Slackware64 13.37 user here.

I have the following line in my .Xresources, and it only works when I'm not running KDE:

When I start up XTerm in Xfce, TWM, or any other window manager, I get the expected black background. When I launch XTerm in KDE, I get a white background, meaning that the reverseVideo setting is not taking effect.

When I'm in KDE, launching XTerm with -rv does give me an XTerm with a black background. Obviously, having to add this switch every time I launch an XTerm in KDE is suboptimal, no matter how you try to automate it.

Manually running xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources and then launching XTerm immediately afterwards does not make a difference.

If you're wondering why this is a concern, it's because all 256-color vim color schemes (xoria256, desert256, inkpot) require reverseVideo to be set so that XTerm launches with a black background. You get a black-on-black cursor otherwise.

maybe it's because you got "apply colors to non kde applications" in the kde preferences color tab (it's on by default).

Ha! Thanks for this. I'm gonna try it. I hope setting this will mean that color0 will be replaced by the background setting.

edit: apparently it doesnt.
Hope you find what you are looking for though.

That won't work because what it actually means is "apply colors to GTK+ applications". Pure X apps (such as XTerm) have no central theming capability whatsoever.

Thank you! That was exactly it.

I would have thought the same thing as MTK358, but apparently he's mistaken.

Sahko, it sounds like you want a terminal with pseudo-transparency settings, such as aterm, eterm or rxvt-unicode.

I wonder how that's supposed to work.

Anyway, mark the thread as solved.

I think it's like this (colors are exported to X resources too) since the start of kde 4, gotta say happened to me a lot times (xterm was the app I used more since some months ago, now I switched to lxterminal).