Re: window manager not picking up Xresources?
On Saturday 16 September 2006 01:03, Kevin Mark wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 15, 2006 at 11:52:51AM -0400, Ian D. Leroux wrote:
> > On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 09:03:23 -0500, "Mumia W."
> >
> > <paduille.4058.mumia.w@earthlink.net> said:
> > > On 09/15/2006 07:50 AM, Ian D. Leroux wrote:
> > > > I'm having a strange (to me) problem where xterms launched by the
> > > > window manager are clearly ignoring my Xresources settings. To be
> > > > precise:
> > > >
> > > > 1) Xterms launched via menu entry or via hard-coded commands in the
> > > > window manager have default settings (small fixed font, white-on
> > > > black) irrespective of the contents of ~/.Xresources. Xterms
> > > > launched by hand (either from other xterms or from a
> > > > window-manager- supplied command line like ratpoison's C-t !) obey
> > > > all
> > > > .Xresources settings, as expected. If I launch a second window
> > > > manager from the first, the second window manager behaves
> > > > correctly, i.e. the problem only appears for the first window
> > > > manager to be launched. [...]
> > >
> > > What are those hard-coded commands you're talking about? That's
> > > important because terminal emulators recognize their resources based
> > > upon their names. So if you define resources for "XTerm" (note the
> > > capitals), but you start the program as "xterm," it won't work.
> >
> > The suspect behaviour is exhibited even if the command name is the same:
> > the fluxbox menu (auto-generated by Debian's menu package, which should
> > be the same as the one for aewm, ratpoison, etc) has an entry that runs
> > the command "xterm", which does not pick up the resources. Running the
> > textually identical command "xterm" from a shell starts up a terminal
> > with the resources correctly loaded.
> >
> > Incidentally, my understanding of the X resources is that class names
> > are always capitalized (first letter for most programs, first two
> > letters if the name starts with X), and that is certainly the behaviour
> > I have seen on other systems. As I note above, it works fine for
> > programs launched by other means.
>
> are you saying that 'clicking' the 'xterm' menu option doesn't work
> correctly, while issuing 'xterm' on an alredy existing term does work?
> If so, I'd look for the specific command that the 'menu' option invokes.
> Beyond that, I'd suspect that the command is not being issued in a way
> to use your environment settings.
That did indeed turn out to be the problem (c.f. previous subthread). I was
misled by Debian's very consistent patching of software to use the
alternatives mechanism and by various stupid mistakes made when I was too
tired.
> ps. as someone who know little about the *bsds, I'd be curious to know
> what difference you notice and what prompted you to use Debian. :-)
I'd rather not get into a full-fledged discussion on the subject. They're
both great systems as far as I can tell. Ironically, I made a very early
(for me) attempt to install Debian some five years ago. It didn't work out
(hardware issues and newbie cluelessness on my part), FreeBSD was the first
Unix I got really working on my desktop, and I've been running it and/or
NetBSD for the last five years. It has served me well, taught me much, and I
like it. I'm trying Debian now for hardware reasons, because I've heard very
good things about its rigidity and predictability of policy and its sound
engineering, and because I have less time now for maintaining and tweaking my
computer system to my liking. I haven't been using it long enough to judge
whether that was a good call (though so far so good).
> Also, have you checked out Debian's bsd ports?
Not really. I get the impression they're less mature, and right now maturity
and lack of surprises is high on my list of priorities (I have a lot of
non-computer-related work to do these days). The other reason is that I have
the feeling that most of these efforts are based on the premise that you want
the *BSD kernel without the rest of BSD. Maybe it's because Linux vs. BSD
flame wars often seem to get down to "my kernel scales better than yours"
arguments. In any case, I don't buy that. BSD is a whole system, not just a
kernel, and there's a lot to like about the rest of the system. To give one,
relatively trivial, example, I happen to like the BSD license better than the
GPL. I'm not saying it's better in any absolute sense, and I understand and
respect the opposing point of view, but that's my preference. Putting a BSD
kernel into an otherwise GPL system does nothing to address that.
Maybe the best answer is this: the only way to find out whether the grass is
greener on the other side is to go and chew it for a while. That's what I'm
doing. You're welcome to do the same. Maybe you'll stick to BSD, maybe
you'll decide that Debian was right for you all along.
Oh, the best Debian/FreeBSD comparison I've seen is this one:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc/msg/248a7f1d3ecfdb0c?hl=en&;
It's written by a BSD guy, but it convinced me to give Debian another try.
Hope that was adequately non-comittal,
Ian Leroux
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