Steve,
	thank you for your advice and it does work for the shell. 
unfortunately this has been a problem solved before, but the root of my
problem is really that I want the colors to show when I am doing a
compile in Xemacs.  The thoughts were first it lies in the shell colors
but when I got that working, it still would not show in the compile
window
interested to hear a solution
-joachim
Steve Youngs wrote:
 
 |--==> "JD" == Joachim Deguara <dga(a)emt.iis.fhg.de> writes:
 
   JD> When running a shell in Xemacs the colors do not show up!
 
 (autoload 'ansi-color-for-comint-mode-on "ansi-color" nil t)
 (add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'ansi-color-for-comint-mode-on)
 (add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
 
 Should be what you want.  If you don't have 'ansi-color.el', just
 update your text-modes package, it's in there.
 
 --
 |---<Steve Youngs>---------------<GnuPG KeyID: 10D5C9C5>---|
 |            XEmacs - It's not just an editor.             |
 |                    It's a way of life.                   |
 |------------------------------------<youngs(a)xemacs.org>---| 
-- 
Joachim Deguara				Email: dga(a)emt.iis.fhg.de
Fraunhofer IIS-AEMT			Phone: +49 3677/669-4022 
Helmholzring 1, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany	Fax:   +49 3677/669-4024