Ken,

>How do they fail to work?  Does the error message above mean you found
>a bug _in_ _ctwm_, or one _in_ _the_ _server_?
>
Well, the message says "Congratulations you've found a bug in ctwm"!

>> The only wm that works is twm.

I've given up for now, but if I find fvwm 1.24, I'll give that a try.
>
>Well, the 'old' distribution and the color server are old, but not
>that old.  AFAIK, there has been no major X protocol change (one major

Ok, I was just wondering out loud, since I was told that the color X
server won't work with the more current X.

Paul