Bug#759734: xterm: the cursor hides the underneath character when in reverse video with xterm -bg black -fg white

[Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.net>]

Package: xterm
Version: 308-1
Severity: normal

The cursor hides the underneath character when it is in reverse video
with "xterm -bg black -fg white". To reproduce this, select the
beginning of a command line and move the cursor backward to the
selected part. This also occurs with links, links2 and elinks for
the current link (because reverse video is also used).

Changing the cursor color with -xrm '*cursorColor: ...' by using a
color that is neither too dark nor too light may be a workaround, but:
  * this limits the possible colors of the cursor;
  * this probably doesn't solve the problem if an app displays colored
    text with the cursor above;
  * the default color should work;
  * this problem doesn't occur with rxvt or gnome-terminal, so there's
    no reason why xterm should be the only one with cursor problems;
  * the problem doesn't even occur in xterm with opposite settings
    (the default -bg white -fg black).

Actually it seems that setting the cursor to black with

  xterm -bg black -fg white -xrm '*cursorColor: black'

solves this problem, while the cursor remains white in the normal case.
This may be OK but completely unintuitive! And not documented.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.11-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=POSIX, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages xterm depends on:
ii  libc6           2.19-10
ii  libfontconfig1  2.11.0-6.1
ii  libice6         2:1.0.9-1
ii  libtinfo5       5.9+20140712-2
ii  libutempter0    1.1.5-4
ii  libx11-6        2:1.6.2-3
ii  libxaw7         2:1.0.12-2
ii  libxft2         2.3.2-1
ii  libxmu6         2:1.1.2-1
ii  libxpm4         1:3.5.11-1
ii  libxt6          1:1.1.4-1
ii  xbitmaps        1.1.1-2

Versions of packages xterm recommends:
ii  x11-utils  7.7+2

Versions of packages xterm suggests:
pn  xfonts-cyrillic  <none>

-- debconf-show failed