Arch Linux

thisoldman

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 1,172

[Wiki] .Xdefaults deprecated?

On our wiki page, X resources, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X_resources, there has been an insistence that .Xdefaults is deprecated.  I've tried looking for the source of this information, diving into documentation and changelogs at x.org, xfree86.org and freedesktop.org, and I cannot find anything.  I'd like to know, is the deprecation of .Xdefaults a fact.

The closest I've come to anything official is a statement in the manpage for Debian's xsession, http://man.flashnux.com/en/debian/6/6.0 … ion.5.html, under the section INPUT FILES, in the description for "$HOME/.Xresources."  Has anyone run across any other "official" mention of .Xdefaults deprecation?

I'm using deprecation as meaning that the feature will be removed in a future release.

Last edited by thisoldman (2013-02-14 11:30:21)

eruditorum

Member

Registered: 2012-11-12

Posts: 130

Re: [Wiki] .Xdefaults deprecated?

no, it's not.
I always write settings to .Xdefaults (it is read upon X apps startup), whereas Xresources are read upon xinit (Xresources are mentioned only in .xinit).

Last edited by eruditorum (2013-02-14 11:52:19)

skanky

Member

From: WAIS

Registered: 2009-10-23

Posts: 1,847

Re: [Wiki] .Xdefaults deprecated?

Can't answer about the deprecation, but here's a good description of the current situation:

http://superuser.com/questions/243914/x … -xdefaults

---

"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin."  - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle

jakobcreutzfeldt

Member

Registered: 2011-05-12

Posts: 1,041

Re: [Wiki] .Xdefaults deprecated?

There's also this description that I found:
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-List … /1410.html

xrdb & Xresources handle multiple displays correctly, unlike Xdefaults, I guess.

skanky

Member

From: WAIS

Registered: 2009-10-23

Posts: 1,847

Re: [Wiki] .Xdefaults deprecated?

I think the bit about XENVIRONMENT is worth noting.

Edit: this was also at jakobcreutzfeldt's link: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive … 00024.html

Last edited by skanky (2013-02-14 12:42:12)

---

"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin."  - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle

thisoldman

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 1,172

Re: [Wiki] .Xdefaults deprecated?

I can also get $HOME/XTerm to work as a resource file, without xrdb.  I wonder how old that feature is.  I believe the X Windows System developers don't remove any feature, if they can help it, in order to maintain backward compatibility.

So...there's probably no official deprecation, but some DEs and distros may have deprecated .Xdefaults by the use of xrdb (and .Xresources) within their startup scripts.

eruditorum

Member

Registered: 2012-11-12

Posts: 130

Re: [Wiki] .Xdefaults deprecated?

with .Xdefaults you don't need to install xrdb. And if you change it configuration changes are seen right after restart of the program, not after restart of Xorg.

Last edited by eruditorum (2013-04-11 06:49:10)

kozaki

Member

From: London >. < Paris

Registered: 2005-06-13

Posts: 673

Website

Re: [Wiki] .Xdefaults deprecated?

Feeling like I'm a few bits less ignorant; thank you!

---

Seeded last month: Arch 50 gig, derivatives 1 gig
Desktop @3.3GHz 8 gig RAM, linux-ck
laptop #1 Atom 2 gig RAM, Arch linux stock i686 (6H w/ 6yrs old battery ) #2: ARM Tegra K1, 4 gig RAM, ChrOS
Atom Z520 2 gig RAM, OMV (Debian 7) kernel 3.16 bpo on SDHC | PGP Key: 0xFF0157D9