1X(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual X(7)
2
6 X - a portable, network-transparent window system
7
9 The X Window System is a network transparent window system which runs
10 on a wide range of computing and graphics machines. It should be rela‐
11 tively straightforward to build the X.Org Foundation software distribu‐
12 tion on most ANSI C and POSIX compliant systems. Commercial implemen‐
13 tations are also available for a wide range of platforms.
14 The X.Org Foundation requests that the following names be used when
16 referring to this software:
17 X
20 X Window System
21 X Version 11
22 X Window System, Version 11
23 X11
24 X Window System is a trademark of The Open Group.
26
28 X Window System servers run on computers with bitmap displays. The
29 server distributes user input to and accepts output requests from vari‐
30 ous client programs through a variety of different interprocess commu‐
31 nication channels. Although the most common case is for the client
32 programs to be running on the same machine as the server, clients can
33 be run transparently from other machines (including machines with dif‐
34 ferent architectures and operating systems) as well.
35 X supports overlapping hierarchical subwindows and text and graphics
37 operations, on both monochrome and color displays. For a full explana‐
38 tion of the functions that are available, see the Xlib - C Language X
39 Interface manual, the X Window System Protocol specification, the X
40 Toolkit Intrinsics - C Language Interface manual, and various toolkit
41 documents.
42 The number of programs that use X is quite large. Programs provided in
44 the core X.Org Foundation distribution include: a terminal emulator,
45 xterm; a window manager, twm; a display manager, xdm; a console redi‐
46 rect program, xconsole; a mail interface, xmh; a bitmap editor, bitmap;
47 resource listing/manipulation tools, appres, editres; access control
48 programs, xauth, xhost, and iceauth; user preference setting programs,
49 xrdb, xcmsdb, xset, xsetroot, xstdcmap, and xmodmap; clocks, xclock and
50 oclock; a font displayer, xfd; utilities for listing information about
51 fonts, windows, and displays, xlsfonts, xwininfo, xlsclients, xdpyinfo,
52 xlsatoms, and xprop; screen image manipulation utilities, xwd, xwud,
53 and xmag; a performance measurement utility, x11perf; a font compiler,
54 bdftopcf; a font server and related utilities, xfs, fsinfo, fslsfonts,
55 fstobdf; a display server and related utilities, Xserver, rgb, mkfont‐
56 dir; a clipboard manager, xclipboard; keyboard description compiler and
57 related utilities, xkbcomp, setxkbmap xkbprint, xkbbell, xkbevd, xkb‐
58 vleds, and xkbwatch; a utility to terminate clients, xkill; a firewall
59 security proxy, xfwp; a proxy manager to control them, proxymngr; a
60 utility to find proxies, xfindproxy; web browser plug-ins, libxrx.so
61 and libxrxnest.so; an RX MIME-type helper program, xrx; and a utility
62 to cause part or all of the screen to be redrawn, xrefresh.
63 Many other utilities, window managers, games, toolkits, etc. are
65 included as user-contributed software in the X.Org Foundation distribu‐
66 tion, or are available on the Internet. See your site administrator
67 for details.
68
70 There are two main ways of getting the X server and an initial set of
71 client applications started. The particular method used depends on
72 what operating system you are running and whether or not you use other
73 window systems in addition to X.
74 Display Manager
76 If you want to always have X running on your display, your site
77 administrator can set your machine up to use a Display Manager
78 such as xdm, gdm, or kdm. This program is typically started by
79 the system at boot time and takes care of keeping the server
80 running and getting users logged in. If you are running one of
81 these display managers, you will normally see a window on the
82 screen welcoming you to the system and asking for your login
83 information. Simply type them in as you would at a normal ter‐
84 minal. If you make a mistake, the display manager will display
85 an error message and ask you to try again. After you have suc‐
86 cessfully logged in, the display manager will start up your X
87 environment. The documentation for the display manager you use
88 can provide more details.
89 xinit (run manually from the shell)
91 Sites that support more than one window system might choose to
92 use the xinit program for starting X manually. If this is true
93 for your machine, your site administrator will probably have
94 provided a program named "x11", "startx", or "xstart" that will
95 do site-specific initialization (such as loading convenient
96 default resources, running a window manager, displaying a
97 clock, and starting several terminal emulators) in a nice way.
98 If not, you can build such a script using the xinit program.
99 This utility simply runs one user-specified program to start
100 the server, runs another to start up any desired clients, and
101 then waits for either to finish. Since either or both of the
102 user-specified programs may be a shell script, this gives sub‐
103 stantial flexibility at the expense of a nice interface. For
104 this reason, xinit is not intended for end users.
105
107 From the user's perspective, every X server has a display name of the
108 form:
109 hostname:displaynumber.screennumber
111 This information is used by the application to determine how it should
113 connect to the server and which screen it should use by default (on
114 displays with multiple monitors):
115 hostname
117 The hostname specifies the name of the machine to which the
118 display is physically connected. If the hostname is not given,
119 the most efficient way of communicating to a server on the same
120 machine will be used.
121 displaynumber
123 The phrase "display" is usually used to refer to a collection
124 of monitors that share a common set of input devices (keyboard,
125 mouse, tablet, etc.). Most workstations tend to only have one
126 display. Larger, multi-user systems, however, frequently have
127 several displays so that more than one person can be doing
128 graphics work at once. To avoid confusion, each display on a
129 machine is assigned a display number (beginning at 0) when the
130 X server for that display is started. The display number must
131 always be given in a display name.
