PC World 1999 August/PCWorld_1999-08_cd.bin/doc/HOWTO/XWindow-User-HOWTO

Text File | 1999-02-08 | 88.0 KB | 2,179 lines

  The X Window User HOWTO
  by Ray Brigleb, [e-mail]
  v1.3, 22 January 1999

  This document contains information on configuring the X Window envi¡
  ronment for the Linux user, as well as for the beginning system admin¡
  istrator attempting to sort through the many configuration options and
  details of X Window. A basic knowledge of software configuration and
  installation is assumed, as is the presence of X on the users system.
  ______________________________________________________________________

  Table of Contents






















































  1. Introduction

     1.1 Other Sources Of Information
     1.2 Versions Of This Document
     1.3 Feedback And Corrections
     1.4 Acknowledgments
     1.5 Copyright

  2. Getting Started

     2.1 The X Window System: History and Architecture
     2.2 Anatomy of Your Desktop
     2.3 Invoking X Window
     2.4 The X Display Manager

  3. Choosing a Window Manager

     3.1 FVWM And Its Ancestors
     3.2 The Wide World of Window Systems
     3.3 The X Graphical Interfaces
     3.4 The X Desktop Environments
     3.5 The Flashy Window Managers

  4. Working In X

     4.1 Command Line Options
     4.2 Display Names
     4.3 XTerm Versus Rxvt, or, Know Thy Terminal Emulator

  5. X Startup

     5.1 A Sample Starting Configuration
     5.2 A More Intelligent Startup
     5.3 Getting The Windows Where You Want Them

  6. Configuring the Window Manager

     6.1 Basic FVWM2 Configuration
     6.2 Advanced FVWM2 Configuration
     6.3 FVWM2 Configuration Shortcuts
     6.4 FVWM2 Themes

  7. Fonts and Colors

     7.1 Fonts Demystified
     7.2 Font Aliases and Configuration
     7.3 Using Type 1 Fonts in X
     7.4 Using TrueType Fonts in X
     7.5 Colors

  8. The X Resources

     8.1 X Resources: The Basics
     8.2 Inside The X Resource Database With
     8.3 The Anatomy of X Resources
     8.4 Making Your Changes Last With
     8.5 Your Own User Resource Directory

  9. Clients and Application Tips

     9.1 Screen Savers for X
     9.2 Emacs and XEmacs
     9.3 Some Useful Programs and Tricks
     9.4 Libraries and Compiling X Applications
     9.5 Basic X Security

  10. Bibliography and Other Resources



  ______________________________________________________________________

  1.  Introduction

  The X Window System is an advanced, network transparent, windowing,
  graphical environment, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of
  Technology, and first released in 1984. This document assumes that you
  have installed X and it is functional. We intend to learn how to use X
  productively, not so much how to compile the programs; most Linux
  distributions come with X as an option during installation, compiled
  and ready to go.


  1.1.  Other Sources Of Information

  If you are just starting out, you may find the XFree86 HOWTO and
  XFree86 Video Timings HOWTOs to be more helpful, and you should be
  able to find that in the same place you found this. At the end of the
  document you will also find a Bibliography And Resources section, to
  find even more information. Oh, and don't forget to read the man
  pages.


  1.2.  Versions Of This Document

  New versions of this HOWTO may be periodically posted to
  comp.os.linux.help <news:comp.os.linux.help> They will also be
  uploaded to various Linux WWW and FTP sites, including Linux
  Documentation Project <http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP> web site.  The
  latest version can (almost) always be found at
  <http://www.croftj.net/~ray/howto>.

  Changes in version 1.1 include more coverage of rxvt, expanded
  coverage of X Resources, more trivial history of X, corrected
  references to SunSite to point to MetaLab, and instructions on  using
  Type 1 fonts with X.

  Changes in version 1.2 include much-requested coverage of using
  TrueType fonts in X, more details about setting up xdm, and a few more
  added resources. There is also a correction to my discussion of screen
  blanking features (thanks to Heinrich Langos for the correction!).

  Changes in this version (1.3) include some fixes, info for corrupted
  font paths in some recent distributions, and lots more info about
  basic X security. I've also added some tips about KDE and an e-mail
  address update.


  1.3.  Feedback And Corrections

  If you have questions or comments about this document, please feel
  free to email Ray Brigleb at [e-mail] or [e-mail]. I
  readily welcome any suggestions or criticisms. If you find any
  mistakes with this document, please let me know so I can correct them
  in the next revision. If you have information you would like to see in
  future revisions, or you would like to contribute to a future
  revision, drop me a line.  I'm also looking for more resources to add
  to the sections and bibliography.  While we're at it, I'm also looking
  for a job in the Portland, Oregon area...



