
TERM putty
TERM rxvt
TERM rxvt-256color
TERM rxvt-unicode-256color
TERM rxvt-cygwin
TERM rxvt-cygwin-native
TERM rxvt-unicode
TERM rxvt-unicode256
TERM screen
TERM screen-256color
TERM screen-256color-bce
TERM screen-bce
TERM screen-w
TERM screen.linux
TERM vt100
TERM xterm
TERM xterm-16color
TERM xterm-256color
TERM xterm-88color
TERM xterm-color
TERM xterm-debian
# Below are the color init strings for the basic file types. A color init
# string consists of one or more of the following numeric codes:
# Attribute codes:
# 00=none 01=bold 04=underscore 05=blink 07=reverse 08=concealed
# Text color codes:
# 30=black 31=red 32=green 33=yellow 34=blue 35=magenta 36=cyan 37=white
# Background color codes:
# 40=black 41=red 42=green 43=yellow 44=blue 45=magenta 46=cyan 47=white
#NORMAL 00 # no color code at all
#FILE 00 # regular file: use no color at all
RESET 0 # reset to "normal" color
DIR 01;36 # directory
LINK target # symbolic link. (If you set this to 'target' instead of a
 # numerical value, the color is as for the file pointed to.)
MULTIHARDLINK 00 # regular file with more than one link
FIFO 40;33 # pipe
SOCK 01;35 # socket
DOOR 01;35 # door
BLK 40;33;01 # block device driver
CHR 40;33;01 # character device driver
ORPHAN 40;31;01 # symlink to nonexistent file, or non-stat'able file
SETUID 37;41 # file that is setuid (u+s)
SETGID 30;43 # file that is setgid (g+s)
CAPABILITY 30;41 # file with capability
STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE 30;42 # dir that is sticky and other-writable (+t,o+w)
OTHER_WRITABLE 34;42 # dir that is other-writable (o+w) and not sticky
STICKY 37;44 # dir with the sticky bit set (+t) and not other-writable
# This is for files with execute permission:
EXEC 01;32
# List any file extensions like '.gz' or '.tar' that you would like ls
# to colorize below. Put the extension, a space, and the color init string.
# (and any comments you want to add after a '#')
# If you use DOS-style suffixes, you may want to uncomment the following:
#.cmd 01;32 # executables (bright green)
#.exe 01;32
#.com 01;32
#.btm 01;32
#.bat 01;32
# Or if you want to colorize scripts even if they do not have the
# executable bit actually set.
#.sh 01;32
#.csh 01;32
# archives or compressed (bright red)
.tar 01;31
.tgz 01;31
.arj 01;31
.taz 01;31
.lzh 01;31
.lzma 01;31
.tlz 01;31
.txz 01;31
.zip 01;31
.ZIP 01;31
.z 01;31
.Z 01;31
.dz 01;31
.gz 01;31
.lz 01;31
.xz 01;31
.bz2 01;31
.bz 01;31
.tbz 01;31
.tbz2 01;31
.tz 01;31
.deb 01;31
.rpm 01;31
.jar 01;31
.rar 01;31
.ace 01;31
.zoo 01;31
.cpio 01;31
.7z 01;31
.rz 01;31
# image formats
.jpg 01;35
.JPG 01;35
.jpeg 01;35
.JPEG 01;35
.gif 01;35
.GIF 01;35
.bmp 01;35
.BMP 01;35
.pbm 01;35
.pgm 01;35
.ppm 01;35
.tga 01;35
.xbm 01;35
.xpm 01;35
.tif 01;35
.tiff 01;35
.TIF 01;35
.TIFF 01;35
.png 01;35
.PNG 01;35
.svg 01;35
.svgz 01;35
.mng 01;35
.pcx 01;35
.mov 01;35
.MOV 01;35
.mpg 01;35
.mpeg 01;35
.m2v 01;35
.mkv 01;35
.ogm 01;35
.mp4 01;35
.m4v 01;35
.mp4v 01;35
.vob 01;35
.qt 01;35
.nuv 01;35
.wmv 01;35
.asf 01;35
.rm 01;35
.rmvb 01;35
.flc 01;35
.avi 01;35
.AVI 01;35
.fli 01;35
.flv 01;35
.swf 01;35
.gl 01;35
.dl 01;35
.xcf 01;35
.xwd 01;35
.yuv 01;35
.cgm 01;35
.emf 01;35
# http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/MIME_Types_and_File_Extensions
.axv 01;35
.anx 01;35
.ogv 01;35
.ogx 01;35
# audio formats
.aac 00;36
.au 00;36
.flac 00;36
.mid 00;36
.midi 00;36
.mka 00;36
.mp3 00;36
.MP3 00;36
.mpc 00;36
.ogg 00;36
.ra 00;36
.wav 00;36
.WAV 00;36
.wma 00;36
.m4a 00;36
# http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/MIME_Types_and_File_Extensions
.axa 00;36
.oga 00;36
.spx 00;36
.xspf 00;36