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                                                        The Florida SunFlash
               Using .Xdefaults under OpenWindows
   
SunFLASH Vol 23 #21					       November 1990 
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I have received a number of technical articles from Tony Brooks, a Sun
engineer. Some articles were written by Tony and others he has
collected from other engineers.  I will be posting these articles to
SunFlash over the next few weeks.  I hope that you enjoy them and find
them useful. If you have any comments on them, please send them to me
and I'll give them to Tony. -johnj
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Overview of the User Defaults

An application should not hardcode all the options that are possible
under X, such as colors and fonts.  It should allow the user to specify
the colors of all windows, the font to use, the display and screen to
use, the initial size and position of the application, and a large
number of other standard and application specific options.  The problem
is that there are too many of these options to be specified on the
command line every time the application is invoked.

So the developers of X designed a more efficient way for users
to specify options.  The user places his options in a file which 
can be read by "xrdb", which places those specified values in the 
file on the root window.  The name of the file that is read is 
called ".Xdefaults".  This file contains key/value pairs e.g.:


--------------------------------------------------------
% vi ~adb/.Xdefaults

OpenWindows.SelectDisplaysMenu: False
OpenWindows.WindowColor:        #ad9a98
OpenWindows.DragRightDistance:  5
OpenWindows.Palette:    summer
OpenWindows.IconLocation:       bottom
OpenWindows.Beep:       always
OpenWindows.SetInput:   followmouse
OpenWindows.ScrollbarPlacement: right
OpenWindows.WorkspaceColor:     #40bdff
Scrollbar.JumpCursor:   True
Notice.JumpCursor:      True
--------------------------------------------------------

The key/value pair may apply only to a particular window within a
particular application, to an entire application, to a certain class 
of applications such as editors, or all applications.

Now if I wanted to change the default font of the desktop I would have 
to edit my .Xdefaults file and add the following:

--------------------------------------------------------

% xlsfonts 

% vi ~adb/.Xdefaults
font.name:	times-bold-24

% xrdb ~adb/.Xdefaults

--------------------------------------------------------

The first thing that I did to add the font was find the font that I wanted
using "xlsfonts" which will list all the server fonts.  I will have 
a seperate discussion on fonts. Then I edited the file and afterwards
ran "xrdb" which is used to get or set the contents of the
RESOURCE_MANAGER property on the root window of screen 0.  You would
normally run this program from your X startup file - take a look at 
your .xinitrc file in your home directory it should look something like
this:

--------------------------------------------------------
% vi ~adb/.xinitrc 

# .xinitrc - OpenWindows startup script.
xrdb $HOME/.Xdefaults &         # Load X11 resource database
eval `svenv -env`               # SunView binary compatibility
olwm &                          # OpenLook Window Manager
(sv_xv_sel_svc &) &             # SunView <-> XView selections
if [ -x $HOME/.openwin-init ]; then
    $HOME/.openwin-init         # Custom OpenWindows tools
else
$OPENWINHOME/lib/openwin-init   # Default OpenWindows tools
 fi
wait
--------------------------------------------------------

Now bring up another window from the rootmenu and you should get a
window with a bigger font. I will also talk more
on the different startup files i.e., .xinitrc, .openwin-init etc. 

Finally, I've included the predefined defaults that you can change 
in your .Xdefaults file. (XView Programming Manual, pg 321):