  1.4.  Acknowledgments

  A special thanks to the HOWTO coordinator Tim Bynum for help and
  suggestions, and the XFree86 Group for the man pages and help files
  that come with XFree86.  I really need to thank all of those who have
  written documentation and descriptions of their offerings in the past,
  I have just gleaned a selection of the most relevant items from their
  material for this document. Also, thanks are due to Matt Chapman,
  author of the Window Managers Guide website, and Scott Scriven, for
  the FVWM2 Themes tips and tricks I stole from some of his hacks.
  Thanks are also due to Joe Croft for the Internet service, invaluable
  to the ongoing development of this HOWTO, and Claire Galper, for moral
  support and miscellaneous tips. Last but not least, thanks to the
  whole GNU/Linux community, for everything, and Mr. Stallman, for this
  text editor (and philosophy).


  1.5.  Copyright

  Copyright (c) 1998, 1999 by Ray Brigleb.

  Unless otherwise stated, Linux HOWTO documents are copyrighted by
  their respective authors. Linux HOWTO documents may be reproduced and
  distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic,
  as long as this copyright notice is retained on all copies. Commercial
  redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the author would
  like to be notified of any such distributions.

  All translations, derivative works, or aggregate works incorporating
  any Linux HOWTO documents must be covered under this copyright notice.
  That is, you may not produce a derivative work from a HOWTO and impose
  additional restrictions on its distribution. Exceptions to these rules
  may be granted under certain conditions; please contact the Linux
  HOWTO coordinator for more information.

  In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through
  as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright
  on the HOWTO documents, and would very much like to be notified of any
  plans to redistribute the HOWTOs, this one in particular!

  Many of the terms mentioned in this document are trade names. Unless
  otherwise stated, all trademarks are property of their respective
  owners.


  2.  Getting Started



  2.1.  The X Window System: History and Architecture

  The X Window System was developed in the Laboratory for Computer
  Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as part of
  project Athena in cooperation with DEC, and first released in 1984.
  The project lead of the main development was Robert Scheifler, and the
  origins of X owe much debt to the ``W'' Windowing package, developed
  by Paul Asente at Stanford. In September of 1987, MIT issued the first
  release of the X11 that we know and use today. As of X11R2, control
  passed from MIT to the X Consortium, formed in January of 1988.

  Many of the ideas that went into X Window also came from research at
  Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where they were
  working on computers like the Parc and the Star in the late seventies.
  None of these computers made it to market, but when Xerox demonstrated
  a window system custom built to run Smalltalk 80, people were hooked.
  These series of three computers demonstrated the WIMP (Windows, Icons,
  Menus, Pointer) interface so well that it spawned a revolution in
  computing almost overnight. Within a few years many computer users got
  a taste of a windowing system of some kind, and you might say they
  never looked back.

  X Window is currently developed and distributed by the X Consortium,
  however, a liberal license permits the existence of free and low-cost
  implementations.  The version of X used on Linux is XFree86. XFree86
  is a collection of X servers for UNIX-like OSs on Intel x86 platforms.
  The work is derived from X386, and much of it is contributed back into
  X11R6 thereafter. We can think of XFree86, for all intents and
  purposes, to be X Window for Linux, unless you have purchased another
  X server.

  X Window is built upon a great many toolkits, or libraries. It is
  built upon the X Toolkit Intrinsics and the Athena Widgets. Many
  programs use XView or Motif tools. More still are part of a newer,
  unified windowing and communication system, like GNOME or KDE. If you
  find many of your programs not compiling, or are getting strange and
  inexplicable errors, you may wish to make sure that you have installed
  X correctly, because most of these libraries (with the exception of
  Motif) are free and most likely preinstalled with X on your system.

  And remember, it's called X Window, not X Windows!


  2.2.  Anatomy of Your Desktop

  There are a few basic principles and terms you should familiarize
  yourself with to make using X much more straightforward. These terms
  will appear over and over again in the manual pages and help files,
  which it is suggested that you consult whenever necessary.

  The screen is your whole ``desktop'', and the words may be used
  interchangeably.  Technically it means the primary video display you
  view X with, and you can have more than one screen, in fact you can
  have more than one computer running off a single X server. This is
  beyond the scope of this humble document, but you should be aware of
  the distinction.

  The root window is the background of your screen. It is referred to a
  window in name alone, it does not behave like any other window, but
  rather you run your applications on the root window, or put a picture
  on it, or just a solid color.

  The window manager is the main interface between the X Window system
  and the user. Without the window manager, the system would be rather
  difficult to use, and would certainly not be a very productive tool.
  The window manager provides such functionality as window borders,
  menus, icons, virtual desktops, button bars, tool bars, and allows the
  user to customize it at will, often adding to its functionality in the
  process.

  The pointer is the arrow or indicator of any given shape which
  represents the location your mouse (or other pointing device)
  corresponds to on the screen.  The pointer often changes to give you
  contextual feedback as to what will happen when you use the mouse at
  that point on the screen.

  The window is a frame in which any given application resides which is
  ``managed'' by the window manager. This includes pretty much anything
  except the so-called root window. Even windows which do not appear to
  have frames, titles, or normal borders of any kind are being managed
  by your window manger. The active window is the window you are
  currently using, the window that will receive text when you type, and
  is traditionally denoted by the fact that your mouse cursor is
  pointing at it, though this is not always the case. The active window
  is said to have ``focus,'' the rest of the windows on your display
  being ``unfocused.''

