EDITRES(1) X11 5.4R3.00 EDITRES(1)
NAME
editres - a dynamic resource editor for X Toolkit applications
SYNTAX
editres [ -toolkitoption ...]
OPTIONS
Editres accepts all of the standard X Toolkit command line options
(see X(1)). The order of the command line options is not important.
DESCRIPTION
Editres is a tool that allows users and application developers to
view the full widget hierarchy of any X Toolkit client that speaks
the Editres protocol. In addition editres will help the user
construct resource specifications, allow the user to apply the
resource to the application and view the results dynamically. Once
the user is happy with a resource specification editres will append
the resource string to the user's X Resources file.
USING EDITRES
Editres provides a window consisting of the following four areas:
Menu Bar A set of popup menus that allow you full
access to editres's features.
Panner The panner allows a more intuitive way to
scroll the application tree display.
Message Area Displays information to the user about the
action that editres expects of her.
Application Widget Tree This area will be used to display the
selected client's widget tree.
To begin an editres session select the Get Widget Tree menu item from
the command menu. This will change the pointer cursor to cross hair.
You should now select the application you wish look at by clicking on
any of its windows. If this application understands the editres
protocol then editres will display the client's widget tree in its
tree window. If the application does not understand the editres
protocol editres will inform you of this fact in the message area
after a few seconds delay.
Once you have a widget tree you may now select any of the other menu
options. The effect of each of these is described below.
COMMANDS
Get Widget Tree
Allows the user to click on any client that speaks the
editres protocol and receive its widget tree.
Refresh Current Widget Tree
Editres only knows about the widgets that exist at the
present time. Many applications create and destroy widgets
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"on-the-fly". Selecting this menu item will cause editres to
ask the application to resend its widget tree, thus updating
its information to the new state of the application.
Example Xman only creates the widgets for its topbox when it starts
up. None of the widgets for the manual page window are
created until the user actually clicks on the Manual Page
button. If you retrieved xman's widget tree before the the
manual page is active, you may wish to refresh the widget
tree after the manual page has been displayed. This will
allow you to also edit the manual page's resources.
Dump Widget Tree to a File
For documenting applications it is often useful to be able to
dump the entire application widget tree to an ascii file.
This file can then be included in the manual page. When this
menu item is selected a popup dialog is activated. Type the
name of the file in this dialog, and either select okay, or
type a carriage-return. Editres will now dump the widget
tree to this file. To cancel the file dialog just select the
cancel button.
Show Resource Box
This command will popup a resource box for the current
client. This resource box (described in detail below) will
allow the user to see exactly which resources can be set for
the widget that is currently selected in the widget tree
display. Only one widget may be currently selected, if
greater or fewer are selected editres will refuse to pop up
the resource box, and put an error message in the Message
Area.
Set Resource
This command will popup a simple dialog box for setting an
arbitrary resource on all selected widgets. You must type in
the resource name, as well as the value. You can use the Tab
key to switch between the resource name field the resource
value field.
Quit Exits editres.
TREE COMMANDS
The Tree menu contains several commands that allow operations to be
performed on the widget tree.
Select Widget in Client
This menu item allows you to select any widget in the
application, editres will then highlight the corresponding
element the widget tree display. Once this menu item is
selected the pointer cursor will again turn to a crosshair,
and you must click any pointer button in the widget you wish
to have displayed. Since some widgets are fully obscured by
their children, it is not possible to get to every widget this
way, but this mechanism does give very useful feedback between
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the elements in the widget tree and those in the actual
client.
Select All
Unselect All
Invert All
These functions allow the user to select, unselect, or invert
all widgets in the widget tree.
Select Children
Select Parents
These functions select the immediate parent or children of
each of the currently selected widgets.
Select Descendants
Select Ancestors
These functions select all parents or children of each of the
currently selected widgets. This is a recursive search.
Show Widget Names
Show Class Names
Show Widget Windows
When the tree widget is initially displayed the labels of each
widget in the tree correspond to the widget names. These
functions will cause the label of all widgets in the tree to
be changed to show the class name, IDs, or window associated
with each widget in the application. The widget IDs, and
windows are shown as hex numbers.
