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NAME [Toc] [Back]
X - a portable, network-transparent window system
SYNOPSIS [Toc] [Back]
The X Window System is a network transparent window system developed at
MIT which runs on a wide range of computing and graphics machines. It
should be relatively straightforward to build the MIT software
distribution on most ANSI C and POSIX compliant systems. Commercial
implementations are also available for a wide range of platforms.
The X Consortium requests that the following names be used when
referring to this software:
X
X Window System
X Version 11
X Window System, Version 11
X11
X Window System is a trademark of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
DESCRIPTION [Toc] [Back]
X Window System servers run on computers with bitmap displays. The
server distributes user input to and accepts output requests from
various client programs through a variety of different interprocess
communication channels. Although the most common case is for the
client programs to be running on the same machine as the server,
clients can be run transparently from other machines (including
machines with different architectures and operating systems) as well.
X supports overlapping hierarchical subwindows and text and graphics
operations, on both monochrome and color displays. For a full
explanation of the functions that are available, see the Xlib - C
Language X Interface manual, the X Window System Protocol
specification, the X Toolkit Intrinsics - C Language Interface manual,
and various toolkit documents.
The number of programs that use X is quite large. Programs provided
in the core MIT distribution include: a terminal emulator (xterm), a
window manager (twm), a display manager (xdm), a console redirect
program (xconsole), mail managing utilities (xmh and xbiff), a manual
page browser (xman), a bitmap editor (bitmap), a resource editor
(editres), a ditroff previewer (xditview), access control programs
(xauth and xhost), user preference setting programs (xrdb, xcmsdb,
xset, xsetroot, xstdcmap, and xmodmap), a load monitor (xload), clocks
(xclock and oclock), a font displayer (xfd), utilities for listing
information about fonts, windows, and displays (xlsfonts, xfontsel,
xwininfo, xlsclients, xdpyinfo, and xprop), a diagnostic for seeing
what events are generated and when (xev), screen image manipulation
utilities (xwd, xwud, xpr, and xmag), and various demos (xeyes, ico,
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xgc, x11perf, etc.).
Hewlett-Packard provides a graphical user environment called The
Common Desktop Environment (CDE). CDE is the user interface, enabling
the user to control a workstation by directly manipulating graphic
objects instead of typing commands on a command-line prompt. See the
"CDE User's Guide" and "CDE Advanced User's and System Administrator's
Guide" for more information on CDE.
Hewlett-Packard does not provide or support the entire core MIT
distribution. Many of these programs or clients are sample
implementations, or perform tasks that are accomplished by other
clients in Hewlett-Packard's Visual User Environment. The primary
differences between the core MIT distribution and the Hewlett-Packard
X11 release are listed below. See appendix A in "Using the X Window
System" for a complete list of the clients supplied and supported with
Hewlett-Packard's X11 release.
Terminal Emulation [Toc] [Back]
hpterm is the primary terminal emulator. xterm is also provided
and supported.
Window Management [Toc] [Back]
twm is replaced by mwm and dtwm.
Display Manager [Toc] [Back]
xdm is replaced by an enhanced version called dtlogin. terminal
emulators.
Bitmap Editing [Toc] [Back]
bitmap is replaced by dticon.
Font Display [Toc] [Back]
Handled by the terminal emulation option -fn override. xfd is
supplied but not supported.
Demos [Toc] [Back]
Obtained from the INTERWORKS users group.
A number of unsupported core MIT clients and miscellaneous utilities
are provided in /usr/contrib/bin. In addition, the entire core MIT
distribution, compiled for Hewlett-Packard platforms, can be obtained
from HP's users group INTERWORKS for a nominal fee. See the release
notes for details.
Many other utilities, window managers, games, toolkits, etc. are
included as user-contributed software in the MIT distribution, or are
available using anonymous ftp on the Internet. See your site
administrator for details.
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STARTING UP [Toc] [Back]
Normally, the X Window System is started on Hewlett-Packard systems by
dtlogin, which is an enhanced version of the MIT client xdm. If
dtlogin is not used, xinit may be used with x11start. See the man
pages for these functions for more information.
