color in man pages and less etc

[Harry Putnam]

netopml at newview.com writes:

> reader at newsguy.com (Harry Putnam) writes:
>> Maybe I wasn't clear... I've had a vimrc of long standing especially so
>> my syn coloring works on dark.   What I said about vim is that I see
>> escape sequences ... setting `dark' won't help that.
>
> Read the archives, your problem has already been described here or go to
> bugzilla:

Ok thanks, I've found the proposed work arounds.  But don't understand
the nature of the bug.

Setting term to gnome-rh90 before calling vim.  Makes it look right
here so I've written a tiny wrapper called `vam' that does that then
calls vim "$@".   But does someone here understand what is the source
of the problem.  Is it in ncurses or termcap ....

My man pages still have bad coloring regardless of setting TERM as
above.  I used to control this with an .Xdefaults, then later an
.Xresources files with xterm res settings.  Those have disappeared as
part of what gets generated for new user.  And I hear no commets about
them anymore so where is that sort of control exercised currently?
(I'm running kde desktop)