  Menus and icons behave in X similar to the way they behave in other
  windowing systems, and the same general principles apply. Windows with
  text only are called terminal emulators, an example would be xterm,
  and these basically emulate a console text-only display, but let you
  multiplex and use more than one at a time, and have many other
  advantages available due to their being used in X. We shall discuss
  many of these later on.


  2.3.  Invoking X Window

  Starting X can be done in several ways. On your system it may be set
  up to start automatically, and you will not need to read this section.
  Most Linux systems, however, presently start at the command line upon
  login, and you have to decipher this for yourself.

  The most basic way to start X is with xinit. This will put you at a
  blank desktop, by default, and with no window manager loaded. If no
  client program is specified on the command line, xinit will look for
  the .xinitrc file to run as a shell script, to start up client
  programs. If this file does not exist, xinit will use the following
  command as a default:



        xterm -geometry +1+1 -n login -display :0





  As you see, this is not very helpful. The most common way to start X
  is with the command startx. This is the most civilized fashion to
  start the windowing system, but requires that you log in from a text
  shell, and start the windowing system yourself. For many Linux users
  this is the most common way to start X, it is also the most flexible.
  You can issue a commands such as the following:



        startx -- -bpp 8    #start x in 256 color mode
        startx -- -bpp 32   #start x in true color mode





  The double dashes pass arguments directly to xinit, and this way you
  can start up X in the resolution your work will require, and still
  have it use the configuration files we will cover later in this
  document.


  2.4.  The X Display Manager

  The program xdm provides similar services to  getty and login, which
  allow users to log into a  system and start their basic shell. If you
  start X with xdm,  however, users need only to type in their username
  and password at a  friendly prompt, and they are dropped directly into
  the graphical  environment. This is simple and easy to use, and is
  seen frequently  in college campuses, cyber cafes, business
  environments, anywhere you  have users not necessarily familiar with
  Unix to any great extent.

  xdm can be configured with configuration  files located in
  /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm on your Linux  system. The file xdm-config is
  for configuring how the  login screen appears to users, and Xsetup_0
  is used to tell   xdm what programs should be launched when X is
  started. Some of the  configuration a normal user would put in their
  .xinitrc file  should go in here, if xdm is to be normally used.

  Here is a sample Xsetup_0 file to look at, which might help to
  configure your system. The xfstt program is the TrueType font server,
  and is discussed later in  this document. Also, notice that we're
  using a shell script here, and it's trying to call xv to set the
  background to a nice picture (instead of the boring black and white
  background pattern), and if that call fails, xsetroot is called, to at
  least try to set the background to a nice blue color.



        #!/bin/sh
        xconsole -geometry 480x100-0-0 -daemon -notify -verbose -fn \
        '-schumacher-clean-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*' -exitOnFail
        /usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt &
        /usr/X11R6/bin/xv -quit -root                               \
        /usr/local/share/WindowMaker/Backgrounds/InDreams.jpg       \
        || xsetroot -solid darkblue
        xset fp+ unix/:7100






  3.  Choosing a Window Manager

  This is a discussion of the window managers available to the X Window
  user, with a comparison of some finer ones to choose from. In order to
  prevent this document from becoming overwhelmingly large (and
  proportionally difficult to maintain, as well) I am limiting the
  discussion to the more popular and well known window managers out
  there. I believe these are most representative for our purposes, and
  once you grasp the basic concepts of a few, you more or less will have
  the hang of them all.

  Your choice of window manager can dramatically influence how pleasant
  your computing experience will be. You spend much of your time dealing
  with windows when you're in X, and you don't want something that's too
  obtrusive, one that will get in your way. Some window managers are
  extremely customizable, to the point that you can pretty much feel
  like it's a new operating system. If you don't like icons, get rid of
  them! If you miss that toolbar, you can build a better one, and it can
  be a pretty painless and rewarding process besides.


  3.1.  FVWM And Its Ancestors

  The most common window managers nowadays have their roots in Robert
  Nation's FVWM window manager. These include FVWM, FVWM2, FVWM95, and
  many more. FVWM itself is derived partly from TWM, which comes with an
  X Window installation, but which we will not cover here.  The syntax
  and usage of TWM is similar to FVWM, but it actually uses more memory,
  and feels clumsy and awkward to most users.

  FVWM is the original and old standby favorite Linux window manager.
  Now that the 2.0 of versions of FVWM have become stable and in more
  general usage, this newer version is preferred, for the syntax is much
  more direct and simplified, and much more flexible as well. However,
  many people still have the original FVWM on their systems, as it has
  been a long time favorite and standard, and most of the examples in
  this text are equally applicable to this older version. And if the
  older one is working fine for you, there may be no need to upgrade,
  since it may break your configuration files to some degree, for some
  of the syntax has indeed changed, and is not altogether backward
  compatible. Such is the nature of progress.

  Nobody seems quite sure what F in FVWM stands for (not even the
  author, from what I can tell!), but the VWM would seem to (correctly)
  indicate Virtual Window Manager, and indeed the FVWM series are
  virtual window managers, and that is one of their strengths. You can
  bind keys to any function, including the switching between the virtual
  desktops, and do this with ease.

