EDITRES(1) X Version 11(Release 5) 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
Send Widget Tree
Allows the user to click on any client that speaks the editres
protocol and receive its widget tree.
10/89 Page 1
EDITRES(1) X Version 11(Release 5) EDITRES(1)
Refresh Widget Tree
Editres only knows about the widgets that exist at the present
time. Many applications create and destroy widgets "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 corrosponding 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
Page 2 10/89
EDITRES(1) X Version 11(Release 5) EDITRES(1)
get to every widget this way, but this mechanism does give very
useful feedback between 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)
10/89 Page 3
EDITRES(1) X Version 11(Release 5) EDITRES(1)
i Invert Select(invert)
c Select Children Select(children)
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.
Page 4 10/89
EDITRES(1) X Version 11(Release 5) EDITRES(1)
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 it, and see what it can do.
10/89 Page 5
EDITRES(1) X Version 11(Release 5) EDITRES(1)
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 flexability, 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 applicaion 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 color
should be used that will immediately draw your attention to the
area being flashed, such as red or yellow.
Page 6 10/89
EDITRES(1) X Version 11(Release 5) EDITRES(1)
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
Paned pane
10/89 Page 7
EDITRES(1) X Version 11(Release 5) EDITRES(1)
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
Page 8 10/89
EDITRES(1) X Version 11(Release 5) EDITRES(1)
10/89 Page 9