Type	| Name			| Default	| Legal Values
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
string	| window.scale		| Medium	| Small,Medium, Large,
	|			|		| Extra_Large
string  | font.name		| NULL		| fontname-size
	|			|		| 
boolean	| window.mono.disable-	| False		| True, False
	|			|		| 
string	| server.name		| getenv(DIS-	| hostnamedisplay
	|			| PLAY)		| 
	|			|		| 
boolean | alarm.audible		| True		| True, False
	|			|		| 
boolean | alarm.visible		| True		| True, False
	|			|		| 
string  | window.header		| NULL		| header string
	|			|		| 
integer | window.columns	| 80		| ----
	|			|		| 
integer | window.rows		| 34		| ----
	|			|		| 
integer | window.width  	| 80 columns    | Greater than 0
	|			|		| 
integer | window.height 	| 34 rows	| Greater than 0
	|			|		| 
integer | window.x		| 0		| ----
	|			|		| 
integer | window.y		| 0		| ----
	|			|		| 
boolean | window.iconic		| False		| True, False
	|			|		| 
integer | window.inheritcolor 	| 1		|
	|			|		| 
string	| window.color.fore-	| "0 0 0"	| 3 RGB values, 0-255
	| ground		|		|
	|			|		| 
string	| window.color.back-	| "255 255 255"	| 3 RGB values, 0-255
	| ground		|		|
	|			|		| 
string	| icon.font.name	| NULL		| fontname-size
	|			|		| 
string	| icon.pixmap   	| NULL		| pixmap filename
	|			|		| 
string	| icon.footer   	| NULL		| footer string
	|			|		| 
integer | icon.x		| 0		| ----
	|			|		| 
integer | icon.y		| 0		| ----
	|			|		| 
integer | openWindows.dragRight-| 5		| ----
	| Distance		| 		|
	|			|		| 
boolean | notice.jumpCursor	| True		| True, False
	|			|		| 
integer | notice.beepCount	| 1		| ----
	|			|		| 
integer | OpenWindows.Multi-	| 4		| 1 through 10 (in sec/10)
	| ClickTimeout		|		| 
	|			|		| 
integer | scrollbar.repeatDelay | 500		| 0,999(msec delay interval)
	|			|		| 
integer | scrollbar.pageinterval| 100		| 0,999(msec delay interval)
	|			|		| 
integer | scrollbar.lineinterval| 1  		| 0,999(msec delay interval)
	|			|		| 
integer | cmdtool.checkpoint-   | 0         	| 0, 0x77777777
	| Frequency		| 		|
	|			|		| 
integer | cmdtool.maxLogFile-   | 0x77777777	| 0, 0x77777777
	| Size			|		| 
	|			|		| 
integer | text.checkpoint-	| 0		| 0, 0x77777777
	|			|		| 
boolean | text.enableScrollbar  | True    	| True, False		
	|			|		| 
integer | text.againLimit	| 1		| 0,500
	|			|		| 
boolean | text.autoindent	| False 	| True, False
	|			|		| 
integer | text.autoScrollby 	| 1   		| 0,100
	|			|		| 
boolean | text.blinkcaret	| True		| True, False
	|			|		| 
boolean | text.confirmOverwrite | True		| True, False
	|			|		| 
boolean | text.displayControl-	| False		| True, False
	| Chars			| 		|
	|			|		| 
integer | text.undoLimit	| 50		| 0,500
	|			|		| 
string	| text.insertMakesCaret-| If_auto_scroll| If_auto_scroll, Always
	| Visible 		|		| 
	|			|		| 
string  | text.lineBreak	| Wrap_word	| Clip, Wrap_char, Wrap_word
	|			|		| 
integer | text.margin.bottom	| 0		| -1, 50
	|			|		| 
integer | mouse.multiclick.space|		|
	|			|		| 
boolean | text.storeChangesFile | True		| True,False
	|			|		|
integer | text.margin.top	| 2		| -1,50
	|			|		|
integer | text.margin.left	| 8		| 0,2000
	|			|		|
integer | text.margin.right	| 0		| 0,2000
	|			|		|
integer | text.tabWidt     	| 8		| 0,50
	|			|		|
string	| text.extrasMenuFile-	| .text_extra-	| filename
	| name			| _menu 	|
	|			| (in /usr/lib)	|
	|			|		|
integer | text.maxDocumentSize	| 20000		| 0,0x80000000
	|			|		|
boolean | text.retained		| False		| True, False
	|			|		|
string	| keyboard.arrowKeys	| Yes		| Yes, No
	|			|		|
string	| keyboard.leftHanded| 	| No		| Yes, No
	|			|		|
boolean | term.enableEdit	| True		| True, False
	|			|		|
string	| term.boldStyle	| Invert	| None, OFFSET_X, OFFSET_Y,
	|			|		| OFFSET_X_AND_Y, 
	|			|		| OFFSET_X_AND_XY, 
	|			|		| OFFSET_Y_AND_XY, 
	|			|		| OFFSET_X_AND_Y_AND_XY, 
	|			|		| OFFSET_XY, INVERT
string	| term.inverseStyle	| Enable	| ENABLE, DISABLED, 
	|			|		| SAME_AS_BOLD
	|			|		|
string	| term.underlineStyle 	|Enable		| ENABLE, DISABLED, 
	|			|		| SAME_AS_BOLD
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For fun, try commands:
	shelltool -scale Large &
	shelltool -font times-bold-24 &
	shelltool -help
In your .Xdefaults, try:
	*.scale:	Small
The filemgr works out well with a Small scale !
-johnj
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