DISPLAY NAMES [Toc] [Back]
From the user's perspective, every X server has a display name of the
form:
hostname:displaynumber.screennumber
This information is used by the application to determine how it should
connect to the server and which screen it should use by default (on
displays with multiple monitors):
hostname
The hostname specifies the name of the machine to which the
display is physically connected. If the hostname is not
given, the most efficient way of communicating to a server on
the same machine will be used.
displaynumber
The phrase "display" is usually used to refer to the
collection of monitors that share a common keyboard and
pointer (mouse, tablet, etc.). Most workstations tend to only
have one keyboard, and therefore, only one display. Larger,
multi-user systems, however, will frequently have several
displays so that more than one person can be doing graphics
work at once. To avoid confusion, each display on a machine
is assigned a display number (beginning at 0) when the X
server for that display is started. The display number must
always be given in a display name.
screennumber
Some displays share a single keyboard and pointer among two or
more monitors. Since each monitor has its own set of windows,
each screen is assigned a screen number (beginning at 0) when
the X server for that display is started. If the screen
number is not given, then screen 0 will be used.
On POSIX systems, the default display name is stored in your DISPLAY
environment variable. This variable is set automatically by the xterm
terminal emulator. However, when you log into another machine on a
network, you'll need to set DISPLAY by hand to point to your display.
For example,
% setenv DISPLAY myws:0
$ DISPLAY=myws:0; export DISPLAY
The xon script can be used to start an X program on a remote machine;
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it automatically sets the DISPLAY variable correctly.
Finally, most X programs accept a command line option of -display
displayname to temporarily override the contents of DISPLAY. This is
most commonly used to pop windows on another person's screen or as
part of a "remote shell" command to start an xterm pointing back to
your display. For example,
% xload -display joesws:0 -geometry 100x100+0+0
% rsh big xterm -display myws:0 -ls </dev/null &
X servers listen for connections on a variety of different
communications channels (network byte streams, shared memory, etc.).
Since there can be more than one way of contacting a given server, The
hostname part of the display name is used to determine the type of
channel (also called a transport layer) to be used. X servers
generally support the following types of connections:
local
The hostname part of the display name should be the empty
string. For example: :0, :1, and :0.1. The most efficient
local transport is chosen.
TCP/IP
The hostname part of the display name should be the server
machine's IP address name. Full Internet names, abbreviated
names, and IP addresses are all allowed. For example:
expo.lcs.mit.edu:0, expo:0, 18.30.0.212:0, bigmachine:1, and
hydra:0.1.
ACCESS CONTROL [Toc] [Back]
An X server can use several types of access control. Mechanisms
provided in Release 5 are:
Host Access Simple host-based access control.
MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 Shared plain-text "cookies".
XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 Secure DES based private-keys.
SUN-DES-1 Based on Sun's secure rpc system.
dtlogin/Xdm initializes access control for the server, and also places
authorization information in a file accessible to the user. Normally,
the list of hosts from which connections are always accepted should be
empty, so that only clients with are explicitly authorized can connect
to the display. When you add entries to the host list (with xhost),
the server no longer performs any authorization on connections from
those machines. Be careful with this.
The file from which Xlib extracts authorization data can be specified
with the environment variable XAUTHORITY, and defaults to the file
.Xauthority in the home directory. dtlogin/Xdm uses $HOME/.Xauthority
and will create it or merge in authorization records if it already
exists when a user logs in.
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If you use several machines, and share a common home directory across
all of the machines by means of a network file system, then you never
really have to worry about authorization files, the system should work
correctly by default. Otherwise, as the authorization files are
machine-independent, you can simply copy the files to share them. To
manage authorization files, use xauth. This program allows you to
extract records and insert them into other files. Using this, you can
send authorization to remote machines when you login, if the remote
machine does not share a common home directory with your local
machine. Note that authorization information transmitted ``in the
clear'' through a network file system or using ftp or rcp can be
``stolen'' by a network eavesdropper, and as such may enable
unauthorized access. In many environments this level of security is
not a concern, but if it is, you need to know the exact semantics of
the particular authorization data to know if this is actually a
problem.
GEOMETRY SPECIFICATIONS [Toc] [Back]
One of the advantages of using window systems instead of hardwired
terminals is that applications don't have to be restricted to a
particular size or location on the screen. Although the layout of
windows on a display is controlled by the window manager that the user
is running (described below), most X programs accept a command line
argument of the form -geometry WIDTHxHEIGHT+XOFF+YOFF (where WIDTH,
HEIGHT, XOFF, and YOFF are numbers) for specifying a preferred size
and location for this application's main window.
The WIDTH and HEIGHT parts of the geometry specification are usually
measured in either pixels or characters, depending on the application.
