Hi, here are a few more techniques to add color and images. Setting the cursor color is useful depending on your base color. You will need to provide a background.png file, or comment out the lines relating to it. The Rc->parse_string is needed to override any default colors and images in the ~/.grtkrc-2.0 file.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Glib qw/TRUE FALSE/;
use Gtk2 '-init';

Gtk2::Rc->parse_string(<<__);

pixmap_path  '.'   

style "my_text" {
font_name ="sans 24"
text[NORMAL] = "#FFAA00"
base[NORMAL] = "#000000"   
GtkTextView::cursor-color = "red"
}

style "my_cursor"{
fg[NORMAL] = "#FF0000"
}

widget "*Text*" style "my_text"


style "my-scrolledwindow"
{
    xthickness = 10
    ythickness = 10
    GtkScrolledWindow ::scrollbars-within-bevel = 1
    GtkScrolledWindow ::scrollbar-spacing = 10
    engine "pixmap"
    {
          image
          {
                function = SHADOW
                file = "./background.png"
                border = {10, 10, 10, 10}
                detail = "scrolled_window"
          }
    }
}
 
class "GtkScrolledWindow" style "my-scrolledwindow"

__

my $window = Gtk2::Window->new('toplevel');
$window->set_title('Z');
$window ->signal_connect( 'destroy' => \&delete_event );
$window->set_border_width(10);
$window->set_size_request(300,300);

my $back_pixbuf =  Gtk2::Gdk::Pixbuf->new_from_file('background.png');
my ($pixmap,$mask) = $back_pixbuf->render_pixmap_and_mask(255);
my $style = $window->get_style();
$style=$style->copy();
$style->bg_pixmap("normal",$pixmap);
$window->set_style($style);

my $vbox = Gtk2::VBox->new( FALSE, 6 );
$window->add($vbox);
$vbox->set_border_width(5);

my $hbox= Gtk2::HBox->new( FALSE, 6 );
$vbox->pack_end($hbox,FALSE,FALSE,0);

my $ebutton = Gtk2::Button->new_from_stock('gtk-quit');
$hbox->pack_end( $ebutton, FALSE, FALSE, 0 );
$ebutton->signal_connect( clicked => \&delete_event );

my $str;
my $file = shift || $0;
open( TEST, "< $file" ) or die "Cannot open test.txt\n";
while (<TEST>) {
    $str .= $_;
}
close TEST;

# Create a textbuffer to contain that string 
my $textbuffer = Gtk2::TextBuffer->new();
$textbuffer->set_text($str);

# Create a textview using that textbuffer 
my $textview = Gtk2::TextView->new_with_buffer($textbuffer);

# Add the textview to a scrolledwindow 
my $scrolledwindow = Gtk2::ScrolledWindow->new( undef, undef );
$scrolledwindow->add($textview);

$scrolledwindow->set_shadow_type ('etched-out');
$scrolledwindow->set_policy ('automatic', 'automatic');

$vbox->pack_start($scrolledwindow, 1, 1, 0 );

$window->show_all();

Gtk2->main;

#####################################
sub delete_event {
Gtk2->main_quit;
return FALSE;
}
#######################################
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