I've set up two versions:
My computer apt-get emacs 23.0.91
Remote server yum emacs 21.4
I've downloaded color-theme-6.6.0, put the files in /usr/share/emacs/-version-/lisp/, and I have this in my .emacs:
(require 'color-theme)
(color-theme-initialize)
(color-theme-midnight)
Running emacs in a terminal, all the colors show up correctly on my computer, but on the server, I only get two colors??? The background is one color, and the text is another, no matter what theme I choose. No errors show up when I start emacs.
Any suggestions?
Paraphrased from Unix and Color Highlighting:
To be able to use syntax highlighting on a Unix/Linux box you need either a terminal that supports color. Some systems (AIX for me) require a TERMINFO file generated by tic on a xterm-color.tic file. Here's a snip:
setenv TERMINFO /home/cfl/lib/terminfo
tic xterm-color
setenv TERM xterm-color
Again, read the Unix and Color Highlighting article for all the details.
On another note, this is what my .emacs file contains for setting color (on a dark background).
;; Maximum colors
(setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)
(setq frame-background-mode 'dark)
(setq auto-mode-alist '(("\\.ad[bs]\\'" . ada-mode)
("\\.awk\\'" . awk-mode)
("\\.lex\\'" . c-mode)
("\\.[cy]\\'" . c++-mode)
("\\.h\\'" . c++-mode)
("\\.hxx\\'" . c++-mode)
("\\.[CH]\\'" . c++-mode)
("\\.java\\'" . java-mode)
("\\.cc\\'" . c++-mode)
("\\.hh\\'" . c++-mode)
("\\.cxx\\'" . c++-mode)
("\\.cpp\\'" . c++-mode)
("\\.rc\\'" . c++-mode) ;; resource files
("\\.rcv\\'" . c++-mode)
("\\.m\\'" . matlab-mode)
("\\.p[lm]\\'" . perl-mode)
("\\.cgi\\'" . perl-mode)
("\\.f\\'" . fortran-mode)
("\\.F\\'" . fortran-mode)
("\\.f90\\'" . f90-mode)
("\\.F90\\'" . f90-mode)
("\\.el\\'" . emacs-lisp-mode)
("\\.emacs\\'" . emacs-lisp-mode)
("\\.tex\\'" . LaTeX-mode)
("\\.bib\\'" . bibtex-mode)
("[Mm]akefile\\'" . makefile-mode)
("\\.mak\\'" . makefile-mode)
("\\[Mm]akefile.\\'" . makefile-mode)
("\\.bat\\'" . shell-script-mode)
("\\.tar\\'" . tar-mode)
("\\.php\\'" . php-mode)
("\\.html\\'" . html-mode)
("\\.jnlp\\'" . html-mode)
("\\.xml\\'" . html-mode)
("\\.pddl\\'" . lisp-mode)
("\\.css\\'" . css-mode)
("\\.py\\'" . python-mode)
("\\.yml\\'" . yaml-mode)
("\\.lisp\\'" . lisp-mode)))