The XOFF and YOFF parts are measured in pixels and are used to specify
the distance of the window from the left or right and top and bottom
edges of the screen, respectively. Both types of offsets are measured
from the indicated edge of the screen to the corresponding edge of the
window. The X offset may be specified in the following ways:
+XOFF The left edge of the window is to be placed XOFF pixels in
from the left edge of the screen (i.e. the X coordinate of the
window's origin will be XOFF). XOFF may be negative, in which
case the window's left edge will be off the screen.
-XOFF The right edge of the window is to be placed XOFF pixels in
from the right edge of the screen. XOFF may be negative, in
which case the window's right edge will be off the screen.
The Y offset has similar meanings:
+YOFF The top edge of the window is to be YOFF pixels below the top
edge of the screen (i.e. the Y coordinate of the window's
origin will be YOFF). YOFF may be negative, in which case the
window's top edge will be off the screen.
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-YOFF The bottom edge of the window is to be YOFF pixels above the
bottom edge of the screen. YOFF may be negative, in which
case the window's bottom edge will be off the screen.
Offsets must be given as pairs; in other words, in order to specify
either XOFF or YOFF both must be present. Windows can be placed in
the four corners of the screen using the following specifications:
+0+0 upper left hand corner.
-0+0 upper right hand corner.
-0-0 lower right hand corner.
+0-0 lower left hand corner.
In the following examples, a terminal emulator will be placed in
roughly the center of the screen and a load average monitor, mailbox,
and clock will be placed in the upper right hand corner:
xterm -fn 6x10 -geometry 80x24+30+200 &
xclock -geometry 48x48-0+0 &
xload -geometry 48x48-96+0 &
xbiff -geometry 48x48-48+0 &
WINDOW MANAGERS [Toc] [Back]
The layout of windows on the screen is controlled by special programs
called window managers. Although many window managers will honor
geometry specifications as given, others may choose to ignore them
(requiring the user to explicitly draw the window's region on the
screen with the pointer, for example).
Since window managers are regular (albeit complex) client programs, a
variety of different user interfaces can be built. The HewlettPackard
distribution comes with window managers named mwm and dtwm
which support overlapping windows, popup menus, point-and-click or
click-to-type input models, title bars, nice icons (and an icon
manager for those who don't like separate icon windows).
See the user-contributed software in the MIT distribution for other
popular window managers.
FONT NAMES [Toc] [Back]
Collections of characters for displaying text and symbols in X are
known as fonts. A font typically contains images that share a common
appearance and look nice together (for example, a single size,
boldness, slant, and character set). Similarly, collections of fonts
that are based on a common type face (the variations are usually
called roman, bold, italic, bold italic, oblique, and bold oblique)
are called families.
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Fonts come in various sizes. The X server supports scalable fonts,
meaning it is possible to create a font of arbitrary size from a
single source for the font. The server supports scaling from outline
fonts and bitmap fonts. Scaling from outline fonts usually produces
significantly better results than scaling from bitmap fonts.
An X server can obtain fonts from individual files stored in
directories in the file system, or from one or more font servers, or
from a mixtures of directories and font servers. The list of places
the server looks when trying to find a font is controlled by its font
path. Although most installations will choose to have the server
start up with all of the commonly used font directories in the font
path, the font path can be changed at any time with the xset program.
However, it is important to remember that the directory names are on
the server's machine, not on the application's. Usually, fonts usex
by X servers and font servers can be found in subdirectories under
/usr/lib/X11/fonts.:
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/iso_8859.1/75dpi
This directory contains bitmap fonts contributed by Adobe
Systems, Inc., Digital Equipment Corporation, Bitstream, Inc.,
Bigelow and Holmes, and Sun Microsystems, Inc. for 75 dots
per inch displays. An integrated selection of sizes, styles,
and weights are provided for each family.
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/iso_8859.1/100dpi
This directory contains 100 dots per inch versions of some of
the fonts in the 75dpi directory.
