davec@gssc.UUCP (09/16/88)
I've got several questions and comments regarding the resource manager
on X11 Release 2:
1) When a client is brought up, defaults are set in the following order:
1) /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/class, if a toolkit client
2) server defaults via xrdb
3) if no server defaults, then
$HOME/.Xdefaults
4) XENVIRONMENT
5) If XENVIRONMENT not set, then
$HOME/.Xdefaults-xxxx, where xxxx is the name
of the host where the client is running.
6) command line options
Why is there a separate .Xdefaults and .Xdefaults-xxxx file, and why
are they treated differently?
Why does the use of xrdb exclude the use of .Xdefaults?
2) .Xdefaults-xxxx quickly reaches the 14 char filename limit of sysV
and other OS's. This is not a friendly interface for users. It
would be more appropriate to collapse the name into something
shorter, such as .X11-xxxx, to fit well into more environments.
Are any plans in place to fix this in R3 or later releases?
3) I don't understand the purpose of .Xdefaults-xxxx files. Why would
I have a file called .Xdefaults-A on machine B? When the client is
started, the Toolkit and Xlib will look for $HOME/.Xdefaults-B. A
client started on machine A will look in A's file system, not B's.
The only possible reason for this I see is for use with distributed
filesystems, and even then it's a bit fuzzy.
4) /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults is a directory of files where the file name
is a classname. For xterm, the classname is XTerm. Each client has
it's own classname (as far as I can tell.) This is not documented
well. For instance, given the set of clients from MIT, what are the
given classnames? Is there a way for the user to specify classnames
at runtime?
Thanks for any answers to or comments on these issues.
Dave Cobbley
{decvax, ucbvax}!tektronix!sequent!gssc!davec