How to reverse video by default in Emacs?

Question

I am running Emacs 24.3.1 on Mac OS 10.9, compiled on my machine from source through MacPorts. (For good measure I also tried a 24.3 binary from emacsformacosx.com.) I can use the -r switch from the command line to get Emacs to run in reverse video, however adding a customization to my .emacs file (setq inverse-video t) or through the Emacs customization menu is having no effect. Does anyone know another way to reverse the video without running Emacs from the command line?

Answer 1

The problem is that the usual Emacs init file (~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el) is read after the GUI is initialized, so it has no effect on reverse video. You have to stick with the command line option --reverse-video or -rv or -r.

However, Emacs 28.1 (not yet released) adds an early init file ‘~/.emacs.d/early-init.el which is loaded before GUI is initialized, and if you put

(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(reverse . t))
(setq initial-frame-alist default-frame-alist)

into it, your Emacs will start with reverse video.

Answer 2

I put this in my .emacs file: (Running GNU Emacs 21.1.3 on x86 linux)

(set-background-color "black")
(set-foreground-color "white")

Edit / update: Works just fine for the first frame. But a new frame is opened with a white background, and black text. Have some vague recollection of separately setting the frame background/foreground colors in the past, but don't know the name of the setting.

Answer 3

I have found this solution which "works for me" on GNU emacs 25.3.1 running on macOS High Sierra / 10.13.2. It's obviously a bit of a hack but maybe it's a good start towards a more solid solution.

(if (display-graphic-p)
   (progn (setq default-frame-alist
             (cons (cons 'reverse t) default-frame-alist))
     (select-frame (make-frame))
     (delete-other-frames) )
 )

the if clause means that the normal terminal based emacs doesn't get messed up by this.

Answer 4

Run emacs with the ReverseVideo flag in Linux:

$ emacs -rv &

Answer 5

I'm using Emacs 24.3 downloaded from emacsformacosx.com on Mac 10.8.5.

Launch the AppleScript Editor, paste in the below line.

do shell script "open -a Emacs.app --args -r"

Now save as "ReverseEmacs" (or your preferred application name) with a File Format of "Application." Double-click your script icon and up comes Emacs with reverse video. Enjoy!

Answer 6

This works in 25.1 (and 27.2) on Linux, Windows, and MacOS:

(set-face-background  'default   "black")
(set-face-foreground  'default   "white")

New frames are handled too.