X(1) USER COMMANDS X(1)
NAME
X - a portable, network-transparent window system
SYNOPSIS
The X Window System is a network transparent window system
developed at MIT which runs on a wide range of computing and
graphics machines. The core distribution from MIT has sup-
port for the following operating systems:
Ultrix 3.1 (Digital)
SunOS 4.0.3 (Sun)
HP-UX 6.5 (Hewlett-Packard)
Domain/OS 10.1 (HP/Apollo)
A/UX 1.1 (Apple)
AIX RT-2.2 and PS/2-1.1 (IBM)
AOS-4.3 (IBM)
UTEK 4.0 (Tektronix)
NEWS-OS 3.2 (Sony; client only)
UNICOS 5.0.1 (Cray; client only)
UNIX(tm) System V, Release 3.2 (AT&T 6386 WGS; client only)
It should be relatively easy to build the client-side
software on a variety of other system. Commercial implemen-
tations are also available for a wide range of platforms.
The X Consortium 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 Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology.
DESCRIPTION
X Window System servers run on computers with bitmap
displays. The server distributes user input to and accepts
output requests from various client programs through a
variety of different interprocess communication 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 different 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 explanation 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
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Language Interface manual, and various toolkit documents.
The number of programs that use X is growing rapidly. Of
particular interest are: a terminal emulator (xterm), a
window manager (twm), a display manager (xdm), mail managing
utilities (xmh and xbiff), a manual page browser (xman), a
bitmap editor (bitmap), access control programs (xauth and
xhost), user preference setting programs (xrdb, xset,
xsetroot, and xmodmap), a load monitor (xload), clocks
(xclock and oclock), a font displayer (xfd), utilities for
listing information about fonts, windows, and displays
(xlsfonts, xfontsel, xlswins, xwininfo, xlsclients, xdpy-
info, and xprop), a diagnostic for seeing what events are
generated and when (xev), screen image manipulation utili-
ties (xwd, xwud, xpr, and xmag), and various demos (xeyes,
ico, muncher, puzzle, xgc, etc.).
Many other utilities, window managers, games, toolkits, etc.
are available from the user-contributed software. See your
site administrator for details.
STARTING UP
There are two main ways of getting the X server and an ini-
tial set of client applications started. The particular
method used depends on what operating system you are running
and on whether or not you use other window systems in addi-
tion 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 Display Manager xdm. This
program is typically started by the system at boot
time and takes care of keeping the server running
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
emulators, 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)
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Sites that support more than one window system might
choose to use the xinit program for starting X manu-
ally. 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 con-
venient default resources, running a window manager,
displaying 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 rea-
son, xinit is not intended for end users.
DISPLAY NAMES
From the user's prospective, 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 worksta-
tions tend to only have one keyboard, and therefore,
only one display. Larger, multi-user systems, how-
ever, will 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 display number (beginning at 0) when
the X server for that display 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
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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 number is
not given, then screen 0 will be used.
On POSIX systems, the default display name is stored in your
DISPLAY environment variable. This variable is set automat-
ically by the xterm terminal emulator. However, when you
log into another machine on a network, you'll need to set
DISPLAY by hand to point to your display. For example,
% setenv DISPLAY myws:0
$ DISPLAY=myws:0; export DISPLAY
Finally, most X programs accept a command line option of
-display displayname 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" com-
mand 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 </dev/null &
X servers listen for connections on a variety of different
communications channels (network byte streams, shared
memory, etc.). Since there can be more than one way of con-
tacting a given server, The hostname part of the display
name is used to determine the type of channel (also called a
transport layer) to be used. The sample servers from MIT
support 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.
TCP/IP
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: expo.lcs.mit.edu:0, expo:0,
18.30.0.212:0, 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
The sample server provides two types of access control: an
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authorization protocol which provides a list of ``magic
cookies'' clients can send to request access, and a list of
hosts from which connections are always accepted. Xdm ini-
tializes magic cookies in the server, and also places them
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 care-
ful with this.
The file for authorization which both xdm and Xlib use 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.
To manage a collection of authorization files containing a
collection of authorization records 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. As the files are machine-
independent, you can also simply copy the files or use NFS
to share them. If you use several machines, and share a
common home directory with NFS, then you never really have
to worry about authorization files, the system should work
correctly by default. Note that magic cookies transmitted
``in the clear'' over NFS or using ftp or rcp can be
``stolen'' by a network eavesdropper, and as such may enable
unauthorized 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 magic cookie to know
if this is actually a problem.