Bitmap font files are usually created by compiling a textual font
description into binary form, using bdftopcf. Font databases are
created by running the mkfontdir program in the directory containing
the source or compiled versions of the fonts. Whenever fonts are
added to a directory, mkfontdir should be rerun so that the server can
find the new fonts. To make the server reread the font database,
reset the font path with the xset program. For example, to add a font
to a private directory, the following commands could be used:
% cp newfont.pcf ~/myfonts
% mkfontdir ~/myfonts
% xset fp rehash
The xlsfonts program can be used to list the fonts available on a
server. Font names tend to be fairly long as they contain all of the
information needed to uniquely identify individual fonts. However,
the X server supports wildcarding of font names, so the full
specification
-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-m-60-iso8859-1
might be abbreviated as:
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-*-courier-medium-r-normal--*-100-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
Because the shell also has special meanings for * and ?, wildcarded
font names should be quoted:
% xlsfonts -fn '-*-courier-medium-r-normal--*-100-*-*-*-*-*-*'
The xlsfonts program can be used to list all of the fonts that match a
given pattern. With no arguments, it lists all available fonts. This
will usually list the same font at many different sizes. To see just
the base scalable font names, try using one of the following patterns:
-*-*-*-*-*-*-0-0-0-0-*-0-*-*
-*-*-*-*-*-*-0-0-75-75-*-0-*-*
-*-*-*-*-*-*-0-0-100-100-*-0-*-*
To convert one of the resulting names into a font at a specific size,
replace one of the first two zeros with a nonzero value. The field
containing the first zero is for the pixel size; replace it with a
specific height in pixels to name a font at that size. Alternatively,
the field containing the second zero is for the point size; replace it
with a specific size in decipoints (there are 722.7 decipoints to the
inch) to name a font at that size. The last zero is an average width
field, measured in tenths of pixels; some servers will anamorphically
scale if this value is specified. See chapter 6 of Using the X Window
System. to
FONT SERVER NAMES [Toc] [Back]
One of the following forms can be used to name a font server that
accepts TCP connections:
tcp/hostname:port
tcp/hostname:port/cataloguelist
The hostname specifies the name (or decimal numeric address) of the
machine on which the font server is running. The port is the decimal
TCP port on which the font server is listening for connections. The
cataloguelist specifies a list of catalogue names, with '+' as a
separator.
Examples: tcp/expo.lcs.mit.edu:7000, tcp/18.30.0.212:7001/all.
COLOR NAMES [Toc] [Back]
Most applications provide ways of tailoring (usually through resources
or command line arguments) the colors of various elements in the text
and graphics they display. A color can be specified either by an
abstract color name, or by a numerical color specification. The
numerical specification can identify a color in either devicedependent
(RGB) or device-independent terms. Color strings are caseinsensitive.
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X supports the use of abstract color names, for example, "red",
"blue". A value for this abstract name is obtained by searching one
or more color name databases. Xlib first searches zero or more
client-side databases; the number, location, and content of these
databases is implementation dependent. If the name is not found, the
color is looked up in the X server's database. The text form of this
database is commonly stored in the file /usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt.
A numerical color specification consists of a color space name and a
set of values in the following syntax:
<color_space_name>:<value>/.../<value>
An RGB Device specification is identified by the prefix "rgb:" and has
the following syntax:
rgb:<red>/<green>/<blue>
<red>, <green>, <blue> := h | hh | hhh | hhhh
h := single hexadecimal digits
Note that h indicates the value scaled in 4 bits, hh the value scaled
in 8 bits, hhh the value scaled in 12 bits, and hhhh the value scaled
in 16 bits, respectively. These values are passed directly to the X
server, and are assumed to be gamma corrected.
The eight primary colors can be represented as:
black rgb:0/0/0
red rgb:ffff/0/0
green rgb:0/ffff/0
blue rgb:0/0/ffff
yellow rgb:ffff/ffff/0
magenta rgb:ffff/0/ffff
cyan rgb:0/ffff/ffff
white rgb:ffff/ffff/ffff
For backward compatibility, an older syntax for RGB Device is
supported, but its continued use is not encouraged. The syntax is an
initial sharp sign character followed by a numeric specification, in
one of the following formats:
#RGB (4 bits each)
#RRGGBB (8 bits each)
#RRRGGGBBB (12 bits each)
#RRRRGGGGBBBB (16 bits each)
The R, G, and B represent single hexadecimal digits. When fewer than
16 bits each are specified, they represent the most-significant bits
of the value (unlike the "rgb:" syntax, in which values are scaled).
For example, #3a7 is the same as #3000a0007000.
