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I have a customization requirement (for branding purposes) to define custom colors for several backgrounds. This needs to use new color names rather than hard-wired #hex so that it can go in a shared .emacs. I don't seem to be able to find the command that will (for example) set foobar to be #314159

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  • 2
    The question is not clear to me. What do you mean by a "new color" and a "new color name"? What do you mean by "set foobar"? Are you talking about using a variable whose value is a hex color string? (setq foobar "#314160") – Drew May 28 '18 at 13:54
  • How about defface? Virtually every library I can think of define a few faces ... – lawlist May 28 '18 at 17:32
  • Sorry for not being more explicit. "new color [name]" means one that is new, ie not already defined (by X or wherever Emacs gets its existing color names from). My example "set foobar" was intended to imply that there may be a command to do this, whose name I do not know (foobar is a token commonly used as a generic example in discussing computer documentation). Put another way, how do I define the name "foobar" to equate to "#314159" (or perhaps a decimal RGB triplet) so that I can use the name in a command like 'set background-color'? Maybe it is a variable I want; I don't know. – Peter Flynn May 29 '18 at 7:28
  • No, not a whole face; I want a named color that I can use in 'set background-color'. – Peter Flynn May 29 '18 at 7:29
  • Your setq example does the job, thank you. I was expecting that it would need something a lot more complex, and also that dereferencing it in a (set-background-color ...) command would require some kind of signal or flag character. – Peter Flynn May 29 '18 at 7:39
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The requirement was for a different background color for each remote host logged into. This snippet is now at the end of the shared .emacs on each host:

(setq colors-for-machines
  '(
("adam" . "seashell")
("eve" . "lavender blush")
("lucifer" . "lavender")
("cherub" . "linen")
("moly" . "alice blue")
("athame" . "mint cream")
("aziraphael" . "alice blue")
))
;;
(set-background-color
 (cdr
  (assoc (nth 0 (split-string (system-name) "\\."))
         colors-for-machines)))

(edited for names to protect the guilty :-)

Thanks to all who contributed.

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  • Just curious -- any reason you went with (nth 0 ...) instead of (car ...)? – cyberbisson Apr 26 '19 at 15:06

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