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 particular size or location on the screen.
Although the layout of windows on a display is controlled by
the window manager that the user is running (described
below), most X programs accept a command line argument of
the form -geometry WIDTHxHEIGHT+XOFF+YOFF (where WIDTH,
HEIGHT, XOFF, and YOFF are numbers) for specifying a pre-
ferred 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
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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 coordi-
nate 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 will be
placed in roughly the center of the screen and a load aver-
age monitor, mailbox, and clock will be 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 &
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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 core 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).
Several other window managers are available in the user-
contributed software: gwm, m_swm, olwm, and tekwm.
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 exam-
ple, a single size, boldness, 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.
Sets of font families of the same resolution (usually meas-
ured in dots per inch) are further grouped into directories
(so named because they were initially stored in file system
directories). Each directory contains a database which
lists the name of the font and information on how to find
the font. The server uses these databases to translate font
names (which have nothing to do with file names) into font
data.
The list of font directories in which the server looks when
trying to find a font is controlled by the font path.
Although most installations will choose to have the server
start up with all of the commonly used font directories, 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.
The default font path for the sample server contains three
directories:
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc
This directory contains many miscellaneous fonts
that are useful on all systems. It contains a small
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family of fixed-width fonts in pixel heights 5
through 10, a family of fixed-width fonts from Dale
Schumacher in similar pixel heights, several Kana
fonts from Sony Corporation, a Kanji font, the stan-
dard cursor font, two cursor fonts from Digital
Equipment Corporation, and OPEN LOOK(tm) cursor and
glyph fonts from Sun Microsystems. It also has font
name aliases for the font names fixed and variable.
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi
This directory contains fonts contributed by Adobe
Systems, Inc., Digital Equipment Corporation,
Bitstream, Inc., Bigelow and Holmes, and Sun
Microsystems, Inc. for 75 dots per inch displays.
An integrated selection of sizes, styles, and
weights are provided for each family.
/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi
This directory contains 100 dots per inch versions
of some of the fonts in the 75dpi directory.
Font databases are created by running the mkfontdir program
in the directory containing the source or compiled versions
of the fonts (in both compressed and uncompressed formats).
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
private directory, the following commands could be used:
% cp newfont.snf ~/myfonts
% mkfontdir ~/myfonts
% xset fp rehash
The xlsfonts program can be used to list all of the fonts
that are found in font databases in the current font path.
Font names tend to be fairly long as they contain all of the
information needed to uniquely identify individual fonts.
However, the sample server supports wildcarding of font
names, so the full specification
-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-m-60-iso8859-1
could be abbreviated as:
-*-courier-medium-r-normal--*-100-*-*-*-*-*-*
or, more tersely (but less accurately):
*-courier-medium-r-normal--*-100-*
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Because the shell also has special meanings for * and ?,
wildcarded font names should be quoted:
% xlsfonts -fn '*-courier-medium-r-normal--*-100-*'
If more than one font in a given directory in the font path
matches a wildcarded font name, the choice of which particu-
lar font to return is left to the server. However, if fonts
from more than one directory match a name, the returned font
will always be from the first such directory in the font
path. The example given above will match fonts in both the
75dpi and 100dpi directories; if the 75dpi directory is
ahead of the 100dpi directory in the font path, the smaller
version of the font will be used.
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. Although
black and white displays don't provide much of a choice,
color displays frequently allow anywhere between 16 and 16
million different colors.
Colors are usually specified by their commonly-used names
(for example, red, white, or medium slate blue). The server
translates these names into appropriate screen colors using
a color database that can usually be found in
/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt. Color names are case-insensitive,
meaning that red, Red, and RED all refer to the same color.
Many applications also accept color specifications of the
following form:
#rgb
#rrggbb
#rrrgggbbb
#rrrrggggbbbb
where r, g, and b are hexadecimal numbers indicating how
much red, green, and blue should be displayed (zero being
none and ffff being on full). Each field in the specifica-
tion must have the same number of digits (e.g., #rrgb or
#gbb are not allowed). Fields that have fewer than four
digits (e.g. #rgb) are padded out with zero's following each
digit (e.g. #r000g000b000). The eight primary colors can be
represented as:
black #000000000000 (no color at all)
red #ffff00000000
green #0000ffff0000
blue #00000000ffff
yellow #ffffffff0000 (full red and green, no blue)
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magenta #ffff0000ffff
cyan #0000ffffffff
white #ffffffffffff (full red, green, and blue)
Unfortunately, RGB color specifications are highly unport-
able since different monitors produce different shades when
given the same inputs. Similarly, color names aren't port-
able because there is no standard naming scheme and because
the color database needs to be tuned for each monitor.
