I'm not sure of the relationship between ~/.Xdefaults and
~/.Xresources and any variant of the two.

The difference is that ~/.Xdefaults is read by libXt-based
programs (such as XTerm) each time one is started, whereas
.Xresources is read by xrdb(1), typically once during user
session initialization (from /etc/X11/Xsession or the like.)

There seems to be some misunderstanding about how xrdb works.
It reads no file by default, the user must supply a file as
argument, or make it available on stdin. Hence, the name of the
file is irrelevant; I think '.Xresources' was simply a convention.
I believe xrdb loads a special resource nameed 'RESOURCE_MANAGER'
into the X server and clients will read resouces from that, rather
than read files. Without this resource present, clients will read
from files (via the X11 libraries), in particular, the older method
of reading from the file '.Xdefaults'.

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Noel Hunt <noel.hunt@gmail.com> writes:

I've missed this response as it wasn't cross-posted to
news:comp.os.linux.misc, where the thread originated.

FTR, I stand by my suggestion to /avoid/ using Go*gle Grou*s in
place of a proper newsreader for participating in Usenet
discussions, as it makes a really poor substitute.

I'm not sure of the relationship between ~/.Xdefaults and
~/.Xresources and any variant of the two.

The difference is that ~/.Xdefaults is read by libXt-based programs
(such as XTerm) each time one is started, whereas .Xresources is
read by xrdb(1), typically once during user session initialization
(from /etc/X11/Xsession or the like.)

There seems to be some misunderstanding about how xrdb works. It
reads no file by default, the user must supply a file as argument, or
make it available on stdin. Hence, the name of the file is
irrelevant; I think '.Xresources' was simply a convention.

Yes. Which is the whole point of my observation above; were it
not a convention for /etc/X11/Xsession to pass this file to xrdb(1)
to read, it would be meaningless to have it in the first place.

I believe xrdb loads a special resource named 'RESOURCE_MANAGER' into
the X server and clients will read resources from that, rather than
read files. Without this resource present, clients will read from
files (via the X11 libraries), in particular, the older method of
reading from the file '.Xdefaults'.

I wasn't aware that ~/.Xdefaults gets ignored when server-side X
resources are present, thanks.

That said, libXt applications will still (try to) read
.Xdefaults-${HOSTNAME} -- and, of course, whatever appropriate
under XAPPLRESDIR, HOME, or /etc/X11/app-defaults; consider, e. g.:

$ strace -- xlogo 2>&1 | grep -F -- "$HOME"
...
open("/home/private/users/ivan/.Xdefaults-sydabo.siamics.net", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT
access("/home/private/users/ivan/.app-defaults/eo.UTF-8/XLogo", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT
access("/home/private/users/ivan/.app-defaults/eo/XLogo", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT access("/home/private/users/ivan/.app-defaults/XLogo", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT access("/home/private/users/ivan/XLogo", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT access("/home/private/users/ivan/.app-defaults/eo.UTF-8/XLogo", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT
access("/home/private/users/ivan/.app-defaults/eo/XLogo", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT access("/home/private/users/ivan/.app-defaults/XLogo", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT access("/home/private/users/ivan/XLogo", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT

--
FSF associate member #7257 http://am-1.org/~ivan/

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On 4/10/19 8:40 AM, Ivan Shmakov wrote:

FTR, I stand by my suggestion to /avoid/ using Go*gle Grou*s in place
of a proper newsreader for participating in Usenet discussions, as it
makes a really poor substitute.

Agreed.

Not the least of which is that some (text only) news server operators
filter Go*gle Grou*s. From the flip side is that Go*gle Grou*s doesn't
carry all the newsgroups that are available on Usenet. IMHO, this means
that Go*gle Grou*s is a poor substitute for a real Usenet NNTP server
and associated reader.

I wasn't aware that ~/.Xdefaults gets ignored when server-side X resources are present, thanks.

That said, libXt applications will still (try to) read
.Xdefaults-${HOSTNAME} -- and, of course, whatever appropriate under XAPPLRESDIR, HOME, or /etc/X11/app-defaults; consider, e. g.:

That explains a behavior I saw on a workstation I used at my last job.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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