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X(7x) X(7x)
NAME
X - a portable, network-transparent window system
SYNOPSIS
The X Window System is a network transparent window system which runs
on a wide range of computing and graphics machines. It should be rel-
atively straightforward to build the X.Org Foundation software distri-
bution on most ANSI C and POSIX compliant systems. Commercial imple-
mentations are also available for a wide range of platforms.
The X.Org Foundation 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 Open Group.
DESCRIPTION
X Window System servers run on computers with bitmap displays. The
server distributes user input to and accepts output requests from var-
ious client programs through a variety of different interprocess com-
munication 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 dif-
ferent 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 expla-
nation 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 X.Org Foundation distribution include: a terminal emula-
tor, xterm; a window manager, twm; a display manager, xdm; a console
redirect program, xconsole; a mail interface, xmh; a bitmap editor,
bitmap; resource listing/manipulation tools, appres, editres; access
control programs, xauth, xhost, and iceauth; user preference setting
programs, xrdb, xcmsdb, xset, xsetroot, xstdcmap, and xmodmap; clocks,
xclock and oclock; a font displayer, (xfd; utilities for listing
information about fonts, windows, and displays, xlsfonts, xwininfo,
xlsclients, xdpyinfo, xlsatoms, and xprop; screen image manipulation
utilities, xwd, xwud, and xmag; a performance measurement utility,
x11perf; a font compiler, bdftopcf; a font server and related utili-
ties, xfs, fsinfo, fslsfonts, fstobdf; a display server and related
utilities, Xserver, rgb, mkfontdir; a print server and related utili-
ties, Xprt, xplsprinters; remote execution utilities, rstart and xon;
a clipboard manager, xclipboard; keyboard description compiler and
related utilities, xkbcomp, xkbprint, xkbbell, xkbevd, xkbvleds, and
xkbwatch; a utility to terminate clients, xkill; an optimized X proto-
col proxy, lbxproxy; a firewall security proxy, xfwp; a proxy manager
to control them, proxymngr; a utility to find proxies, xfindproxy;
Netscape Navigator Plug-ins, libxrx.so and libxrxnest.so; an RX MIME-
type helper program, xrx; and a utility to cause part or all of the
screen to be redrawn, xrefresh.
Many other utilities, window managers, games, toolkits, etc. are
included as user-contributed software in the X.Org Foundation distri-
bution, or are available using anonymous ftp on the Internet. See
your site administrator for details.
STARTING UP
There are two main ways of getting the X server and an initial set of
client applications started. The particular method used depends on
what operating system you are running and whether or not you use other
window systems in addition to X.
xdm (the X Display Manager)
If you want to always have X running on your display, your
site administrator can set your machine up to use the X Dis-
play Manager xdm. This program is typically started by the
system at boot time and takes care of keeping the server run-
ning and getting users logged in. If you are running xdm, you
will see a window on the screen welcoming you to the system
and asking for your username and password. Simply type them
in as you would at a normal terminal, pressing the Return key
after each. If you make a mistake, xdm will display an error
message and ask you to try again. After you have successfully
logged in, xdm will start up your X environment. By default,
if you have an executable file named .xsession in your home
directory, xdm will treat it as a program (or shell script) to
run to start up your initial clients (such as terminal emula-
tors, clocks, a window manager, user settings for things like
the background, the speed of the pointer, etc.). Your site
administrator can provide details.
xinit (run manually from the shell)
Sites that support more than one window system might choose to
use the xinit program for starting X manually. If this is
true for your machine, your site administrator will probably
have provided a program named "x11", "startx", or "xstart"
that will do site-specific initialization (such as loading
convenient default resources, running a window manager, dis-
playing a clock, and starting several terminal emulators) in a
nice way. If not, you can build such a script using the xinit
program. This utility simply runs one user-specified program
to start the server, runs another to start up any desired
clients, and then waits for either to finish. Since either or
both of the user-specified programs may be a shell script,
this gives substantial flexibility at the expense of a nice
interface. For this reason, xinit is not intended for end
users.