  FVWM2 is the new standard, including many improvements and features
  not found in the previous version. Unlike many newer window managers,
  it works just fine on 8-bit, 256 color displays, which I am using at
  the moment, and still can be improved with little icons and gradients,
  to look as much like the Win98 interface as you may or may not want.
  This version is also much more extensible in general, and allows the
  use of themes and dynamic menus. Technically, FVWM2 is still in beta,
  but it works just great, and I have not yet had a single problem with
  it.


     Resources:
        The official FVWM and FVWM2 site is
        <http://www.hpc.uh.edu/fvwm/>.  The latest version should always
        be available at  <ftp://ftp.hpc.uh.edu/pub/fvwm/>.


  3.2.  The Wide World of Window Systems

  For users more familiar with other window environments on other
  operating systems, there are plenty of window managers to emulate the
  desktop you're accustomed to.

  The icewm <http://berta.fri.uni-lj.si/~markom/icewm> window manager is
  aimed at a more consistent look and feel, and can emulate many other
  windowing system standards, hot key bindings, and such.  The OS/2
  emulations are particularly nice.  AmiWM
  <http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/amiwm.html> is an Amiga Workbench
  type window manager, mlvwm <http://www.bioele.nuee.nagoya-
  u.ac.jp/member/tak/mlvwm.html> is a MacOS emulator. A nice addition to
  these window managers is dfm <http://www-c.informatik.uni-
  hannover.de/~kaiser/dfm/dfm.html>, a desktop and file manager that
  pleasantly resembles the OS/2 Workplace Shell.


     Resources:
        The Window Managers website can be found at
        <http://www.PLiG.org/xwinman/>, and is a consistently good
        resource for finding out about the variety of window managers
        available, particularly for finding good window managers to
        emulate other windowing environments. Many more still are listed
        at  <http://www.PLiG.org/xwinman/others.html>, provided by the
        same author as the previous link, and this is quite a formidable
        and complete list indeed. You can download Linux versions of
        most popular window managers at the metalab
        <ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/window-managers> archive.




  3.3.  The X Graphical Interfaces

  Open Look and Motif were early attempts to standardize X Window, and
  make it usable in more mainstream environments, around a greater
  variety of workstations. Both were somewhat successful at those
  attempts (in look and feel, if not politically) and can be used under
  a modern Linux system.  Both require specific libraries, which can be
  used to compile a variety of applications specifically designed for
  one or the other environment, to give all programs a similar look and
  feel.

  Starting with X11 Release 5, Sun Microsystem's OpenWindows graphical
  interface was available to X users. This includes two versions of the
  Open Look Window Manager, olwm and olvwm (with a virtual desktop).
  This was developed by Sun in hopes of making a standard windowing
  environment, and indeed it was standard with Solaris for many years.
  If your distribution of Linux did not come with this windowing system
  installed, you must remember to install the XView libraries to get it
  to work, and you will also have to put the /usr/openwin/...
  directories in your search path.

  If you want the actual OSF/Motif Toolkit for Linux, you'll have to
  pay, the programs and toolkit are not free. However, the Hungry
  Programmers have written LessTif, which allows you to compile Motif
  programs more or less as if you owned to toolkit. LessTif is a clone
  of the Motif toolkit. Currently LessTif is partially implemented with
  most of the API in place. Many programs already work under this free
  version of the toolkit, and it even comes with a window manager,
  derived from FVWM code, which you'd swear was the Motif Window
  Manager.

  The most useful feature of this toolkit, however, is compiling
  programs dependent on having a Motif library on your system. The
  window manager is nothing spectacular, and mostly useful if you're
  migrating from the original Motif, and want to keep your configuration
  file. For all intents and purposes, you will find FVWM much more
  feature-filled and useful, and it looks and behaves almost
  identically, even recognizing the window hints supplied by programs
  built with the Motif toolkit.


     Resources:
        The Hungry Programmers LessTif can be found at
        <http://www.lesstif.org/>.


  3.4.  The X Desktop Environments

  The second generation of Linux window managers was brought about by
  KDE, and soon joined by GNOME. There are some striking similarities,
  and some great differences, between these two, and I will attempt to
  cover them here. The most important thing to remember at this point is
  that neither of them is in any way a complete product. Both are at the
  start of a long development cycle, and not completely stable yet, and
  as such are not suited to mission-critical work at this time.

  The KDE Desktop Environment

  (A quote from the home page:) ``KDE is a completely new desktop,
  incorporating a large suite of applications for Unix workstations.
  While KDE includes a window manager, file manager, panel, control
  center and many other components that one would expect to be part of a
  contemporary desktop environment, the true strength of this
  exceptional environment lies in the interoperability of its
  components.''