Application developers should take care to make their colors
tailorable.
KEYS
The X keyboard model is broken into two layers: server-
specific codes (called keycodes) which represent the physi-
cal keys, and server-independent symbols (called keysyms)
which represent the letters or words that appear on the
keys. Two tables are kept in the server for converting key-
codes to keysyms:
modifier list
Some keys (such as Shift, Control, and Caps Lock)
are known as modifier and are used to select dif-
ferent symbols that are attached to a single key
(such as Shift-a generates a capital A, and
Control-l generates a formfeed 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 con-
tains 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 con-
tains one row for each keycode and one column for
various modifier states. This table is initialized
by the server to correspond to normal typewriter
conventions, but is only used by client programs.
Although most programs deal with keysyms directly (such as
those written with the X Toolkit Intrinsics), most program-
ming libraries provide routines for converting keysyms into
the appropriate type of string (such as ISO Latin-1).
OPTIONS
Most X programs attempt to use the same names for command
line options and arguments. All applications written with
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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 background.
-bd color, -bordercolor color
Either option specifies the color to use for the
window border.
-bw number, -borderwidth number
Either option specifies the width in pixels of the
window border.
-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 display-
ing text.
-iconic
This option indicates that the user would prefer
that the application's windows initially not be
visible as if the windows had be immediately iconi-
fied by the user. Window managers 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 invo-
cations 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 swap-
ping the foreground and background colors. Not all
programs honor this or implement it correctly. It
is usually only used on monochrome displays.
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+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 asynchro-
nously. Since Xlib normally buffers requests to the
server, errors do not necessarily 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 provide some sort of header iden-
tifying 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 prefer-
ences easier, X supports several mechanisms for storing
default values for program resources (e.g. background color,
window title, etc.) Resources are specified as strings of
the form
appname*subname*subsubname...: value
that are read in from various places when an application is
run. By convention, the application name is the same as the
program name, but with the first letter capitalized (e.g.
Bitmap or Emacs) although some programs that begin with the
letter ``x'' also capitalize the second letter for
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historical reasons. The precise syntax for resources is:
ResourceLine = Comment | ResourceSpec
Comment = "!" string | <empty line>
ResourceSpec = WhiteSpace ResourceName WhiteSpace ":" WhiteSpace value
ResourceName = [Binding] ComponentName {Binding ComponentName}
Binding = "." | "*"
WhiteSpace = {" " | "\t"}
ComponentName = {"a"-"z" | "A"-"Z" | "0"-"9" | "_" | "-"}
value = string
string = {<any character not including "\n">}
Note that elements enclosed in curly braces ({...}) indicate
zero or more occurrences of the enclosed elements
To allow values to contain arbitrary octets, the 4-character
sequence \nnn, where n is a digit in the range of "0"-"7",
is recognized and replaced with a single byte that contains
this sequence interpreted as an octal number. For example,
a value containing a NULL byte can be stored by specifying
"\000".
The Xlib routine XGetDefault(3X) and the resource utilities
within Xlib and the X Toolkit Intrinsics obtain resources
from the following sources:
RESOURCEMANAGER 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 using
the xrdb program. This is frequently taken care of
when the user starts up X through the display
manager or xinit.
application-specific files
Programs that use the X Toolkit Intrinsics will also
look in the directories named by the environment
variable XUSERFILESEARCHPATH or the environment
variable XAPPLRESDIR, plus directories in a standard
place (usually under /usr/lib/X11/, but this can be
overridden with the XFILESEARCHPATH environment
variable) for application-specific resources. See
the X Toolkit Intrinsics - C Language Interface
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 variable is not
defined, a file named $HOME/.Xdefaults-hostname is
looked for instead, where hostname is the name of
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the host where the application is executing.