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An RGB intensity specification is identified by the prefix "rgbi:" and
has the following syntax:
rgbi:<red>/<green>/<blue>
The red, green, and blue are floating point values between 0.0 and
1.0, inclusive. They represent linear intensity values, with 1.0
indicating full intensity, 0.5 half intensity, and so on. These
values will be gamma corrected by Xlib before being sent to the X
server. The input format for these values is an optional sign, a
string of numbers possibly containing a decimal point, and an optional
exponent field containing an E or e followed by a possibly signed
integer string.
The standard device-independent string specifications have the
following syntax:
CIEXYZ:<X>/<Y>/<Z> (none, 1, none)
CIEuvY:<u>/<v>/<Y> (~.6, ~.6, 1)
CIExyY:<x>/<y>/<Y> (~.75, ~.85, 1)
CIELab:<L>/<a>/<b> (100, none, none)
CIELuv:<L>/<u>/<v> (100, none, none)
TekHVC:<H>/<V>/<C> (360, 100, 100)
All of the values (C, H, V, X, Y, Z, a, b, u, v, y, x) are floating
point values. Some of the values are constrained to be between zero
and some upper bound; the upper bounds are given in parentheses above.
The syntax for these values is an optional '+' or '-' sign, a string
of digits possibly containing a decimal point, and an optional
exponent field consisting of an 'E' or 'e' followed by an optional '+'
or '-' followed by a string of digits.
For more information on device independent color, see the Xlib
reference manual.
KEYBOARDS [Toc] [Back]
The X keyboard model is broken into two layers: server-specific codes
(called keycodes) which represent the physical keys, and serverindependent
symbols (called keysyms) which represent the letters or
words that appear on the keys. Two tables are kept in the server for
converting keycodes to keysyms:
modifier list
Some keys (such as Shift, Control, and Caps Lock) are known as
modifier and are used to select different symbols that are
attached to a single key (such as Shift-a generates a capital
A, and Control-l generates a control character ^L). The
server keeps a list of keycodes corresponding to the various
modifier keys. Whenever a key is pressed or released, the
server generates an event that contains the keycode of the
indicated key as well as a mask that specifies which of the
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modifier keys are currently pressed. Most servers set up this
list to initially contain the various shift, control, and
shift lock keys on the keyboard.
keymap table
Applications translate event keycodes and modifier masks into
keysyms using a keysym table which contains one row for each
keycode and one column for various modifier states. This
table is initialized by the server to correspond to normal
typewriter conventions. The exact semantics of how the table
is interpreted to produce keysyms depends on the particular
program, libraries, and language input method used, but the
following conventions for the first four keysyms in each row
are generally adhered to:
The first four elements of the list are split into two groups of
keysyms. Group 1 contains the first and second keysyms; Group 2
contains the third and fourth keysyms. Within each group, if the
first element is alphabetic and the the second element is the special
keysym NoSymbol, then the group is treated as equivalent to a group in
which the first element is the lowercase letter and the second element
is the uppercase letter.
Switching between groups is controlled by the keysym named MODE
SWITCH, by attaching that keysym to some key and attaching that key to
any one of the modifiers Mod1 through Mod5. This modifier is called
the ``group modifier.'' Group 1 is used when the group modifier is
off, and Group 2 is used when the group modifier is on.
Within a group, the modifier state determines which keysym to use.
The first keysym is used when the Shift and Lock modifiers are off.
The second keysym is used when the Shift modifier is on, when the Lock
modifier is on and the second keysym is uppercase alphabetic, or when
the Lock modifier is on and is interpreted as ShiftLock. Otherwise,
when the Lock modifier is on and is interpreted as CapsLock, the state
of the Shift modifier is applied first to select a keysym; but if that
keysym is lowercase alphabetic, then the corresponding uppercase
keysym is used instead.
OPTIONS [Toc] [Back]
Most X programs attempt to use the same names for command line options
and arguments. All applications written with the X Toolkit Intrinsics
automatically accept the following options:
-display display
This option specifies the name of the X server to use.
-geometry geometry
This option specifies the initial size and location of the
window.
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-bg color, -background color
Either option specifies the color to use for the window
background.
-bd color, -bordercolor color
Either option specifies the color to use for the window
border.
-bw number, -borderwidth number
Either option specifies the width in pixels of the window
border.
-fg color, -foreground color
Either option specifies the color to use for text or graphics.
-fn font, -font font
Either option specifies the font to use for displaying text.
-iconic
This option indicates that the user would prefer that the
application's windows initially not be visible as if the
windows had be immediately iconified by the user. Window
managers may choose not to honor the application's request.