132 screennumber
134 Some displays share their input devices among two or more moni‐
135 tors. These may be configured as a single logical screen,
136 which allows windows to move across screens, or as individual
137 screens, each with their own set of windows. If configured
138 such that each monitor has its own set of windows, each screen
139 is assigned a screen number (beginning at 0) when the X server
140 for that display is started. If the screen number is not
141 given, screen 0 will be used.
142 On POSIX systems, the default display name is stored in your DISPLAY
144 environment variable. This variable is set automatically by the xterm
145 terminal emulator. However, when you log into another machine on a
146 network, you may need to set DISPLAY by hand to point to your display.
147 For example,
148 % setenv DISPLAY myws:0
150 $ DISPLAY=myws:0; export DISPLAY
151 The ssh program can be used to start an X program on a remote machine;
153 it automatically sets the DISPLAY variable correctly.
154 Finally, most X programs accept a command line option of -display dis‐
156 playname to temporarily override the contents of DISPLAY. This is most
157 commonly used to pop windows on another person's screen or as part of a
158 "remote shell" command to start an xterm pointing back to your display.
159 For example,
160 % xeyes -display joesws:0 -geometry 1000x1000+0+0
162 % rsh big xterm -display myws:0 -ls </dev/null &
163 X servers listen for connections on a variety of different communica‐
165 tions channels (network byte streams, shared memory, etc.). Since
166 there can be more than one way of contacting a given server, The host‐
167 name part of the display name is used to determine the type of channel
168 (also called a transport layer) to be used. X servers generally sup‐
169 port the following types of connections:
170 local
172 The hostname part of the display name should be the empty
173 string. For example: :0, :1, and :0.1. The most efficient
174 local transport will be chosen.
175 TCPIP
177 The hostname part of the display name should be the server
178 machine's hostname or IP address. Full Internet names, abbre‐
179 viated names, IPv4 addresses, and IPv6 addresses are all
180 allowed. For example: x.org:0, expo:0, [::1]:0,
181 198.112.45.11:0, bigmachine:1, and hydra:0.1.
182
184 An X server can use several types of access control. Mechanisms pro‐
185 vided in Release 7 are:
186 Host Access Simple host-based access control.
188 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 Shared plain-text "cookies".
189 XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 Secure DES based private-keys.
190 SUN-DES-1 Based on Sun's secure rpc system.
191 Server Interpreted Server-dependent methods of access control
192 Xdm initializes access control for the server and also places autho‐
194 rization information in a file accessible to the user.
195 Normally, the list of hosts from which connections are always accepted
197 should be empty, so that only clients with are explicitly authorized
198 can connect to the display. When you add entries to the host list
199 (with xhost), the server no longer performs any authorization on con‐
200 nections from those machines. Be careful with this.
201 The file from which Xlib extracts authorization data can be specified
203 with the environment variable XAUTHORITY, and defaults to the file
204 .Xauthority in the home directory. Xdm uses $HOME/.Xauthority and will
205 create it or merge in authorization records if it already exists when a
206 user logs in.
207 If you use several machines and share a common home directory across
209 all of the machines by means of a network file system, you never really
210 have to worry about authorization files, the system should work cor‐
211 rectly by default. Otherwise, as the authorization files are machine-
212 independent, you can simply copy the files to share them. To manage
213 authorization files, use xauth. This program allows you to extract
214 records and insert them into other files. Using this, you can send
215 authorization to remote machines when you login, if the remote machine
216 does not share a common home directory with your local machine. Note
217 that authorization information transmitted ``in the clear'' through a
218 network file system or using ftp or rcp can be ``stolen'' by a network
219 eavesdropper, and as such may enable unauthorized access. In many
220 environments, this level of security is not a concern, but if it is,
221 you need to know the exact semantics of the particular authorization
222 data to know if this is actually a problem.
223 For more information on access control, see the Xsecurity(7) manual
225 page.
226
228 One of the advantages of using window systems instead of hardwired ter‐
229 minals is that applications don't have to be restricted to a particular
230 size or location on the screen. Although the layout of windows on a
231 display is controlled by the window manager that the user is running
232 (described below), most X programs accept a command line argument of
233 the form -geometry WIDTHxHEIGHT+XOFF+YOFF (where WIDTH, HEIGHT, XOFF,
234 and YOFF are numbers) for specifying a preferred size and location for
235 this application's main window.
236 The WIDTH and HEIGHT parts of the geometry specification are usually
238 measured in either pixels or characters, depending on the application.
239 The XOFF and YOFF parts are measured in pixels and are used to specify
240 the distance of the window from the left or right and top and bottom
241 edges of the screen, respectively. Both types of offsets are measured
242 from the indicated edge of the screen to the corresponding edge of the
243 window. The X offset may be specified in the following ways:
244 +XOFF The left edge of the window is to be placed XOFF pixels in from
246 the left edge of the screen (i.e., the X coordinate of the win‐
247 dow's origin will be XOFF). XOFF may be negative, in which
248 case the window's left edge will be off the screen.
249 -XOFF The right edge of the window is to be placed XOFF pixels in
251 from the right edge of the screen. XOFF may be negative, in
252 which case the window's right edge will be off the screen.
253 The Y offset has similar meanings:
255 +YOFF The top edge of the window is to be YOFF pixels below the top
257 edge of the screen (i.e., the Y coordinate of the window's ori‐
258 gin will be YOFF). YOFF may be negative, in which case the
259 window's top edge will be off the screen.
260 -YOFF The bottom edge of the window is to be YOFF pixels above the
262 bottom edge of the screen. YOFF may be negative, in which case
263 the window's bottom edge will be off the screen.
264 Offsets must be given as pairs; in other words, in order to specify
266 either XOFF or YOFF both must be present. Windows can be placed in the
267 four corners of the screen using the following specifications:
268 +0+0 upper left hand corner.
