There is a bug in the face inheritance (merging I guess) code that only shows itself in mswindows but can be replicated in X. To duplicate it set the background pixmap of the default face to something and set the background color of the modeline face to something. You then see on the modeline an alternating background of pixmap and color. You always see this under mswindows since mswindows sets the modeline color to something but X relies on inheriting the color from the default face. The bug is that the background color is taken in preference to pixmap when the former is set and the latter inherited, but otherwise the background pixmap is taken in preference. Thus in the above example the backgrond color is seen for the modeline. This is ok but for faces that inherit from modeline (e.g. modeline-mousable) since they inherit *both*, the pixmap is taken in preference to the background. I don't know enough about the face code to know what the fix should be or how to do it. Any pointers appreciated. andy