-name
This option specifies the name under which resources for the
application should be found. This option is useful in shell
aliases to distinguish between invocations of an application,
without resorting to creating links to alter the executable
file name.
-rv, -reverse
Either option indicates that the program should simulate
reverse video if possible, often by swapping the foreground
and background colors. Not all programs honor this or
implement it correctly. It is usually only used on monochrome
displays.
+rv
This option indicates that the program should not simulate
reverse video. This is used to override any defaults since
reverse video doesn't always work properly.
-selectionTimeout
This option specifies the timeout in milliseconds within which
two communicating applications must respond to one another for
a selection request.
-synchronous
This option indicates that requests to the X server should be
sent synchronously, instead of asynchronously. Since Xlib
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normally buffers requests to the server, errors do not
necessarily get reported immediately after they occur. This
option turns off the buffering so that the application can be
debugged. It should never be used with a working program.
-title string
This option specifies the title to be used for this window.
This information is sometimes used by a window manager to
provide some sort of header identifying the window.
-xnllanguage language[_territory][.codeset]
This option specifies the language, territory, and codeset for
use in resolving resource and other filenames.
-xrm resourcestring
This option specifies a resource name and value to override
any defaults. It is also very useful for setting resources
that don't have explicit command line arguments.
RESOURCES [Toc] [Back]
To make the tailoring of applications to personal preferences easier,
X provides a mechanism for storing default values for program
resources (e.g. background color, window title, etc.) Resources are
specified as strings that are read in from various places when an
application is run. Program components are named in a hierarchical
fashion, with each node in the hierarchy identified by a class and an
instance name. At the top level is the class and instance name of the
application itself. By convention, the class name of the application
is the same as the program name, but with the first letter
capitalized, although some programs that begin with the letter ``x''
also capitalize the second letter for historical reasons.
The precise syntax for resources is:
ResourceLine = Comment | IncludeFile | ResourceSpec | <empty line>
Comment = "!" {<any character except null or newline>}
IncludeFile = "#" WhiteSpace "include" WhiteSpace FileName WhiteSpace
FileName = <valid filename for operating system>
ResourceSpec = WhiteSpace ResourceName WhiteSpace ":" WhiteSpace Value
ResourceName = [Binding] {Component Binding} ComponentName
Binding = "." | "*"
WhiteSpace = {<space> | <horizontal tab>}
Component = "?" | ComponentName
ComponentName = NameChar {NameChar}
NameChar = "a"-"z" | "A"-"Z" | "0"-"9" | "_" | "-"
Value = {<any character except null or unescaped newline>}
Elements separated by vertical bar (|) are alternatives. Curly braces
({...}) indicate zero or more repetitions of the enclosed elements.
Square brackets ([...]) indicate that the enclosed element is
optional. Quotes ("...") are used around literal characters.
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IncludeFile lines are interpreted by replacing the line with the
contents of the specified file. The word "include" must be in
lowercase. The filename is interpreted relative to the directory of
the file in which the line occurs (for example, if the filename
contains no directory or contains a relative directory specification).
If a ResourceName contains a contiguous sequence of two or more
Binding characters, the sequence will be replaced with single "."
character if the sequence contains only "." characters, otherwise the
sequence will be replaced with a single "*" character.
A resource database never contains more than one entry for a given
ResourceName. If a resource file contains multiple lines with the
same ResourceName, the last line in the file is used.
Any whitespace character before or after the name or colon in a
ResourceSpec are ignored. To allow a Value to begin with whitespace,
the two-character sequence ``\space'' (backslash followed by space) is
recognized and replaced by a space character, and the two-character
sequence ``\tab'' (backslash followed by horizontal tab) is recognized
and replaced by a horizontal tab character. To allow a Value to
contain embedded newline characters, the two-character sequence ``\n''
is recognized and replaced by a newline character. To allow a Value
to be broken across multiple lines in a text file, the two-character
sequence ``\newline'' (backslash followed by newline) is recognized
and removed from the value. To allow a Value to contain arbitrary
character codes, the four-character sequence ``\nnn'', where each n is
a digit character in the range of ``0''-``7'', is recognized and
replaced with a single byte that contains the octal value specified by
the sequence. Finally, the two-character sequence ``\\'' is
recognized and replaced with a single backslash.
When an application looks for the value of a resource, it specifies a
complete path in the hierarchy, with both class and instance names.
