Re: Xdefaults and Xresources not working

On 30 Mar 2006 13:50:58 -0800, bjarthur wrote:
[ .... ] 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.

What do you mean, NO saved lines? Are you expecting to be able to scroll
back in a freshly-opened xterm where you haven't even typed any commands
yet?

Saved lines are lines that have scrolled off the top of the window and
are saved in a buffer. Each window has its own private buffer, and the
buffer is initially empty. Scrolling doesn't become enabled until there
is something to scroll to.

The man page says you get 64 saved lines by default, and my experiments
indicate that this is a minimum. I deleted my .Xresources file and
started a new X11 session.

Typing "xrdb -query" in the new window gave me no output at all, yet
after a "pr -n <file>", where the file had around 1000 lines, I found
that I could scroll back around 300 lines.

I also found that my xterm in this experiment was not running a login
shell, which it normally does when I have my .Xresources in place. An
easy way to tell (assuming you use bash) is to type the command "ps $$"
in your xterm. The COMMAND column will show "/bin/bash" if it's not a
login shell, or "-bash" if it's a login shell.


--
Dave Seaman
U.S. Court of Appeals to review three issues
concerning case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
<http://www.mumia2000.org/>
.

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