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| -rw-r--r-- | man/cmdargs.texi | 6 |
1 files changed, 5 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/man/cmdargs.texi b/man/cmdargs.texi index dbc60e1d867..6bda286c929 100644 --- a/man/cmdargs.texi +++ b/man/cmdargs.texi @@ -397,11 +397,15 @@ Used by the @sc{gnus} package. @item SHELL The name of an interpreter used to parse and execute programs run from inside Emacs. +@cindex background mode, on @code{xterm} @item TERM The name of the terminal that Emacs is running on. The variable must be set unless Emacs is run in batch mode. On MS-DOS, it defaults to @samp{internal}, which specifies a built-in terminal emulation that -handles the machine's own display. +handles the machine's own display. If the value of @env{TERM} indicates +that Emacs runs in non-windowed mode from @code{xterm} or a similar +terminal emulator, the background mode defaults to @samp{light}, and +Emacs will choose colors that are appropriate for a light background. @item TERMCAP The name of the termcap library file describing how to program the terminal specified by the @env{TERM} variable. This defaults to |