270 -0+0 upper right hand corner.
272 -0-0 lower right hand corner.
274 +0-0 lower left hand corner.
276 In the following examples, a terminal emulator is placed in roughly the
278 center of the screen and a load average monitor, mailbox, and clock are
279 placed in the upper right hand corner:
280 xterm -fn 6x10 -geometry 80x24+30+200 &
282 xclock -geometry 48x48-0+0 &
283 xload -geometry 48x48-96+0 &
284 xbiff -geometry 48x48-48+0 &
285
287 The layout of windows on the screen is controlled by special programs
288 called window managers. Although many window managers will honor geom‐
289 etry specifications as given, others may choose to ignore them (requir‐
290 ing the user to explicitly draw the window's region on the screen with
291 the pointer, for example).
292 Since window managers are regular (albeit complex) client programs, a
294 variety of different user interfaces can be built. The X.Org Founda‐
295 tion distribution comes with a window manager named twm which supports
296 overlapping windows, popup menus, point-and-click or click-to-type
297 input models, title bars, nice icons (and an icon manager for those who
298 don't like separate icon windows).
299 See the user-contributed software in the X.Org Foundation distribution
301 for other popular window managers.
302
304 Collections of characters for displaying text and symbols in X are
305 known as fonts. A font typically contains images that share a common
306 appearance and look nice together (for example, a single size, bold‐
307 ness, slant, and character set). Similarly, collections of fonts that
308 are based on a common type face (the variations are usually called
309 roman, bold, italic, bold italic, oblique, and bold oblique) are called
310 families.
311 Fonts come in various sizes. The X server supports scalable fonts,
313 meaning it is possible to create a font of arbitrary size from a single
314 source for the font. The server supports scaling from outline fonts
315 and bitmap fonts. Scaling from outline fonts usually produces signifi‐
316 cantly better results than scaling from bitmap fonts.
317 An X server can obtain fonts from individual files stored in directo‐
319 ries in the file system, or from one or more font servers, or from a
320 mixtures of directories and font servers. The list of places the
321 server looks when trying to find a font is controlled by its font path.
322 Although most installations will choose to have the server start up
323 with all of the commonly used font directories in the font path, the
324 font path can be changed at any time with the xset program. However,
325 it is important to remember that the directory names are on the
326 server's machine, not on the application's.
327 Bitmap font files are usually created by compiling a textual font
329 description into binary form, using bdftopcf. Font databases are cre‐
330 ated by running the mkfontdir program in the directory containing the
331 source or compiled versions of the fonts. Whenever fonts are added to
332 a directory, mkfontdir should be rerun so that the server can find the
333 new fonts. To make the server reread the font database, reset the font
334 path with the xset program. For example, to add a font to a private
335 directory, the following commands could be used:
336 % cp newfont.pcf ~/myfonts
338 % mkfontdir ~/myfonts
339 % xset fp rehash
340 The xfontsel and xlsfonts programs can be used to browse through the
342 fonts available on a server. Font names tend to be fairly long as they
343 contain all of the information needed to uniquely identify individual
344 fonts. However, the X server supports wildcarding of font names, so
345 the full specification
346 -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-m-60-iso8859-1
348 might be abbreviated as:
350 -*-courier-medium-r-normal--*-100-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
352 Because the shell also has special meanings for * and ?, wildcarded
354 font names should be quoted:
355 % xlsfonts -fn '-*-courier-medium-r-normal--*-100-*-*-*-*-*-*'
357 The xlsfonts program can be used to list all of the fonts that match a
359 given pattern. With no arguments, it lists all available fonts. This
360 will usually list the same font at many different sizes. To see just
361 the base scalable font names, try using one of the following patterns:
362 -*-*-*-*-*-*-0-0-0-0-*-0-*-*
364 -*-*-*-*-*-*-0-0-75-75-*-0-*-*
365 -*-*-*-*-*-*-0-0-100-100-*-0-*-*
366 To convert one of the resulting names into a font at a specific size,
368 replace one of the first two zeros with a nonzero value. The field
369 containing the first zero is for the pixel size; replace it with a spe‐
370 cific height in pixels to name a font at that size. Alternatively, the
371 field containing the second zero is for the point size; replace it with
372 a specific size in decipoints (there are 722.7 decipoints to the inch)
373 to name a font at that size. The last zero is an average width field,
374 measured in tenths of pixels; some servers will anamorphically scale if
375 this value is specified.
376
378 One of the following forms can be used to name a font server that
379 accepts TCP connections:
380 tcp/hostname:port
382 tcp/hostname:port/cataloguelist
383 The hostname specifies the name (or decimal numeric address) of the
385 machine on which the font server is running. The port is the decimal
386 TCP port on which the font server is listening for connections. The
387 cataloguelist specifies a list of catalogue names, with '+' as a sepa‐
388 rator.
389 Examples: tcp/x.org:7100, tcp/198.112.45.11:7100/all.
391
393 Most applications provide ways of tailoring (usually through resources
394 or command line arguments) the colors of various elements in the text
395 and graphics they display. A color can be specified either by an
396 abstract color name, or by a numerical color specification. The numer‐
397 ical specification can identify a color in either device-dependent
398 (RGB) or device-independent terms. Color strings are case-insensitive.
399 X supports the use of abstract color names, for example, "red", "blue".
401 A value for this abstract name is obtained by searching one or more
402 color name databases. Xlib first searches zero or more client-side
403 databases; the number, location, and content of these databases is
404 implementation dependent. If the name is not found, the color is
405 looked up in the X server's database. The text form of this database
406 is commonly stored in the file usr/share/X11/rgb.txt.