-xrm resourcestring
Applications that use the X Toolkit Intrinsics can
have resources specified from the command line. The
resourcestring is a single resource name and value
as shown above. Note that if the string contains
characters interpreted by the shell (e.g., aster-
isk), they must be quoted. Any number of -xrm argu-
ments 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 conven-
tion, the instance name of a resource begins with a lower-
case letter and class name with an upper case letter. Mul-
tiple word resources are concatenated with the first letter
of the succeeding words capitalized. Applications written
with the X Toolkit Intrinsics will have at least the follow-
ing resources:
background (class Background)
This resource specifies the color to use for the
window background.
borderWidth (class BorderWidth)
This resource specifies the width in pixels of the
window border.
borderColor (class BorderColor)
This resource specifies the color to use for the
window border.
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
preferences can be set quickly and easily. Users of color
displays will frequently want to set Background and Fore-
ground 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
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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: #5b7686
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-specific defaults into any site-wide defaults. All
sites are encouraged to set up convenient ways of automati-
cally loading resources. See the Xlib manual section Using
the Resource Manager for more information.
EXAMPLES
The following is a collection of sample command lines for
some of the more frequently used commands. For more infor-
mation on a particular command, please refer to that
command's manual page.
% xrdb -load $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 '#888'
% 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
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% xlsfonts '*helvetica*'
% xlswins -l
% 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 $*
DIAGNOSTICS
A wide variety of error messages are generated from various
programs. Various toolkits are encouraged to provide a com-
mon mechanism for locating error text so that applications
can be tailored easily. Programs written to interface
directly to the Xlib C language library are expected to do
their own error checking.
The default error handler in Xlib (also used by many toolk-
its) uses standard resources to construct diagnostic mes-
sages when errors occur. The defaults for these messages
are usually stored in /usr/lib/X11/XErrorDB. If this file
is not present, error messages 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 usually 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 behavior 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 at the top of 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
BUGS
If you encounter a repeatable bug, please contact your site
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X(1) USER COMMANDS X(1)
administrator for instructions on how to submit an X Bug
Report.
SEE ALSO
XConsortium(1), XStandards(1), appres(1), bdftosnf(1), bit-
map(1), imake(1), listres(1), maze(1), mkfontdir(1),
muncher(1), oclock(1), puzzle(1), resize(1), showsnf(1),
twm(1), xauth(1), xbiff(1), xcalc(1), xclipboard(1),
xclock(1), xditview(1), xdm(1), xdpyinfo(1), xedit(1),
xev(1), xeyes(1), xfd(1), xfontsel(1), xhost(1), xinit(1),
xkill(1), xload(1), xlogo(1), xlsatoms(1), xlsclients(1),
xlsfonts(1), xlswins(1), xmag(1), xman(1), xmh(1), xmod-
map(1), xpr(1), xprop(1), xrdb(1), xrefresh(1), xset(1),
xsetroot(1), xstdcmap(1), xterm(1), xwd(1), xwininfo(1),
xwud(1), Xserver(1), Xapollo(1), Xcfbpmax(1), Xhp(1),
Xibm(1), XmacII(1), Xmfbpmax(1), Xqdss(1), Xqvss(1),
Xsun(1), Xtek(1), kbd_mode(1), todm(1), tox(1), biff(1),
init(8), ttys(5), Xlib - C Language X Interface, X Toolkit
Intrinsics - C Language Interface, and Using and Specifying
X Resources
COPYRIGHT
The following copyright and permission notice outlines the
rights and restrictions covering most parts of the core dis-
tribution of the X Window System from MIT. Other parts have
additional or different copyrights and permissions; see the
individual source files.
Copyright 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1989, by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this
software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby
granted without fee, provided that the above copyright
notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright
notice and this permission notice appear in supporting docu-
mentation, and that the name of MIT not be used in advertis-
ing or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software
without specific, written prior permission. MIT makes no
representations about the suitability of this software for
any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or
implied warranty.
This software is not subject to any license of the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company or of the Regents of the
University of California.
TRADEMARKS
UNIX and OPEN LOOK are trademarks of AT&T. X Window System
is a trademark of MIT.
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AUTHORS
A cast of thousands, literally. The X distribution is
brought to you by the MIT X Consortium. The staff members
at MIT responsible for this release are: Donna Converse
(MIT X Consortium), Jim Fulton (MIT X Consortium), Michelle
Leger (MIT X Consortium), Keith Packard (MIT X Consortium),
Chris Peterson (MIT X Consortium), Bob Scheifler (MIT X Con-
sortium), and Ralph Swick (Digital/MIT Project Athena).
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