DISPLAY NAMES
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 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, 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 dis-
play number (beginning at 0) when the X server for that dis-
play 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 num-
ber is not given, 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 will need to set DISPLAY by hand to point to your dis-
play. 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;
it automatically sets the DISPLAY variable correctly.
Finally, most X programs accept a command line option of -display dis-
playname 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,
% xeyes -display joesws:0 -geometry 1000x1000+0+0
% rsh big xterm -display myws:0 -ls more than one way of contacting a given server, The host-
name part of the display name is used to determine the type of channel
(also called a transport layer) to be used. X servers generally sup-
port 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 will be chosen.
TCPIP
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:
x.org:0, expo:0, 198.112.45.11:0, bigmachine:1, and hydra:0.1.
DECnet
The hostname part of the display name should be the server
machine's nodename, followed by two colons instead of one.
For example: myws::0, big::1, and hydra::0.1.
ACCESS CONTROL
An X server can use several types of access control. Mechanisms pro-
vided in Release 6 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.
MIT-KERBEROS-5 Kerberos Version 5 user-to-user.
Xdm initializes access control for the server and also places autho-
rization 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. Xdm uses $HOME/.Xauthority and
will create it or merge in authorization records if it already exists
when a user logs in.
If you use several machines and share a common home directory across
all of the machines by means of a network file system, 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 unautho-
rized 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.
For more information on access control, see the Xsecurity manual page.
GEOMETRY SPECIFICATIONS
One of the advantages of using window systems instead of hardwired
terminals is that applications don't have to be restricted to a par-
ticular size or location on the screen. Although the layout of win-
dows on a display is controlled by the window manager that the user is
running (described below), most X programs accept a command line argu-
ment 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.
-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 is placed in roughly
the center of the screen and a load average monitor, mailbox, and
clock are 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
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 X.Org Founda-
tion distribution comes with a window manager named twm which supports
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 X.Org Foundation distribution
for other popular window managers.
FONT NAMES
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, bold-
ness, 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.
Fonts come in various sizes. The X server supports scalable fonts,
meaning it is possible to create a font of arbitrary size from a sin-
gle 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 directo-
ries 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.
Bitmap font files are usually created by compiling a textual font
description into binary form, using bdftopcf. Font databases are cre-
ated 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 pri-
vate directory, the following commands could be used:
% cp newfont.pcf ~/myfonts
% mkfontdir ~/myfonts
% xset fp rehash
The xfontsel and xlsfonts programs can be used to browse through the
fonts available on a server. Font names tend to be fairly long as
they contain all of the information needed to uniquely identify indi-
vidual 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:
-*-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.
FONT SERVER NAMES
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 sepa-
rator.
Examples: tcp/x.org:7100, tcp/198.112.45.11:7100/all.
One of the following forms can be used to name a font server that
accepts DECnet connections:
decnet/nodename::font$objname
decnet/nodename::font$objname/cataloguelist
The nodename specifies the name (or decimal numeric address) of the
machine on which the font server is running. The objname is a normal,
case-insensitive DECnet object name. The cataloguelist specifies a
list of catalogue names, with '+' as a separator.
Examples: DECnet/SRVNOD::FONT$DEFAULT, decnet/44.70::font$special/sym-
bols.
COLOR NAMES
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 device-depen-
dent (RGB) or device-independent terms. Color strings are case-insen-
sitive.
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/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt.
A numerical color specification consists of a color space name and a
set of values in the following syntax:
:/.../
An RGB Device specification is identified by the prefix "rgb:" and has
the following syntax:
rgb://
, , := 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 sup-
ported, 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.
An RGB intensity specification is identified by the prefix "rgbi:" and
has the following syntax:
rgbi://
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 val-
ues 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 follow-
ing syntax:
CIEXYZ:// (none, 1, none)
CIEuvY:// (~.6, ~.6, 1)
CIExyY:// (~.75, ~.85, 1)
CIELab:// (100, none, none)
CIELuv:// (100, none, none)
TekHVC:// (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 expo-
nent 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 refer-
ence manual.
