Some time ago, Ben Wing wrote... I am sorry, I have been busy working on a big and late project last weeks, so I am not even following the list. Ghost specifiers are just more complex fallbacks. When XEmacs loads information from resources, or any other way from the window system (like user prefeences in Windows), it (the info) is put into the ghost fallback specifiers, instead of being put into the same user-tweakable specifier. This way, the provided fallback is always accurate. Ghost specifiers are modified when global variable Vunlock_ghost_specifiers is set. It is set during early init of XEmacs and every new device, when resources are read in, and explicitly for the duration of a call to {add,remove}_specs_to_ghost_specifier. Absolutely, the code is generic. Mmmmm..... When I did these, I thought about updating the ghost part when window system notifies me, not about looking up the values every time. I must admit I have been Windows-minded. What can I think of in the first place is that you can have it instantiate into a distinguishable value which woudl say to look up a real color in the window system. Just a special form of color-instance which is not allowed to slip into lisp lisp level. William, I'd be glad to be of any help, just CC me your messages, as I will not follow the XEmacs lists a few next days. Big K