  The KDE Desktop Environment is an attempt to make a desktop
  environment, not just a window manager. The tools of KDE work together
  so well, for instance, one might be fooled into thinking KDE was an
  entire operating system. All the tools to work in a windowing system
  are included, and many more have been ported to the KDE environment.
  KDE has achieved a surprising level of maturity already, but many are
  reluctant to install it on their desktop, because of the licensing
  stipulations of the QT toolkit, upon which KDE is based. This has
  changed a little lately, and the licence now qualifies as Open Source
  by definition, but is not the same as that of GNU software.

  GNOME: The GNU Object Model Environment

  (A quote from the home page:) ``GNOME stands for GNU Network Object
  Model Environment. The GNOME project intends to build a complete,
  user-friendly desktop based entirely on free software. GNOME is part
  of the GNU project, and GNOME is part of the OpenSource(tm) movement.
  The desktop will consist of small utilities and larger applications
  which share a consistent look and feel. GNOME uses GTK+ as the GUI
  toolkit for all GNOME-compliant applications.''

  The GNOME project is an attempt to do much of the same work as KDE,
  but even a little more than that. GNOME is less tied to one window
  manager, for instance, and it is interoperable not just between
  applications, but computers and platforms, as it uses the Common
  Object Resource Broker Architecture (CORBA).  Also, and to many most
  importantly, GNOME is based on the GTk+ toolkit, which is free and
  open source, unlike the underlying toolkit of KDE, thereby following
  in the philosophy of Linux itself.


     Resources:
        The official KDE website is  <http://www.kde.org/>. The official
        GNOME website is  <http://www.gnome.org/>. More detailed
        information regarding the issues surrounding GNOME can be found
        at  <http://www.gnome.org/gnomefaq/FAQ.txt>.  The home page of
        CORBA is located at  <http://www.corba.org/> , and the GTk+
        toolkit home is  <http://www.gtk.org/> .


  3.5.  The Flashy Window Managers

  The latest generation of window manger is very very pretty indeed.
  Sporting every convenience you could think of, and emulating the most
  beautiful operating systems ever used on the most gorgeous
  workstations in the world, these are the window managers to run if
  you've got the memory and CPU cycles to burn.

  Window Maker

  (A quote from the home page:) ``Window Maker is an X11 window manager
  designed to give additional integration support for GNUstep
  applications. It tries to emulate the elegant look and feel of the
  NEXTSTEP(tm) GUI. It is relatively fast, feature rich, and easy to
  configure and use.''

  A big strength of this window manager is that it supports the GNU
  desktop, meaning that it makes a great and very pretty front-end to
  GNOME. This is also one of the most easily configurable window
  managers, and can be configured from a graphical interface, and
  supports the OffiX drag and drop protocol, easy switching of desktop
  themes, and it's now available within the popular Red Hat
  distribution, so it's easy and painless to switch from FVWM when the
  mood finally strikes. As of the 0.50 release, Window Maker supports
  KDE compliance as well.

  This is the author's personal favorite window manager.  Get it!

  AfterStep

  (A quote from the home page:) ``AfterStep is a Window Manager for X
  which started by emulating the NEXTSTEP look and feel, but which has
  been significantly altered according to the requests of various users.
  Many adepts will tell you that NEXTSTEP is not only the most visually
  pleasant interface, but also one of the most functional and intuitive
  out there. AfterStep aims to incorporate the advantages of the
  NEXTSTEP interface, and add additional useful features.  The
  developers of AfterStep have also worked very hard to ensure stability
  and a small program footprint.''

  Enlightenment

  Enlightenment is more than just a window manager, it is an extreme,
  detailed, and configurable environment, and is particularly attractive
  in that it allows irregular and completely customizable window shapes.
  It is open in design, and instead of dictating a policy it allows the
  user to define their own policy right down to the minute and
  infinitesimal details; from its functionality right on through to its
  looks.

  Enlightenment is still in development currently, and can cause your
  system to crash. However, Rasterman, the author of Enlightenment, is
  currently working for Red Hat on the GNOME project, and as that
  project matures, support for Enlightenment will be maturing as well,
  making this an environment to keep an eye on.


     Resources:
        The official Window Maker website is
        <http://www.windowmaker.org/>. The official AfterStep website is
        <afterstep.org/>.  Enlightenment can be found, predictably, at
        <http://www.enlightenment.org/>.


  4.  Working In X

  In this section we will become familiar with running clients in X
  Window and the basic procedures involved in using the system. X is not
  an intuitive interface on its own, and without any window manager, it
  is easiest to use as a display for programs started from the command
  line. One of the most common uses for X is just to have several xterm
  windows open at the same time. Not exactly maxing out the graphics
  capabilities of the computer, but it's a nice feature to start with.

  The flexibility and usefulness of the command line is so great, in
  fact, that you don't really need a window manager. It's nice, and you
  will want it very quickly, but the fact is that you can get by without
  one, just the command line and the mouse. If you give it a shot,
  you'll be surprised as to the exact distinctions between the clients
  and the window manager. If you start toying around with this, however,
  remember that the key combination Ctrl-Alt-Backspace gets you out of X
  Window in a pinch.


  4.1.  Command Line Options

  Most X programs try to use the same basic names for command line
  options.  All applications written using the MIT X Toolkit Intrinsics
  automatically accept the following options:



     -display display
        This option specifies the X server to use. See the section on
        Display Names for details.