KEYBOARDS
The X keyboard model is broken into two layers: server-specific codes
(called keycodes) which represent the physical keys, and server-inde-
pendent symbols (called keysyms) which represent the letters or words
that appear on the keys. Two tables are kept in the server for con-
verting 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
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 ta-
ble is initialized by the server to correspond to normal type-
writer conventions. The exact semantics of how the table is
interpreted to produce keysyms depends on the particular pro-
gram, libraries, and language input method used, but the fol-
lowing 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 con-
tains 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
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.
-bg color, -background color
Either option specifies the color to use for the window back-
ground.
-bd color, -bordercolor color
Either option specifies the color to use for the window bor-
der.
-bw number, -borderwidth number
Either option specifies the width in pixels of the window bor-
der.
-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 win-
dows had be immediately iconified by the user. Window man-
agers 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 imple-
ment it correctly. It is usually only used on monochrome dis-
plays.
+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
normally buffers requests to the server, errors do not neces-
sarily 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 pro-
vide 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
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 capital-
ized (e.g. Bitmap or Emacs) 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 |
Comment = "!" {}
IncludeFile = "#" WhiteSpace "include" WhiteSpace FileName WhiteSpace
FileName =
ResourceSpec = WhiteSpace ResourceName WhiteSpace ":" WhiteSpace Value
ResourceName = [Binding] {Component Binding} ComponentName
Binding = "." | "*"
WhiteSpace = { | }
Component = "?" | ComponentName
ComponentName = NameChar {NameChar}
NameChar = "a"-"z" | "A"-"Z" | "0"-"9" | "_" | "-"
Value = {}
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.
IncludeFile lines are interpreted by replacing the line with the con-
tents 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 direc-
tory or contains a relative directory specification).
If a ResourceName contains a contiguous sequence of two or more Bind-
ing characters, the sequence will be replaced with single "." charac-
ter 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 con-
tain 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 recog-
nized 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 speci-
fied names and classes, using pattern matching constructs. An aster-
isk (*) is a loose binding and is used to represent any number of
intervening components, including none. A period (.) is a tight bind-
ing and is used to separate immediately adjacent components. A ques-
tion 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, prece-
dence 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 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
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 up X
through the display manager or xinit.
SCREEN_RESOURCES root window property
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 automati-
cally and place them in RESOURCE_MANAGER or SCREEN_RESOURCES,
as appropriate.
application-specific files
Directories named by the environment variable XUSERFILESEARCH-
PATH or the environment variable XAPPLRESDIR (which names a
single directory and should end with a '/' on POSIX systems),
plus directories in a standard place (usually under
/usr/X11R6/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/X11R6/lib/X11/app-
defaults/. See the X Toolkit Intrinsics - C Language Inter-
face manual for details.
XENVIRONMENT
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 vari-
able is not defined, a file named $HOME/.Xdefaults-hostname is
looked for instead, where hostname is the name of 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 inter-
preted 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 writ-
ten 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 back-
ground.
borderWidth (class BorderWidth)
This resource specifies the width in pixels of the window bor-
der.
borderColor (class BorderColor)
This resource specifies the color to use for the window bor-
der.
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 prefer-
ences 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,
bitmap*Dashed: off
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
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
emacs*Geometry: 80x65-0-0
emacs*Background: rgb:5b/76/86
emacs*Foreground: white
emacs*Cursor: white
emacs*BorderColor: white
emacs*Font: 6x10
xmag*geometry: -0-0
xmag*borderColor: white
If these resources were stored in a file called .Xresources in your
home directory, they could be added to any existing resources in the
server with the following command:
% xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources
This is frequently how user-friendly startup scripts merge user-spe-
cific 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.
ENVIRONMENT
DISPLAY
This is the only mandatory environment variable. It must point
to an X server. See section "Display Names" above.
XAUTHORITY
This must point to a file that contains authorization data. The
default is $HOME/.Xauthority. See Xsecurity(7x), xauth(1),
xdm(1), Xau(3).
ICEAUTHORITY
This must point to a file that contains authorization data. The
default is $HOME/.ICEauthority.
LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG
The first non-empty value among these three determines the cur-
rent locale's facet for character handling, and in particular
the default text encoding. See locale(7x), setlocale(3),
locale(1).
XMODIFIERS
This variable can be set to contain additional information
important for the current locale setting. Typically set to
@im= to enable a particular input method. See
XSetLocaleModifiers(3).
XLOCALEDIR
This must point to a directory containing the locale.alias file
and Compose and XLC_LOCALE file hierarchies for all locales.
The default value is /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale.
XENVIRONMENT
This must point to a file containing X resources. The default
is $HOME/.Xdefaults-. Unlike /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/Xre-
sources, it is consulted each time an X application starts.
XFILESEARCHPATH
This must contain a colon separated list of path templates,
where libXt will search for resource files. The default value
consists of
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/%L/%T/%N%C%S: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/%l/%T/%N%C%S: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/%T/%N%C%S: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/%L/%T/%N%S: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/%l/%T/%N%S: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/%T/%N%S
A path template is transformed to a pathname by substituting:
%N => name (basename) being searched for
%T => type (dirname) being searched for
%S => suffix being searched for
%C => value of the resource "customization"
(class "Customization")
%L => the locale name
%l => the locale's language (part before '_')
%t => the locale's territory (part after '_' but before '.')
%c => the locale's encoding (part after '.')
XUSERFILESEARCHPATH
This must contain a colon separated list of path templates,
where libXt will search for user dependent resource files. The
default value is:
$XAPPLRESDIR/%L/%N%C: $XAPPLRESDIR/%l/%N%C: $XAPPLRESDIR/%N%C: $HOME/%N%C: $XAPPLRESDIR/%L/%N: $XAPPLRESDIR/%l/%N: $XAPPLRESDIR/%N: $HOME/%N
$XAPPLRESDIR defaults to $HOME, see below.
A path template is transformed to a pathname by substituting:
%N => name (basename) being searched for
%T => type (dirname) being searched for
%S => suffix being searched for
%C => value of the resource "customization"
(class "Customization")
%L => the locale name
%l => the locale's language (part before '_')
%t => the locale's territory (part after '_' but before '.')
%c => the locale's encoding (part after '.')
XAPPLRESDIR
This must point to a base directory where the user stores his
application dependent resource files. The default value is
$HOME. Only used if XUSERFILESEARCHPATH is not set.
XKEYSYMDB
This must point to a file containing nonstandard keysym defini-
tions. The default value is /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB.
XCMSDB This must point to a color name database file. The default
value is usr/X11R6/lib/X11/Xcms.txt.
XFT_CONFIG
This must point to a configuration file for the Xft library.
The default value is /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XftConfig.
RESOURCE_NAME
This serves as main identifier for resources belonging to the
program being executed. It defaults to the basename of pathname
of the program.
SESSION_MANAGER
Denotes the session manager the application should connect. See
xsm(1), rstart(1).
XF86BIGFONT_DISABLE
Setting this variable to a non-empty value disables the
XFree86-Bigfont extension. This extension is a mechanism to
reduce the memory consumption of big fonts by use of shared
memory.
XKB_FORCE
XKB_DISABLE
XKB_DEBUG
_XKB_CHARSET
_XKB_LOCALE_CHARSETS
_XKB_OPTIONS_ENABLE
_XKB_LATIN1_LOOKUP
_XKB_CONSUME_LOOKUP_MODS
_XKB_CONSUME_SHIFT_AND_LOCK
_XKB_IGNORE_NEW_KEYBOARDS
_XKB_CONTROL_FALLBACK
_XKB_COMP_LED _XKB_COMP_FAIL_BEEP
These variables influence the X Keyboard Extension.
EXAMPLES
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/.Xresources
% 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
% twm
% xmag
% xclock -geometry 48x48-0+0 -bg blue -fg white
% xeyes -geometry 48x48-48+0
% xbiff -update 20
% xlsfonts '*helvetica*'
% xwininfo -root
% xdpyinfo -display joesworkstation:0
% xhost -joesworkstation
% xrefresh
% xwd | xwud
% bitmap companylogo.bm 32x32
% xcalc -bg blue -fg magenta
% xterm -geometry 80x66-0-0 -name myxterm $*
% xon filesysmachine xload
DIAGNOSTICS
A wide variety of error messages are generated from various programs.
