I want to set the foreground colour for the `modeline-mousable' and `modeline-buffer-id' faces from the .Xdefaults file to keep all the colour specifications in one place. However, this does not seem to work in 21.0-b60 or 21.2-b7. A glance at the code in modeline.el seems to be: 1. make-face 2. set-face-parent to `modeline' 3. set defaults (e.g. firebrick for modeline-mousable) If you do not specify a foreground, step 3 sets it to the default. If you do specify a foreground, step 1 gets the foreground, and step 2 reverts it to the default foreground for the modeline. (I tested this by commenting out the set-face-parent call.) I was able to fix the problem by putting the following lines in my .emacs file: (when (featurep 'x) (x-init-face-from-resources 'modeline-mousable nil t) (x-init-face-from-resources 'modeline-buffer-id nil t)) It would be nice though, if set-face-parent could know not to override the settings from the .Xdefaults file. Sean -- Sean MacLennan Just crank that volume to the point of pain. Ottawa, Canada Why waste good music on a brain? http://www.storm.ca/~seanm (Spinal Tap)