Re: Xdefaults and Xresources not working

all very good suggestions dave. thanks very much for the help, but
it's still not working and i'm at a complete loss.

/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc is indeed running, as when i comment out the
line which starts an xterm, none appears when i run X11.app.

i've now also confirmed it has nothing to do with fink, as i'm having
the same problems on a second computer on which i haven't installed it.
so with just the default X11 install from apple's binaries, i created
~/.Xresources with just a single line about SaveLines, then restarted
the machine and ran X11.app. in the resulting xterm which pops up, an
"xrdb -query" results in:

XTerm*SaveLines: 500

yet strangely, the xterm i typed this into had no saved lines. if i
then change .Xresources by adding another line, say LoginShell: true,
do a "xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources", another xrdb -query shows:

XTerm*SaveLines: 500
XTerm*LoginShell: true

so xrdb is working just fine in both xinitrc and on the command line.
but when i invoke another xterm from within the first xterm window by
typing 'xterm", a second one appears sure enough, but it has neither
any saved lines nor has it sourced my .bash_profile, as it should have
were it a login shell.

i feel really stupid. any other ideas?

.