It appears that slime overwrites some color-theme variable, making the color selection option on the Emacs menu bar (under Tools) pop up this error message: face-attribute: Wrong type argument: symbolp, (slime-repl-inputed-output-face) My default.el has ... (require 'color-theme) ; wild colors ... (require 'slime) This has been occurring for awhile, I guess that color-theme is not that popular. I like using colors to help separate what username is working on what problem. Are there better alternatives? ;;; color-theme.el --- install color themes ;; Version: 6.5.4 ;; Keywords: faces ;; Author: Jonadab the Unsightly One <jonadab@bright.net> ;; Maintainer: Xavier Maillard <zedek@gnu-rox.org> ;; URL: http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ColorTheme TIA