407 A numerical color specification consists of a color space name and a
409 set of values in the following syntax:
410 <color_space_name>:<value>/.../<value>
412 An RGB Device specification is identified by the prefix "rgb:" and has
414 the following syntax:
415 rgb:<red>/<green>/<blue>
417 <red>, <green>, <blue> := h | hh | hhh | hhhh
419 h := single hexadecimal digits
420 Note that h indicates the value scaled in 4 bits, hh the value scaled
422 in 8 bits, hhh the value scaled in 12 bits, and hhhh the value scaled
423 in 16 bits, respectively. These values are passed directly to the X
424 server, and are assumed to be gamma corrected.
425 The eight primary colors can be represented as:
427 black rgb:0/0/0
430 red rgb:ffff/0/0
431 green rgb:0/ffff/0
432 blue rgb:0/0/ffff
433 yellow rgb:ffff/ffff/0
434 magenta rgb:ffff/0/ffff
435 cyan rgb:0/ffff/ffff
436 white rgb:ffff/ffff/ffff
437 For backward compatibility, an older syntax for RGB Device is sup‐
439 ported, but its continued use is not encouraged. The syntax is an ini‐
440 tial sharp sign character followed by a numeric specification, in one
441 of the following formats:
442 #RGB (4 bits each)
445 #RRGGBB (8 bits each)
446 #RRRGGGBBB (12 bits each)
447 #RRRRGGGGBBBB (16 bits each)
448 The R, G, and B represent single hexadecimal digits. When fewer than
450 16 bits each are specified, they represent the most-significant bits of
451 the value (unlike the "rgb:" syntax, in which values are scaled). For
452 example, #3a7 is the same as #3000a0007000.
453 An RGB intensity specification is identified by the prefix "rgbi:" and
455 has the following syntax:
456 rgbi:<red>/<green>/<blue>
458 The red, green, and blue are floating point values between 0.0 and 1.0,
460 inclusive. They represent linear intensity values, with 1.0 indicating
461 full intensity, 0.5 half intensity, and so on. These values will be
462 gamma corrected by Xlib before being sent to the X server. The input
463 format for these values is an optional sign, a string of numbers possi‐
464 bly containing a decimal point, and an optional exponent field contain‐
465 ing an E or e followed by a possibly signed integer string.
466 The standard device-independent string specifications have the follow‐
468 ing syntax:
469 CIEXYZ:<X>/<Y>/<Z> (none, 1, none)
472 CIEuvY:<u>/<v>/<Y> (~.6, ~.6, 1)
473 CIExyY:<x>/<y>/<Y> (~.75, ~.85, 1)
474 CIELab:<L>/<a>/<b> (100, none, none)
475 CIELuv:<L>/<u>/<v> (100, none, none)
476 TekHVC:<H>/<V>/<C> (360, 100, 100)
477 All of the values (C, H, V, X, Y, Z, a, b, u, v, y, x) are floating
479 point values. Some of the values are constrained to be between zero
480 and some upper bound; the upper bounds are given in parentheses above.
481 The syntax for these values is an optional '+' or '-' sign, a string of
482 digits possibly containing a decimal point, and an optional exponent
483 field consisting of an 'E' or 'e' followed by an optional '+' or '-'
484 followed by a string of digits.
485 For more information on device independent color, see the Xlib refer‐
487 ence manual.
488
490 The X keyboard model is broken into two layers: server-specific codes
491 (called keycodes) which represent the physical keys, and server-inde‐
492 pendent symbols (called keysyms) which represent the letters or words
493 that appear on the keys. Two tables are kept in the server for con‐
494 verting keycodes to keysyms:
495 modifier list
497 Some keys (such as Shift, Control, and Caps Lock) are known as
498 modifier and are used to select different symbols that are
499 attached to a single key (such as Shift-a generates a capital
500 A, and Control-l generates a control character ^L). The server
501 keeps a list of keycodes corresponding to the various modifier
502 keys. Whenever a key is pressed or released, the server gener‐
503 ates an event that contains the keycode of the indicated key as
504 well as a mask that specifies which of the modifier keys are
505 currently pressed. Most servers set up this list to initially
506 contain the various shift, control, and shift lock keys on the
507 keyboard.
508 keymap table
510 Applications translate event keycodes and modifier masks into
511 keysyms using a keysym table which contains one row for each
512 keycode and one column for various modifier states. This table
513 is initialized by the server to correspond to normal typewriter
514 conventions. The exact semantics of how the table is inter‐
515 preted to produce keysyms depends on the particular program,
516 libraries, and language input method used, but the following
517 conventions for the first four keysyms in each row are gener‐
518 ally adhered to:
519 The first four elements of the list are split into two groups of
521 keysyms. Group 1 contains the first and second keysyms; Group 2 con‐
522 tains the third and fourth keysyms. Within each group, if the first
523 element is alphabetic and the the second element is the special keysym
524 NoSymbol, then the group is treated as equivalent to a group in which
525 the first element is the lowercase letter and the second element is the
526 uppercase letter.
527 Switching between groups is controlled by the keysym named MODE SWITCH,
529 by attaching that keysym to some key and attaching that key to any one
530 of the modifiers Mod1 through Mod5. This modifier is called the
531 ``group modifier.'' Group 1 is used when the group modifier is off,
532 and Group 2 is used when the group modifier is on.
533 Within a group, the modifier state determines which keysym to use. The
535 first keysym is used when the Shift and Lock modifiers are off. The
536 second keysym is used when the Shift modifier is on, when the Lock mod‐
537 ifier is on and the second keysym is uppercase alphabetic, or when the
538 Lock modifier is on and is interpreted as ShiftLock. Otherwise, when
539 the Lock modifier is on and is interpreted as CapsLock, the state of
540 the Shift modifier is applied first to select a keysym; but if that
541 keysym is lowercase alphabetic, then the corresponding uppercase keysym
542 is used instead.