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/X11R6/lib/X11/XErrorDB. If this file is not present, error mes-
sages 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 usu-
ally 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 behav-
ior 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 file
that gets loaded onto the RESOURCE_MANAGER property using the xrdb
program (frequently called .Xresources or .Xres in the user's home
directory):
*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
XProjectTeam(7x), XStandards(7x), Xsecurity(7x), Xprint(7x),
appres(1), bdftopcf(1), bitmap(1), editres(1), fsinfo(1), fsls-
fonts(1), fstobdf(1), iceauth(1), imake(1), lbxproxy(1), kbd_mode(1),
makedepend(1), mkfontdir(1), oclock(1), proxymngr(1), rgb(1),
resize(1), rstart(1), smproxy(1), twm(1), x11perf(1), x11perfcomp(1),
xauth(1), xclipboard(1), xclock(1), xcmsdb(1), xconsole(1), xdm(1),
xdpyinfo(1), xfd(1), xfindproxy(1), xfs(1), xfwp(1), xhost(1),
xinit(1), xkbbell(1), xkbcomp(1), xkbevd(1), xkbprint(1), xkbvleds(1),
xkbwatch(1), xkill(1), xlogo(1), xlsatoms(1), xlsclients(1), xls-
fonts(1), xmag(1), xmh(1), xmodmap(1), xon(1), xplsprinters(1),
xprop(1), xrdb(1), xrefresh(1), xrx(1), xset(1), xsetroot(1), xsm(1),
xstdcmap(1), xterm(1), xwd(1), xwininfo(1), xwud(1). Xserver(1),
Xdec(1), XmacII(1), Xsun(1), Xnest(1), Xvfb(1), Xorg(1), XDarwin(1),
Xprt(1). Xlib - C Language X Interface, and X Toolkit Intrinsics - C
Language Interface
TRADEMARKS
X Window System is a trademark of The Open Group.
AUTHORS
A cast of thousands, literally. The Release 6.8 distribution is
brought to you by the X.Org Foundation, LLC. The names of all people
who made it a reality will be found in the individual documents and
source files.
Releases 6.6 and 6.5 were done by The X.Org Group. Release 6.4 was
done by The X Project Team. The Release 6.3 distribution was from The
X Consortium, Inc. The staff members at the X Consortium responsible
for that release were: Donna Converse (emeritus), Stephen Gildea
(emeritus), Kaleb Keithley, Matt Landau (emeritus), Ralph Mor (emeri-
tus), Janet O'Halloran, Bob Scheifler, Ralph Swick, Dave Wiggins
(emeritus), and Reed Augliere.
The X Window System standard was originally developed at the Labora-
tory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-
ogy, and all rights thereto were assigned to the X Consortium on Jan-
uary 1, 1994. X Consortium, Inc. closed its doors on December 31,
1996. All rights to the X Window System have been assigned to The
Open Group.
X.Org Version 6.8.2 X(7x)
UNIX/Linux commands referenced on this page:
- which
- bitmap
- as
- display
- appres
- xauth
- xhost
- xrdb
- xcmsdb
- xset
- xsetroot
- xstdcmap
- xclock
- xlsfonts
- xlsclients
- xdpyinfo
- xlsatoms
- xfs
- fslsfonts
- xkbcomp
- xkbprint
- xkbevd
- col
- ftp
- play
- at
- time
- users
- make
- file
- xinit
- more
- true
- clock
- nice
- script
- hostname
- refer
- xon
- accept
- xterm
- rsh
- host
- login
- rcp
- enable
- size
- top
- xload
- twm
- who
- find
- mkfontdir
- reset
- cp
- xfontsel
- convert
- replace
- last
- identify
- strings
- red
- column
- groups
- links
- sort
- kill
- locale
- basename
- xmodmap
- xwininfo
- xwd
- xcalc