Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!uwm.edu!bionet!arisia!roo!janssen From: janssen@parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Help w/ resources, maybe what I want in R5... Message-ID: Date: 3 Jul 90 03:42:49 GMT References: Sender: news@parc.xerox.com Organization: Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 29 In-reply-to: warsaw@cme.nist.gov's message of 28 Jun 90 14:46:03 GMT In article warsaw@cme.nist.gov (Barry A. Warsaw) writes: I want to be able to use resources to control the personality of the applications running in my environment. The kinds of things I want to do are: 1) Make all command buttons be oval shaped, with Black on Wheat colors, using the helvetica.b.12 (*) font. This brings up an interesting point. Quite often users want to customize resources based not on the Widget used by the programmer in implementing a feature, or on the name of the application, but by the role that a particular widget-realized feature plays in their usage pattern. "Make all buttons that Save Files be octagonal" "Make all quit operations ask for confirmation" This can be done to some limited extent in Xt-based applications, by using widgets appropriately sub-classed, crossed with an application name. But the mechanism seems a bit strained, and the users are forced to think about the implementation of the application, and are at the mercy of the programmers who decide to use this or that widget. -- Bill Janssen janssen.pa@xerox.com (415) 494-4763 Xerox Palo Alto Research Center 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304