     -geometry geometry
        The initial size and location of the window, in a format such as
        widthxheight+hoffset+voffset or +hoffset-voffset. Note that if
        you put in a negative horizontal or vertical offset, the window
        will be placed counting backward from the right or the bottom of
        the screen, respectively.


     -font font
        The font to use for displaying the text in your window.


     -bg color
        The color to use for the window background.


     -fg color
        The color to use for the window foreground.


     -name resource-name
        Useful for specifying the name under which the resources for
        this application will be found. This is useful to distinguish
        between invocations of the same application, for example, two
        xterms can be named differently so that they may inherit
        different resources based upon those names in the resource
        database.


     -title string
        This is the title to be used for the window on your display,
        generally used by the window manager to put a descriptive title
        at the top of the window. Not to be confused with the -name
        option.


     -iconic
        Invoke window as an icon.


     -xrm resource-string
        This option specifies a resource name and value to override any
        defaults that may already be set. Also useful for setting X
        resources that do not have explicit command line options. For
        instance, the command line xterm -xrm "xterm*background: blue"
        is functionally identical to typing xterm -bg blue.



  4.2.  Display Names

  Every X Server has a display name of the form:

  hostname:displaynumber.screennumber

  The hostname specifies the name of the machine to which the display is
  actually, physically connected. The hostname can be omitted, and if
  so, the server on the same machine will be chosen. In fact, if you are
  the only one using X on your computer, you will want to just leave
  this off of your display specifications. The displaynumber should
  probably be zero, this is used if the X Server is controlling more
  than one keyboard and monitor unit, for instance, a network of X
  terminals. The screennumber specifies which monitor in a multiple
  monitor setup should be used. Following this specification, you would
  open an xterm window on your local machine with the option -display
  :0.0. You can see that we have omitted the hostname from the option,
  so the current machine is assumed.

  On Linux systems, your DISPLAY variable holds your display name, which
  on my system is :0.0. This is usually set by xterm, or one of the
  scripts that starts X Window for you, although you can set it
  yourself, or as discussed above, use the -display command line option
  when invoking your application.

  If you have opened an xterm or rxvt window, and then opted to do
  super-user work via the su command, you will find that if you try to
  launch an X application you will have no display to launch it on.
  Silly it seems, because you are sitting right in front of your
  display, but the trick to getting this to work is to pass an option on
  the command line to the program such as -display :0.0, and it will
  work fine.


  4.3.  XTerm Versus Rxvt, or, Know Thy Terminal Emulator

  Your choice of terminal emulator can affect your experience in X
  almost as much as your window manager, so a little discussion of your
  best options is due here. A terminal emulator is a program such as
  xterm, discussed above, which lets you emulate the simple console of
  Linux in X. You will rely heavily on the program you choose, so it
  pays to choose it wisely to begin with.

  If you have a slow video card, the first thing you should consider
  doing is switching to rxvt. Using xterm is a good starting point,
  mainly because it comes standard with all X distributions, but it's
  not always the best choice. It contains a lot of legacy code, and is
  quite bloated for a simple terminal emulator. This is partly due to
  the fact that it's not just a plain text terminal emulator, but also
  emulates graphics modes that you simply will never use. Because of
  this, you may wish to switch to rxvt, and also because xterm can be
  extremely slow. I'm not sure why it's so slow, but if you have a slow
  video card you'll know what I mean, and you'll be amazed at the
  difference when you dump xterm.

  Some other perks of rxvt include pixmap backgrounds, and a much nicer
  scrollbar. If you specify the -pixmap option on the command line (and
  have support compiled in to your version!) you will get any .xpm-type
  picture in the background. A very cool feature, and it surprisingly
  doesn't slow down your output at all, it still redraws faster than
  your xterm window. Give it a shot, I haven't seen it around lately but
  I think it can be found on metalab.


  5.  X Startup

  We will presume for the following examples that we have picked a
  fairly stable window manager, such as FVWM2, to try out some sample
  configurations.  I would suggest giving that a shot for the purpose of
  learning these topics, as most of what you will learn here and in the
  following sections will apply to any window manager out there, but the
  topics seem most easily picked up using FVWM2.


  5.1.  A Sample Starting Configuration

  Our first step is to write ourselves an initialization file for X
  itself.  This file can be either a system-wide file, in which case it
  would likely be placed in /var/X11R6/lib/xinit/xinitrc, or it can be
  overridden on a per-user basis by placing the file .xinitrc in your
  home directory. Generally, it is expected that there will be a basic,
  default file in the system-wide location, possibly enforced if
  necessary for security reasons, but otherwise users will probably wish
  to configure the file themselves.

