X Window System User's Guide, Vol 3 (The Definitive Guides to the X Window System)

10

Setting Resources

This chapter describes how to set resource variables that determine application features such as color, geometry, fonts, and so on. It describes the syntax of resource definition files such as .Xresources, as well as the operation of xrdb, a client that can be used to change resource definitions dynamically and make resources available to clients running on other machines.

In This Chapter:

Resource Naming Syntax

Syntax of Toolkit Client Resources

Tight Bindings and Loose Bindings

Instances and Classes

Precedence Rules for Resource Specification

Some Common Resources

10

Setting Resources

Virtually all X clients are customizable. You can specify how a client looks on the screen—its size and placement, its border and background color or pattern, whether the window has a scrollbar, and so on. Some applications even allow you to redefine the keystrokes or pointer actions used to control the application.

Traditional UNIX applications rely on command line options to allow users to customize the way they work. As we've already discussed in Chapter 9, Command Line Options, X applications support command line options too, but often not for all features. Also, there can be so many customizable features in an application that entering a command line to set them all would be completely impractical. (Imagine the aggravation of misspelling an option in a command that was three lines long!)

X offers an alternative to customizing an application on the command line. Almost ...