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From: dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: app-defaults or xrdb?
Message-ID: <1990Jan10.150705.1609@smsc.sony.com>
Date: 10 Jan 90 15:07:05 GMT
References: <4468@hemuli.tik.vtt.fi> <2417@bacchus.dec.com>
Reply-To: dce@Sony.COM (David Elliott)
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp.
Lines: 34

In article <2417@bacchus.dec.com> asente@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Asente) writes:
>In article <4468@hemuli.tik.vtt.fi> tml@hemuli.tik.vtt.fi (Tor Lillqvist) writes:
>>Am I correct in assuming that you are supposed to achieve site-wide
>>defaults by loading resources from some file via xinit or xdm, not by
>>editing files in /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults?
>
>Nope.  One of the principal motivations for the app-defaults files was to
>allow site-wide customizations without having to modify the source code.

Maybe I've done too much overall systems development, but this seems to
me to be a mechanism that is less than optimal.

When you have a file that is to be overwritten by installation,
customers are given the burden of remembering to save their changes so
that they can be made again.  It's easy to forget to save off a
directory, especially when its almost invisible to you from a user
standpoint.

Because of this, it seems to me that it would be better to have
applications look for a file that isn't part of the standard
distribution, and thus won't be overwritten by a new installation.
For example, the directory /usr/local/lib/X11/app-defaults could
be used for localized app-defaults files.

I realize that this adds complexity to the release, and I'm not sure
it's the "right thing to do".  Maybe the best thing to do is to warn
people to remember to save copies of their changed app-defaults files
somewhere.

-- 
David Elliott
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