However, resource values are usually given with only partially
specified names and classes, using pattern matching constructs. An
asterisk (*) is a loose binding and is used to represent any number of
intervening components, including none. A period (.) is a tight
binding and is used to separate immediately adjacent components. A
question mark (?) is used to match any single component name or class.
A database entry cannot end in a loose binding; the final component
(which cannot be "?") must be specified. The lookup algorithm
searches the resource database for the entry that most closely matches
(is most specific for) the full name and class being queried. When
more than one database entry matches the full name and class,
precedence rules are used to select just one. The full name and class
are scanned from left to right (from highest level in the hierarchy to
lowest), one component at a time. At each level, the corresponding
component and/or binding of each matching entry is determined, and
these matching components and bindings are compared according to
precedence rules. Each of the rules is applied at each level, before
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moving to the next level, until a rule selects a single entry over all
others. The rules (in order of precedence) are:
1. An entry that contains a matching component (whether name, class,
or "?") takes precedence over entries that elide the level (that
is, entries that match the level in a loose binding).
2. An entry with a matching name takes precedence over both entries
with a matching class and entries that match using "?". An entry
with a matching class takes precedence over entries that match
using "?".
3. An entry preceded by a tight binding takes precedence over
entries preceded by a loose binding.
Programs based on the X Tookit Intrinsics obtain resources from the
following sources (other programs usually support some subset of these
sources):
RESOURCE_MANAGER root window property [Toc] [Back]
Any global resources that should be available to clients on
all machines should be stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property
on the root window of the first screen using the xrdb program.
This is frequently taken care of when the user starts X
through the display manager.
SCREEN_RESOURCES root window property [Toc] [Back]
Any resources specific to a given screen (e.g. colors) that
should be available to clients on all machines should be
stored in the SCREEN_RESOURCES property on the root window of
that screen. The xrdb program will sort resources
automatically and place them in RESOURCE_MANAGER or
SCREEN_RESOURCES, as appropriate.
application-specific files
Directories named by the environment variable
XUSERFILESEARCHPATH or the environment variable XAPPLRESDIR,
plus directories in a standard place (usually under
/usr/lib/X11/, but this can be overridden with the
XFILESEARCHPATH environment variable) are searched for for
application-specific resources. For example, application
default resources are usually kept in /usr/lib/X11/appdefaults/.
See the X Toolkit Intrinsics - C Language
Interface manual for details.
XENVIRONMENT [Toc] [Back]
Any user- and machine-specific resources may be specified by
setting the XENVIRONMENT environment variable to the name of a
resource file to be loaded by all applications. If this
variable is not defined, a file named $HOME/.Xdefaultshostname
is looked for instead, where hostname is the name of
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the host where the application is executing.
-xrm resourcestring
Resources can also be specified from the command line. The
resourcestring is a single resource name and value as shown
above. Note that if the string contains characters
interpreted by the shell (e.g., asterisk), they must be
quoted. Any number of -xrm arguments may be given on the
command line.
Program resources are organized into groups called classes, so that
collections of individual resources (each of which are called
instances) can be set all at once. By convention, the instance name
of a resource begins with a lowercase letter and class name with an
upper case letter. Multiple word resources are concatenated with the
first letter of the succeeding words capitalized. Applications
written with the X Toolkit Intrinsics will have at least the following
resources:
background (class Background)
This resource specifies the color to use for the window
background.
borderWidth (class BorderWidth)
This resource specifies the width in pixels of the window
border.
borderColor (class BorderColor)
This resource specifies the color to use for the window
border.
Most applications using the X Toolkit Intrinsics also have the
resource foreground (class Foreground), specifying the color to use
for text and graphics within the window.
