Re: Accepting .Xdefaults by default

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Jacobo221 <jacobo221@hotmail.com>

> Currently, Debian doesn't support ~/.Xdefaults but does support
> ~/.Xresources. The ways to walk around this are to soft link or to change
> it's name.

Beware! The intended semantics of .Xresources and .Xdefaults is *not
the same*!

.Xresources is meant to be loaded into the X *server* when a user logs
in. It will affect all clients started during the X session, even
clients running on remote machines.

.Xdefaults is loaded locally by each *client* as it starts up. Settings
in it will affect all clients *running* on that machine and account,
even if they connect to a remote server.

Each kind of settings is useful, and I daresay that there are Debian
users out there who depend on the ability to define either kind of
settings - even though the vast majority are probably not aware of the
difference, and many of them misuse the files because they don't know
the difference.

If you read the manpage X(7x) you'll find that Debian does not use the
name .Xdefaults bu default, but instead .Xdefaults-<hostname>. That is
presumably intentional. You should be able to override this by setting
$XENVIRONMENT in your .profile or .login file. If that does not work
(and you're sure its not your own fault, or the individual
application's), file a bug report against libXt6.

-- 
Henning Makholm              "I Guds Faders namn, och Sonens, och den Helige
                   Andes! Bevara oss från djävulens verk och från Muhammeds,
                den förbannades, illfundigheter! Med dig är det värre än med
            någon annan, ty att lyssna till Muhammed är det värsta av allt."