Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!hao!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ATHENA.MIT.EDU!swick
From: swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R. Swick)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: option parsing in the X11 toolkit
Message-ID: <8803211324.AA18536@LYRE.MIT.EDU>
Date: 21 Mar 88 13:24:14 GMT
References: <1599@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 20


     Date: 17 Mar 88 04:33:16 GMT
     From: grady@postgres.Berkeley.EDU  (Steven Grady)

     I am confused by something.  I have used xrdb to set the main font
     of my xterm by default to 6x10, by using the following line:

	     xterm*VT100*font:       6x10

     This works fine, except that I can't override it on the command
     line.  If I say "xterm -fn fixed" or "xterm -font fixed", it should
     give me the "fixed" font, but it still gives me 6x10.

The bug (if any) is a little more subtle than you describe.  The
default option table used by the toolkit stores the resource identified
by -fn under xterm*font.  By the precedence rules for resource retrieval,
xterm*VT100*font is more specific than xterm*font and therefore continues
to be the resource value used.  The reason for the order of processing
that you describe is so that an application can over-ride the default
option table by specifying it's own entry for -fn.