543
545 Most X programs attempt to use the same names for command line options
546 and arguments. All applications written with the X Toolkit Intrinsics
547 automatically accept the following options:
548 -display display
550 This option specifies the name of the X server to use.
551 -geometry geometry
553 This option specifies the initial size and location of the win‐
554 dow.
555 -bg color, -background color
557 Either option specifies the color to use for the window back‐
558 ground.
559 -bd color, -bordercolor color
561 Either option specifies the color to use for the window border.
562 -bw number, -borderwidth number
564 Either option specifies the width in pixels of the window bor‐
565 der.
566 -fg color, -foreground color
568 Either option specifies the color to use for text or graphics.
569 -fn font, -font font
571 Either option specifies the font to use for displaying text.
572 -iconic
574 This option indicates that the user would prefer that the
575 application's windows initially not be visible as if the win‐
576 dows had be immediately iconified by the user. Window managers
577 may choose not to honor the application's request.
578 -name
580 This option specifies the name under which resources for the
581 application should be found. This option is useful in shell
582 aliases to distinguish between invocations of an application,
583 without resorting to creating links to alter the executable
584 file name.
585 -rv, -reverse
587 Either option indicates that the program should simulate
588 reverse video if possible, often by swapping the foreground and
589 background colors. Not all programs honor this or implement it
590 correctly. It is usually only used on monochrome displays.
591 +rv
593 This option indicates that the program should not simulate
594 reverse video. This is used to override any defaults since
595 reverse video doesn't always work properly.
596 -selectionTimeout
598 This option specifies the timeout in milliseconds within which
599 two communicating applications must respond to one another for
600 a selection request.
601 -synchronous
603 This option indicates that requests to the X server should be
604 sent synchronously, instead of asynchronously. Since Xlib nor‐
605 mally buffers requests to the server, errors do not necessarily
606 get reported immediately after they occur. This option turns
607 off the buffering so that the application can be debugged. It
608 should never be used with a working program.
609 -title string
611 This option specifies the title to be used for this window.
612 This information is sometimes used by a window manager to pro‐
613 vide some sort of header identifying the window.
614 -xnllanguage language[_territory][.codeset]
616 This option specifies the language, territory, and codeset for
617 use in resolving resource and other filenames.
618 -xrm resourcestring
620 This option specifies a resource name and value to override any
621 defaults. It is also very useful for setting resources that
622 don't have explicit command line arguments.
623
625 To make the tailoring of applications to personal preferences easier, X
626 provides a mechanism for storing default values for program resources
627 (e.g. background color, window title, etc.) that is used by programs
628 that use toolkits based on the X Toolkit Intrinsics library libXt.
629 (Programs using the common Gtk+ and Qt toolkits use other configuration
630 mechanisms.) Resources are specified as strings that are read in from
631 various places when an application is run. Program components are
632 named in a hierarchical fashion, with each node in the hierarchy iden‐
633 tified by a class and an instance name. At the top level is the class
634 and instance name of the application itself. By convention, the class
635 name of the application is the same as the program name, but with the
636 first letter capitalized (e.g. Bitmap or Emacs) although some programs
637 that begin with the letter ``x'' also capitalize the second letter for
638 historical reasons.
639 The precise syntax for resources is:
641 ResourceLine = Comment | IncludeFile | ResourceSpec | <empty line>
643 Comment = "!" {<any character except null or newline>}
644 IncludeFile = "#" WhiteSpace "include" WhiteSpace FileName WhiteSpace
645 FileName = <valid filename for operating system>
646 ResourceSpec = WhiteSpace ResourceName WhiteSpace ":" WhiteSpace Value
647 ResourceName = [Binding] {Component Binding} ComponentName
648 Binding = "." | "*"
649 WhiteSpace = {<space> | <horizontal tab>}
650 Component = "?" | ComponentName
651 ComponentName = NameChar {NameChar}
652 NameChar = "a"-"z" | "A"-"Z" | "0"-"9" | "_" | "-"
653 Value = {<any character except null or unescaped newline>}
654 Elements separated by vertical bar (|) are alternatives. Curly braces
656 ({...}) indicate zero or more repetitions of the enclosed elements.
657 Square brackets ([...]) indicate that the enclosed element is optional.
658 Quotes ("...") are used around literal characters.
659 IncludeFile lines are interpreted by replacing the line with the con‐
661 tents of the specified file. The word "include" must be in lowercase.
662 The filename is interpreted relative to the directory of the file in
663 which the line occurs (for example, if the filename contains no direc‐
664 tory or contains a relative directory specification).
665 If a ResourceName contains a contiguous sequence of two or more Binding
667 characters, the sequence will be replaced with single "." character if
668 the sequence contains only "." characters, otherwise the sequence will
669 be replaced with a single "*" character.
670 A resource database never contains more than one entry for a given
672 ResourceName. If a resource file contains multiple lines with the same
673 ResourceName, the last line in the file is used.
674 Any whitespace character before or after the name or colon in a
676 ResourceSpec are ignored. To allow a Value to begin with whitespace,
677 the two-character sequence ``\space'' (backslash followed by space) is
678 recognized and replaced by a space character, and the two-character
679 sequence ``\tab'' (backslash followed by horizontal tab) is recognized
680 and replaced by a horizontal tab character. To allow a Value to con‐
681 tain embedded newline characters, the two-character sequence ``\n'' is
682 recognized and replaced by a newline character. To allow a Value to be
683 broken across multiple lines in a text file, the two-character sequence
684 ``\newline'' (backslash followed by newline) is recognized and removed
685 from the value. To allow a Value to contain arbitrary character codes,
686 the four-character sequence ``\nnn'', where each n is a digit character
687 in the range of ``0''-``7'', is recognized and replaced with a single
688 byte that contains the octal value specified by the sequence. Finally,
689 the two-character sequence ``\\'' is recognized and replaced with a
690 single backslash.