  First let's create a file in your home directory called .xinitrc. Open
  up your ``favorite'' text editor, and paste the following, or
  something like it, in that file:



        #!/bin/sh

        # if your backspace and delete are reversed, try this:
        xmodmap -e "keysym BackSpace=Delete" -e "keysym
       Delete-BackSpace"

        xsetroot -solid darkslateblue

        # start some basic applications
        xclock -geometry 96x96+2+2 -bg grey40 -fg black -hl white &
        xload -geometry 120x96+2+147 -bg grey40 -fg white -hl darkred -update 4
       &
        xterm -sb -ls -geom 80x25-2+2 -title "shell" &
        xterm -sb -ls -geom 80x25-2-2 &

        # start the window manager
        fvwm2





  There are plenty of things to learn from this example. First of all,
  this file will be a shell script, as indicated by the first line. The
  xsetroot command on the second line turns the background of our
  desktop to a pleasant blue color, not a bad idea if we're going to be
  staring at that color predominantly all day.

  The third and fourth lines are some programs that I like to leave
  running while I'm fast at work. You'll notice that some of the options
  make for a nicer setup, for example, specifying the colors and
  geometry (location on screen).  I'll give you some tips for figuring
  this stuff out in a bit. The fifth and sixth lines follow similarly,
  opening up two handy xterm windows for us, which we will no doubt be
  needing soon.

  The last line is very important--it is this line that starts up your
  window manager! Notice that the only commands we did not run as
  background processes (by putting the & at the end) were xsetroot,
  xmodmap, fvwm2. With these first two it doesn't matter, as the
  programs exit immediately. But all the rest of the programs have to be
  in the background, otherwise when you closed one, it would kill your X
  Window session. That would not be very pleasant, nor very expected. As
  shown above, when you close fvwm2, you exit X.


  5.2.  A More Intelligent Startup

  We can add lots to our primitive example of a startup file. For
  instance, this is a good way to warn yourself when you may have
  carelessly stared X as the root user.  Red Hat users seem to do this
  often, for many of the configuration programs which must be run as
  root, must also be run in X.  You can avoid this by issuing an su
  command to become root during your normal X user session, and then
  calling the program you need to run as root with the option -display
  :0.0 discussed above.



        # change background color for root
        if [ "$USER" = "root" ];
        then
             xsetroot -solid darkred
        else xsetroot -solid darkslateblue
        fi





  This will check to see if you are the user named root, and if you are,
  it will set the background to a harsh red, rather than the usual
  friendly blue, to warn you. This next bit of code, also intended for
  your .xinitrc file, will merge in your user-specific and system-wide
  resources, first checking to be sure the files exist.



        userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
        usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
        sysresources=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xresources
        sysmodmap=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap
        # Merge in defaults and keymaps
        if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
           xrdb -merge $sysresources; fi
        if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
           xmodmap $sysmodmap; fi
        if [ -f $userresources ]; then
           xrdb -merge $userresources; fi
        if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
           xmodmap $usermodmap; fi






  5.3.  Getting The Windows Where You Want Them

  Placing everything on your screen by guesswork with the -geometry
  option can get very tedious indeed. Particularly when you consider
  that you can specify the -geometry option to pretty much any program
  you can run in X. This allows a great precision in tuning the
  interface, but that's a heck of a lot of options to set, indeed.

  This brings up one very nice feature of the FVWM window managers. By
  default, when you move a window around the screen, you see the
  geometry specification appear on the screen. Go ahead, try moving a
  window around with the left button.  Now try resizing it. As you can
  see, you can get some primitive specifications this way. However, even
  this method can be a little difficult, and it would be nice to have
  all the details about your window in one concise list.

  It is at this point that we will introduce the program xwininfo. To
  use this program, go to an xterm window and type in that program name.
  It will ask you to click on another window that you want information
  about, and after you click it will dump out useful information that it
  knows about that window.  This is useful for plugging information
  about windows once you have them set up how you want them on your
  screen - run this program, then click on the window, then put in those
  parameters in your startup file, and your window system will
  henceforth be frozen in a pristine state of immaculate precision.


  6.  Configuring the Window Manager

  Now we take a look at the files to configure your window manager.
  These vary from manager to manager, but for our examples we will focus
  on the per-user files, and we are looking at FVWM2 in this example, so
  you will modify the file .fvwm2rc in your home directory.


  6.1.  Basic FVWM2 Configuration

  Configuring your window manager resource file in earlier versions of
  FVWM was a rather arduous process, because the order of the items in
  the file needed to be very particular, but that has relaxed quite a
  bit in this version. To my knowledge, the only crucial part of the
  ordering is the bindings for the menus, but we'll cover that a bit
  later. Your FVWM2 installation should have come with an example
  resource file, and you should be able to find that in
  /var/X11R6/lib/fvwm2/system.fvwm2rc. This is the default system-wide
  configuration file. A good idea would be to copy that file into your
  home directory and call it .fvwm2rc. From that point on, when FVWM2
  starts up it will read the file in your home directory, and ignore the
  system-wide configuration file.

  Now that you've got a working, personalized copy of the window manager
  resource file in your home directory, open it in your favorite text
  editor, and take a look at it. If you're in X at the moment, you can
  see the correlation between the file and what you see on your desktop.
  Very helpful indeed. Let's try changing something and see if we can
  make it look a little better. Probably the first entry in your file
  (that is not followed by the # comment character) is the WindowFont
  entry, followed by a very bizarre font name. If you want to figure out
  how to set up the fonts and colors to their fullest, skip ahead to the
  next section on X Fonts and Colors.


