File->OPen file list does not highlight selection...

[Scott Tringali]

KDE helpfully turns the select & highlight color to the same color as 
the background color.  Why?  Maybe they don't like us.

Try this:
   nedit -xrm '*selectColor: blue' -xrm '*highlightColor: red'

Not that you'd ever use blue or red, but it will show you pretty plainly 
which color is used where.  Once you've got something you like, you can 
save off that as an X resource.

Or, you can turn off "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE applications".