691 When an application looks for the value of a resource, it specifies a
693 complete path in the hierarchy, with both class and instance names.
694 However, resource values are usually given with only partially speci‐
695 fied names and classes, using pattern matching constructs. An asterisk
696 (*) is a loose binding and is used to represent any number of interven‐
697 ing components, including none. A period (.) is a tight binding and is
698 used to separate immediately adjacent components. A question mark (?)
699 is used to match any single component name or class. A database entry
700 cannot end in a loose binding; the final component (which cannot be
701 "?") must be specified. The lookup algorithm searches the resource
702 database for the entry that most closely matches (is most specific for)
703 the full name and class being queried. When more than one database
704 entry matches the full name and class, precedence rules are used to
705 select just one.
706 The full name and class are scanned from left to right (from highest
708 level in the hierarchy to lowest), one component at a time. At each
709 level, the corresponding component and/or binding of each matching
710 entry is determined, and these matching components and bindings are
711 compared according to precedence rules. Each of the rules is applied
712 at each level, before moving to the next level, until a rule selects a
713 single entry over all others. The rules (in order of precedence) are:
714 1. An entry that contains a matching component (whether name, class,
716 or "?") takes precedence over entries that elide the level (that
717 is, entries that match the level in a loose binding).
718 2. An entry with a matching name takes precedence over both entries
720 with a matching class and entries that match using "?". An entry
721 with a matching class takes precedence over entries that match
722 using "?".
723 3. An entry preceded by a tight binding takes precedence over entries
725 preceded by a loose binding.
726 Programs based on the X Toolkit Intrinsics obtain resources from the
728 following sources (other programs usually support some subset of these
729 sources):
730 RESOURCE_MANAGER root window property
732 Any global resources that should be available to clients on all
733 machines should be stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property on
734 the root window of the first screen using the xrdb program.
735 This is frequently taken care of when the user starts up X
736 through the display manager or xinit.
737 SCREEN_RESOURCES root window property
739 Any resources specific to a given screen (e.g. colors) that
740 should be available to clients on all machines should be stored
741 in the SCREEN_RESOURCES property on the root window of that
742 screen. The xrdb program will sort resources automatically and
743 place them in RESOURCE_MANAGER or SCREEN_RESOURCES, as appro‐
744 priate.
745 application-specific files
747 Directories named by the environment variable XUSERFILESEARCH‐
748 PATH or the environment variable XAPPLRESDIR (which names a
749 single directory and should end with a '/' on POSIX systems),
750 plus directories in a standard place (usually under
751 /usr/share/X11/, but this can be overridden with the XFILE‐
752 SEARCHPATH environment variable) are searched for for applica‐
753 tion-specific resources. For example, application default
754 resources are usually kept in /usr/share/X11/app-defaults/.
755 See the X Toolkit Intrinsics - C Language Interface manual for
756 details.
757 XENVIRONMENT
759 Any user- and machine-specific resources may be specified by
760 setting the XENVIRONMENT environment variable to the name of a
761 resource file to be loaded by all applications. If this vari‐
762 able is not defined, a file named $HOME/.Xdefaults-hostname is
763 looked for instead, where hostname is the name of the host
764 where the application is executing.
765 -xrm resourcestring
767 Resources can also be specified from the command line. The
768 resourcestring is a single resource name and value as shown
769 above. Note that if the string contains characters interpreted
770 by the shell (e.g., asterisk), they must be quoted. Any number
771 of -xrm arguments may be given on the command line.
772 Program resources are organized into groups called classes, so that
774 collections of individual resources (each of which are called
775 instances) can be set all at once. By convention, the instance name of
776 a resource begins with a lowercase letter and class name with an upper
777 case letter. Multiple word resources are concatenated with the first
778 letter of the succeeding words capitalized. Applications written with
779 the X Toolkit Intrinsics will have at least the following resources:
780 background (class Background)
782 This resource specifies the color to use for the window back‐
783 ground.
784 borderWidth (class BorderWidth)
786 This resource specifies the width in pixels of the window bor‐
787 der.
788 borderColor (class BorderColor)
790 This resource specifies the color to use for the window border.
791 Most applications using the X Toolkit Intrinsics also have the resource
793 foreground (class Foreground), specifying the color to use for text and
794 graphics within the window.
795 By combining class and instance specifications, application preferences
797 can be set quickly and easily. Users of color displays will frequently
798 want to set Background and Foreground classes to particular defaults.
799 Specific color instances such as text cursors can then be overridden
800 without having to define all of the related resources. For example,
801 bitmap*Dashed: off
803 XTerm*cursorColor: gold
804 XTerm*multiScroll: on
805 XTerm*jumpScroll: on
806 XTerm*reverseWrap: on
807 XTerm*curses: on
808 XTerm*Font: 6x10
809 XTerm*scrollBar: on
810 XTerm*scrollbar*thickness: 5
811 XTerm*multiClickTime: 500
812 XTerm*charClass: 33:48,37:48,45-47:48,64:48
813 XTerm*cutNewline: off
814 XTerm*cutToBeginningOfLine: off
815 XTerm*titeInhibit: on
816 XTerm*ttyModes: intr ^c erase ^? kill ^u
817 XLoad*Background: gold
818 XLoad*Foreground: red
819 XLoad*highlight: black
820 XLoad*borderWidth: 0
821 emacs*Geometry: 80x65-0-0
822 emacs*Background: rgb:5b/76/86
823 emacs*Foreground: white
824 emacs*Cursor: white
825 emacs*BorderColor: white
826 emacs*Font: 6x10
827 xmag*geometry: -0-0
828 xmag*borderColor: white
829 If these resources were stored in a file called .Xresources in your
831 home directory, they could be added to any existing resources in the
832 server with the following command:
833 % xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources
835 This is frequently how user-friendly startup scripts merge user-spe‐
837 cific defaults into any site-wide defaults. All sites are encouraged
838 to set up convenient ways of automatically loading resources. See the
839 Xlib manual section Resource Manager Functions for more information.
840
842 DISPLAY
843 This is the only mandatory environment variable. It must point
844 to an X server. See section "Display Names" above.