By combining class and instance specifications, application
preferences can be set quickly and easily. Users of color displays
will frequently want to set Background and Foreground classes to
particular defaults. Specific color instances such as text cursors
can then be overridden without having to define all of the related
resources. For example,
XTerm*cursorColor: gold
XTerm*multiScroll: on
XTerm*jumpScroll: on
XTerm*reverseWrap: on
XTerm*curses: on
XTerm*Font: 6x10
XTerm*scrollBar: on
XTerm*scrollbar*thickness: 5
XTerm*multiClickTime: 500
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XTerm*charClass: 33:48,37:48,45-47:48,64:48
XTerm*cutNewline: off
XTerm*cutToBeginningOfLine: off
XTerm*titeInhibit: on
XTerm*ttyModes: intr ^c erase ^? kill ^u
XLoad*Background: gold
XLoad*Foreground: red
XLoad*highlight: black
XLoad*borderWidth: 0
hpterm*Geometry: 80x65-0-0
hpterm*Background: rgb:5b/76/86
hpterm*Foreground: white
hpterm*Cursor: white
hpterm*BorderColor: white
hpterm*Font: 6x10
If these resources were stored in a file called .Xdefaults in your
home directory, they could be added to any existing resources in the
server with the following command:
% xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xdefaults
This is frequently how user-friendly startup scripts merge userspecific
defaults into any site-wide defaults. All sites are
encouraged to set up convenient ways of automatically loading
resources. See the Xlib manual section Resource Manager Functions for
more information.
EXAMPLES [Toc] [Back]
The following is a collection of sample command lines for some of the
more frequently used commands. For more information on a particular
command, please refer to that command's manual page.
% xrdb $HOME/.Xdefaults
% xmodmap -e "keysym BackSpace = Delete"
% mkfontdir /usr/local/lib/X11/otherfonts
% xset fp+ /usr/local/lib/X11/otherfonts
% xmodmap $HOME/.keymap.km
% xsetroot -solid 'rgbi:.8/.8/.8'
% xset b 100 400 c 50 s 1800 r on
% xset q
% mwm
% xclock -geometry 48x48-0+0 -bg blue -fg white
% xlsfonts '*helvetica*'
% xwininfo -root
% xhost -joesworkstation
% xwd | xwud
% xterm -geometry 80x66-0-0 -name myxterm $*
DIAGNOSTICS [Toc] [Back]
A wide variety of error messages are generated from various programs.
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The default error handler in Xlib (also used by many toolkits) uses
standard resources to construct diagnostic messages when errors occur.
The defaults for these messages are usually stored in
/usr/lib/X11/XErrorDB. If this file is not present, error messages
will be rather terse and cryptic.
When the X Toolkit Intrinsics encounter errors converting resource
strings to the appropriate internal format, no error messages are
usually printed. This is convenient when it is desirable to have one
set of resources across a variety of displays (e.g. color vs.
monochrome, lots of fonts vs. very few, etc.), although it can pose
problems for trying to determine why an application might be failing.
This behavior can be overridden by the setting the
StringConversionsWarning resource.
To force the X Toolkit Intrinsics to always print string conversion
error messages, the following resource should be placed in the
.Xdefaults file in the user's home directory. This file is then
loaded into the RESOURCE_MANAGER property using the xrdb program.
*StringConversionWarnings: on
To have conversion messages printed for just a particular application,
the appropriate instance name can be placed before the asterisk:
xterm*StringConversionWarnings: on
SEE ALSO [Toc] [Back]
bdftopcf(1), bitmap(1), fs(1), hpter
,
xauth(1), xclock(1), xcmsdb(1), xfd(1), xhost(1), xinitcolor(1),
xload(1), xlsfonts(1), xmodmap(1), xpr(1), xprop(1), xrdb(1),
xrefresh(1), xset(1), xsetroot(1), xterm(1), xwd(1), xwininfo(1),
xwud(1), Xserver(1), Xlib - C Language X Interface, and X Toolkit
Intrinsics - C Language Interface
COPYRIGHT [Toc] [Back]
The following copyright and permission notice outlines the rights and
restrictions covering most parts of the core distribution of the X
Window System from MIT. Other parts have additional or different
copyrights and permissions; see the individual source files.
Copyright 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software
and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee,
provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that
both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in
supporting documentation, and that the name of MIT not be used in
advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software
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without specific, written prior permission. MIT makes no
representations about the suitability of this software for any
purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
TRADEMARKS [Toc] [Back]
X Window System is a trademark of MIT.
AUTHORS [Toc] [Back]
A cast of thousands, literally. The MIT Release 5 distribution is
brought to you by the MIT X Consortium. The names of all people who
made it a reality will be found in the individual documents and source
files. The staff members at MIT responsible for this release are:
Donna Converse (MIT X Consortium), Stephen Gildea (MIT X Consortium),
Susan Hardy (MIT X Consortium), Jay Hersh (MIT X Consortium), Keith
Packard (MIT X Consortium), David Sternlicht (MIT X Consortium), Bob
Scheifler (MIT X Consortium), and Ralph Swick (Digital/MIT Project
Athena).
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