In addition there are keyboard accelerators for each of the Tree
operations. If the input focus is over an individual widget in the
tree, then that operation will only effect that widget. If the input
focus is in the Tree background it will have exactly the same effect
as the corresponding menu item.
The translation entries shown may be applied to any widget in the
application. If that widget is a child of the Tree widget, then it
will only affect that widget, otherwise it will have the same effect
as the commands in the tree menu.
Flash Active Widgets
This command is the inverse of the Select Widget in Client
command, it will show the user each widget that is currently
selected in the widget tree, by flashing the corresponding
widget in the application numFlashes (three by default) times
in the flashColor.
Key Option Translation Entry
space Unselect Select(nothing)
w Select Select(widget)
s Select Select(all)
i Invert Select(invert)
c Select Children Select(children)
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d Select Descendants Select(descendants)
p Select Parent Select(parent)
a Select Ancestors Select(ancestors)
N Show Widget Names Relabel(name)
C Show Class Names Relabel(class)
I Show Widget IDs Relabel(id)
W Show Widget Windows Relabel(window)
T Toggle Widget/Class Name Relabel(toggle)
Clicking button 1 on a widget adds it to the set of selected
widgets. Clicking button 2 on a widget deselects all other
widgets and then selects just that widget. Clicking button 3
on a widget toggles its label between the widget's instance
name the widget's class name.
USING THE RESOURCE BOX
The resource box contains five different areas. Each of the areas,
as they appear on the screen, from top to bottom will be discussed.
The Resource Line
This area at the top of the resource box shows the current
resource name exactly as it would appear if you were to save
it to a file or apply it.
The Widget Names and Classes
This area allows you to select exactly which widgets this
resource will apply to. The area contains four lines, the
first contains the name of the selected widget and all its
ancestors, and the more restrictive dot (.) separator. The
second line contains less specific the Class names of each
widget, and well as the less restrictive star (*) separator.
The third line contains a set of special buttons called Any
Widget which will generalize this level to match any widget.
The last line contains a set of special buttons called Any
Widget Chain which will turn the single level into something
that matches zero or more levels.
The initial state of this area is the most restrictive, using
the resource names and the dot separator. By selecting the
other buttons in this are you can ease the restrictions to
allow more and more widgets to match the specification. The
extreme case is to select all the Any Widget Chain buttons,
which will match every widget in the application. As you
select different buttons the tree display will update to show
you exactly which widgets will be effected by the current
resource specification.
Normal and Constraint Resources
The next area allows you to select the name of the normal or
constraint resources you wish to set. Some widgets may not
have constraint resources, so that area will not appear.
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Resource Value
This next area allows you to enter the resource value. This
value should be entered exactly as you would type a line into
your resource file. Thus it should contain no unescaped new-
lines. There are a few special character sequences for this
file:
\n - This will be replaced with a newline.
\### - Where # is any octal digit. This will be 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.
\<new-line> - This will compress to nothing.
\\ - This will compress to a single backslash.
Command Area
This area contains several command buttons that I will
describe in this section.
Set Save File
This button allows the user to modify file that the resources
will be saved to. This button will bring up a dialog box that
will ask you for a filename, once the filename has been
entered, either hit carriage-return or click on the okay
button. To popdown the dialog box without changing the save
file, click the cancel button.
Save This button will append the resource line described above to
the end of the current save file. If no save file has been
set the Set Save File dialog box will be popped up to prompt
the user for a filename.
Apply This button attempts to perform a XtSetValues call on all
widgets that match the resource line described above. The
value specified is applied directly to all matching widgets.
This behavior is an attempt to give a dynamic feel to the
resource editor. Since this feature allows users to put an
application in states it may not be willing to handle, a hook
has been provided to allow specific clients block these
SetValues requests (see Blocking Editres Requests below).