845 XAUTHORITY
847 This must point to a file that contains authorization data. The
848 default is $HOME/.Xauthority. See Xsecurity(7), xauth(1),
849 xdm(1), Xau(3).
850 ICEAUTHORITY
852 This must point to a file that contains authorization data. The
853 default is $HOME/.ICEauthority.
854 LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG
856 The first non-empty value among these three determines the cur‐
857 rent locale's facet for character handling, and in particular
858 the default text encoding. See locale(7), setlocale(3),
859 locale(1).
860 XMODIFIERS
862 This variable can be set to contain additional information
863 important for the current locale setting. Typically set to
864 @im=<input-method> to enable a particular input method. See
865 XSetLocaleModifiers(3).
866 XLOCALEDIR
868 This must point to a directory containing the locale.alias file
869 and Compose and XLC_LOCALE file hierarchies for all locales. The
870 default value is /usr/share/X11/locale.
871 XENVIRONMENT
873 This must point to a file containing X resources. The default is
874 $HOME/.Xdefaults-<hostname>. Unlike $HOME/.Xresources, it is
875 consulted each time an X application starts.
876 XFILESEARCHPATH
878 This must contain a colon separated list of path templates,
879 where libXt will search for resource files. The default value
880 consists of
881 /etc/X11/%L/%T/%N%C%S:\
883 /etc/X11/%l/%T/%N%C%S:\
884 /etc/X11/%T/%N%C%S:\
885 /etc/X11/%L/%T/%N%S:\
886 /etc/X11/%l/%T/%N%S:\
887 /etc/X11/%T/%N%S:\
888 /usr/share/X11/%L/%T/%N%C%S:\
889 /usr/share/X11/%l/%T/%N%C%S:\
890 /usr/share/X11/%T/%N%C%S:\
891 /usr/share/X11/%L/%T/%N%S:\
892 /usr/share/X11/%l/%T/%N%S:\
893 /usr/share/X11/%T/%N%S:\
894 /usr/lib/X11/%L/%T/%N%C%S:\
895 /usr/lib/X11/%l/%T/%N%C%S:\
896 /usr/lib/X11/%T/%N%C%S:\
897 /usr/lib/X11/%L/%T/%N%S:\
898 /usr/lib/X11/%l/%T/%N%S:\
899 /usr/lib/X11/%T/%N%S
900 A path template is transformed to a pathname by substituting:
902 %D => the implementation-specific default path
904 %N => name (basename) being searched for
905 %T => type (dirname) being searched for
906 %S => suffix being searched for
907 %C => value of the resource "customization"
908 (class "Customization")
909 %L => the locale name
910 %l => the locale's language (part before '_')
911 %t => the locale's territory (part after '_` but before '.')
912 %c => the locale's encoding (part after '.')
913 XUSERFILESEARCHPATH
915 This must contain a colon separated list of path templates,
916 where libXt will search for user dependent resource files. The
917 default value is:
918 $XAPPLRESDIR/%L/%N%C:\
920 $XAPPLRESDIR/%l/%N%C:\
921 $XAPPLRESDIR/%N%C:\
922 $HOME/%N%C:\
923 $XAPPLRESDIR/%L/%N:\
924 $XAPPLRESDIR/%l/%N:\
925 $XAPPLRESDIR/%N:\
926 $HOME/%N
927 $XAPPLRESDIR defaults to $HOME, see below.
929 A path template is transformed to a pathname by substituting:
931 %D => the implementation-specific default path
933 %N => name (basename) being searched for
934 %T => type (dirname) being searched for
935 %S => suffix being searched for
936 %C => value of the resource "customization"
937 (class "Customization")
938 %L => the locale name
939 %l => the locale's language (part before '_')
940 %t => the locale's territory (part after '_` but before '.')
941 %c => the locale's encoding (part after '.')
942 XAPPLRESDIR
944 This must point to a base directory where the user stores the
945 application dependent resource files. The default value is
946 $HOME. Only used if XUSERFILESEARCHPATH is not set.
947 XKEYSYMDB
949 This must point to a file containing nonstandard keysym defini‐
950 tions. The default value is /usr/share/X11/XKeysymDB.
951 XCMSDB This must point to a color name database file. The default value
953 is
954 /usr/lib/X11/Xcms.txt.
955 RESOURCE_NAME
957 This serves as main identifier for resources belonging to the
958 program being executed. It defaults to the basename of pathname
959 of the program.
960 SESSION_MANAGER
962 Denotes the session manager to which the application should con‐
963 nect. See xsm(1), rstart(1).
964 XF86BIGFONT_DISABLE
966 Setting this variable to a non-empty value disables the
967 XFree86-Bigfont extension. This extension is a mechanism to
968 reduce the memory consumption of big fonts by use of shared mem‐
969 ory.