Unfortunately due to design constraints imposed on the widgets
by the X Toolkit and the Resource Manager, trying to coerce an
inherently static system into dynamic behavior can cause
strange results. There is no guarantee that the results of an
apply will be the same as what will happen when you save the
value, and restart the application. This functionality is
provided to try to give you a rough feel for what your changes
will accomplish, and the results obtained should be considered
suspect at best. Having said that, this is one of the neatest
features of editres, and I strongly suggest that you play with
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it, and see what it can do.
Save and Apply
This button combines the Save and Apply actions described
above into one button.
Popdown Resource Box
This button will remove the resource box from the display.
BLOCKING EDITRES REQUESTS
The editres protocol has been built into the Athena Widget set. This
allows all application that are linked against Xaw to be able to
speak to the resource editor. While this provides great flexibility,
and is a useful tool, it can quite easily be abused. It is therefore
possible for any Xaw client to specify a value for the editresBlock
resource described below, to keep editres from divulging information
about its internals, or to disable the SetValues part of the
protocol.
editresBlock (Class EditresBlock)
Specifies which type of blocking this client wishes to impose
on the editres protocol.
The accepted values are:
all Block all requests.
setValues Block all setvalues request, this is the only editres
request that actually modifies the application, this
is in effect stating that the application is read-
only.
none Allow all editres requests.
Remember that these resources are set on any Xaw client, not editres.
They allow individual clients to keep all or some of the requests
editres makes from ever succeeding. Of course, editres is also an
Xaw client, so it may also be viewed and modified by editres (rather
recursive, I know), these commands can be blocked by setting the
editresBlock resource on editres itself.
RESOURCES
For editres the available application resources are:
numFlashes (Class NumFlashes)
Specifies the number of times the widgets in the client
application will be flashed when the Show Active Widgets
command in invoked.
flashTime (Class FlashTime)
Amount of time between the flashes described above.
flashColor (Class flashColor)
Specifies the color used to flash client widgets. A bright
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color should be used that will immediately draw your
attention to the area being flashed, such as red or yellow.
saveResourcesFile (Class SaveResourcesFile)
This is the file the resource line will be append to when the
Save button activated in the resource box.
WIDGETS
In order to specify resources, it is useful to know the hierarchy of
the widgets which compose editres. In the notation below,
indentation indicates hierarchical structure. The widget class name
is given first, followed by the widget instance name.
Editres editres
Paned paned
Box box
MenuButton commands
SimpleMenu menu
SmeBSB sendTree
SmeBSB refreshTree
SmeBSB dumpTreeToFile
SmeLine line
SmeBSB getResourceList
SmeLine line
SmeBSB quit
MenuButton treeCommands
SimpleMenu menu
SmeBSB showClientWidget
SmeBSB selectAll
SmeBSB unselectAll
SmeBSB invertAll
SmeLine line
SmeBSB selectChildren
SmeBSB selectParent
SmeBSB selectDescendants
SmeBSB selectAncestors
SmeLine line
SmeBSB showWidgetNames
SmeBSB showClassNames
SmeBSB showWidgetIDs
SmeBSB showWidgetWindows
SmeLine line
SmeBSB flashActiveWidgets
Paned hPane
Panner panner
Label userMessage
Grip grip
Porthole porthole
Tree tree
Toggle <name of widget in client>
.
.
.
TransientShell resourceBox
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Paned pane
Label resourceLabel
Form namesAndClasses
Toggle dot
Toggle star
Toggle any
Toggle name
Toggle class
.
.
.
Label namesLabel
List namesList
Label constraintLabel
List constraintList
Form valueForm
Label valueLabel
Text valueText
Box commandBox
Command setFile
Command save
Command apply
Command saveAndApply
Command cancel
Grip grip
Grip grip
ENVIRONMENT
DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
XENVIRONMENT
to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global
resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
FILES
/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Editres - specifies required resources
SEE ALSO
X(1), xrdb(1), Athena Widget Set
RESTRICTIONS
This is a prototype, there are lots of nifty features I would love to
add, but I hope this will give you some ideas about what a resource
editor can do.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1990, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
See X(1) for a full statement of rights and permissions.
AUTHOR
Chris D. Peterson, formerly MIT X Consortium
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