970 XKB_FORCE
972 XKB_DISABLE
973 XKB_DEBUG
974 _XKB_CHARSET
975 _XKB_LOCALE_CHARSETS
976 _XKB_OPTIONS_ENABLE
977 _XKB_LATIN1_LOOKUP
978 _XKB_CONSUME_LOOKUP_MODS
979 _XKB_CONSUME_SHIFT_AND_LOCK
980 _XKB_IGNORE_NEW_KEYBOARDS
981 _XKB_CONTROL_FALLBACK
982 _XKB_COMP_LED _XKB_COMP_FAIL_BEEP
983 These variables influence the X Keyboard Extension.
985
987 The following is a collection of sample command lines for some of the
988 more frequently used commands. For more information on a particular
989 command, please refer to that command's manual page.
990 % xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
992 % xmodmap -e "keysym BackSpace = Delete"
993 % mkfontdir /usr/local/lib/X11/otherfonts
994 % xset fp+ /usr/local/lib/X11/otherfonts
995 % xmodmap $HOME/.keymap.km
996 % xsetroot -solid 'rgbi:.8/.8/.8'
997 % xset b 100 400 c 50 s 1800 r on
998 % xset q
999 % twm
1000 % xmag
1001 % xclock -geometry 48x48-0+0 -bg blue -fg white
1002 % xeyes -geometry 48x48-48+0
1003 % xbiff -update 20
1004 % xlsfonts '*helvetica*'
1005 % xwininfo -root
1006 % xdpyinfo -display joesworkstation:0
1007 % xhost -joesworkstation
1008 % xrefresh
1009 % xwd | xwud
1010 % bitmap companylogo.bm 32x32
1011 % xcalc -bg blue -fg magenta
1012 % xterm -geometry 80x66-0-0 -name myxterm $*
1013
1015 A wide variety of error messages are generated from various programs.
1016 The default error handler in Xlib (also used by many toolkits) uses
1017 standard resources to construct diagnostic messages when errors occur.
1018 The defaults for these messages are usually stored in
1019 usr/share/X11/XErrorDB. If this file is not present, error messages
1020 will be rather terse and cryptic.
1021 When the X Toolkit Intrinsics encounter errors converting resource
1023 strings to the appropriate internal format, no error messages are usu‐
1024 ally printed. This is convenient when it is desirable to have one set
1025 of resources across a variety of displays (e.g. color vs. monochrome,
1026 lots of fonts vs. very few, etc.), although it can pose problems for
1027 trying to determine why an application might be failing. This behavior
1028 can be overridden by the setting the StringConversionWarnings resource.
1029 To force the X Toolkit Intrinsics to always print string conversion
1031 error messages, the following resource should be placed in the file
1032 that gets loaded onto the RESOURCE_MANAGER property using the xrdb pro‐
1033 gram (frequently called .Xresources or .Xres in the user's home direc‐
1034 tory):
1035 *StringConversionWarnings: on
1037 To have conversion messages printed for just a particular application,
1039 the appropriate instance name can be placed before the asterisk:
1040 xterm*StringConversionWarnings: on
1042
1044 XOrgFoundation(7), XStandards(7), Xsecurity(7), appres(1), bdftopcf(1),
1045 bitmap(1), editres(1), fsinfo(1), fslsfonts(1), fstobdf(1), iceauth(1),
1046 imake(1), makedepend(1), mkfontdir(1), oclock(1), proxymngr(1), rgb(1),
1047 resize(1), rstart(1), smproxy(1), twm(1), x11perf(1), x11perfcomp(1),
1048 xauth(1), xclipboard(1), xclock(1), xcmsdb(1), xconsole(1), xdm(1),
1049 xdpyinfo(1), xfd(1), xfindproxy(1), xfs(1), xfwp(1), xhost(1),
1050 xinit(1), xkbbell(1), xkbcomp(1), xkbevd(1), xkbprint(1), xkbvleds(1),
1051 xkbwatch(1), xkill(1), xlogo(1), xlsatoms(1), xlsclients(1), xls‐
1052 fonts(1), xmag(1), xmh(1), xmodmap(1), xprop(1), xrdb(1), xrefresh(1),
1053 xrx(1), xset(1), xsetroot(1), xsm(1), xstdcmap(1), xterm(1), xwd(1),
1054 xwininfo(1), xwud(1). Xserver(1), Xorg(1), Xdmx(1), Xephyr(1),
1055 Xnest(1), Xquartz(1), Xvfb(1), Xvnc(1), XWin(1). Xlib - C Language X
1056 Interface, and X Toolkit Intrinsics - C Language Interface
1057
1059 X Window System is a trademark of The Open Group.
1060
1062 A cast of thousands, literally. Releases 6.7 and later are brought to
1063 you by the X.Org Foundation. The names of all people who made it a
1064 reality will be found in the individual documents and source files.
1065 Releases 6.6 and 6.5 were done by The X.Org Group. Release 6.4 was
1067 done by The X Project Team. The Release 6.3 distribution was from The
1068 X Consortium, Inc. The staff members at the X Consortium responsible
1069 for that release were: Donna Converse (emeritus), Stephen Gildea (emer‐
1070 itus), Kaleb Keithley, Matt Landau (emeritus), Ralph Mor (emeritus),
1071 Janet O'Halloran, Bob Scheifler, Ralph Swick, Dave Wiggins (emeritus),
1072 and Reed Augliere.
1073 The X Window System standard was originally developed at the Laboratory
1075 for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and
1076 all rights thereto were assigned to the X Consortium on January 1,
1077 1994. X Consortium, Inc. closed its doors on December 31, 1996. All
1078 rights to the X Window System have been assigned to The Open Group.
1079X Version 11 xorg-docs 1.7.1 X(7)