  6.2.  Advanced FVWM2 Configuration

  Configuring FVWM2 can get incredibly subtle and complex. Take this
  code snippet from the fvwm2gnome setup for the .fvwm2rc file:



        # import config files

        Echo -Styles-
        Read .fvwm2gnome/config/styles/app.styles
        Read .fvwm2gnome/config/styles/window.styles

        Echo -Buttons & Keys-
        Read .fvwm2gnome/config/buttons.config





  This is an example of a way to read in other configurations. In this
  fashion you can modularize your .fvwm2rc -- not a bad idea,
  considering how jumbled one huge configuration file can become. This
  can make it easier to change and to debug, and it also makes it easier
  to configure so-called themes, which we will cover in a moment.

  6.3.  FVWM2 Configuration Shortcuts

  A really neat way to configure your script for FVWM2 (and FVWM, and
  bash, and a whole lot of other programs besides!) is to use the
  Dotfile Generator, by Jesper K. Pedersen, available from
  <http://www.imada.ou.dk/~blackie/dotfile/>.  You will need to have a
  recent version of Tcl/Tk installed (available with most Linux
  distributions). This program starts with a configuration preset, or
  takes the one you presently have, and allows you to tweak it via many
  structured menus of options.

  Be warned, however, for I advise learning how to set up your
  configuration file yourself! Not only is this the Unix Way (for what
  that's worth) but it's much easier to make small and incremental
  changes to your .fvwm2rc file that way, and get things exactly how you
  like them. Also, being a Tcl/Tk program, it's a little slow.
  Nevertheless, if you want a painless way to start with a decent
  configuration, this is definitely worth a shot.


  6.4.  FVWM2 Themes

  Among the many new possibilities of FVWM2 are something commonly
  called themes. This basically means that you can switch between a
  basic look for all of your windows on your desktop, on the fly. Note
  that if you've made the distinction between the functions of the
  window manager and the functions of the applications themselves, you
  will realize that a window manager theme is not going to affect the
  look and feel of the applications themselves. Integrated toolkits such
  as KDE and GNOME do have this capability, however, and the two might
  be used together very effectively.

  In order to generate a theme, you must roll up your sleeves and modify
  your .fvwm2rc file a little bit. Here's something I added near the
  beginning of my file, try putting it right after your Style
  definitions:



        # Blue Theme
        DestroyDecor Blue
        AddToDecor Blue
        + WindowFont -b&h-lucida-bold-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-*-*
        + TitleStyle ActiveDown (Solid DarkSteelBlue)\
            ActiveUp (Solid SteelBlue) Inactive (Solid Grey)
        + HilightColor white blue
        + ButtonStyle 1 -- UseBorderStyle
        Style Blue UseDecor Blue, BorderWidth 5, HandleWidth 5,\
            MWMborder, MWMbuttons

        # Function to change all windows to a new style.
        DestroyFunc ChangeStyle
        AddToFunc ChangeStyle
        + "I" Style $0 $1
        + "I" Recapture





  That's a lot to swallow, I know. Basically we're first defining a
  theme called ``Blue,'' and you can use that first half as a model to
  design other themes. Themes can describe many more features than that,
  in fact, and can be quite remarkably different from one another. Then
  we're defining a function to change all the windows to a new style.
  Notice in both sections above that we destroy the object before
  creating it. This is a good idea since you may well be restarting
  FVWM2 a lot to try out your different styles, and this makes it work a
  bit more smoothly.

  The function call is needed as a generic interface to call the
  definitions of the styles we have defined. Now we will make the menu
  items to call them.



        DestroyMenu "Themes"
        AddToMenu "Themes"
        + "Choose a theme..." Title
        + "" Nop
        + "Blue" ChangeStyle "*" "UseStyle Blue"
        + "Mwm" ChangeStyle "*" "UseStyle Mwm"
        + "Flat" ChangeStyle "*" "UseStyle Flat"





  We're being a little terse with the menu definition here, but there
  should be a lot more in the sample file on your system. What we're
  doing is calling the ChangeStyle function that we defined above to
  change the style for all the windows on the screen to one of the
  presets we defined above that. Notice, again, our good practice in
  destroying the menu before creating it. Now if you restart FVWM2 (you
  should also have a menu option for that, hopefully!)  you will see a
  new Themes menu selection, and you should be able to try out the
  different themes.

  For more examples of FVWM2 Themes, visit
  <http://www.vis.colostate.edu/~scriven/Linux/fvwm/index.html>.


  7.  Fonts and Colors

  There are a lot of tricks to the fonts and colors used in X. They are
  not quite as simple as in some other systems, for instance, the font
  is not just a one-word name. You specify these resources quite
  explicitly, and it seems rather complex at first, but with a little
  explanation you'll be a whiz in no time.


  7.1.  Fonts Demystified

  The X Logical Font Description (``XLFD'') is the full name for a font.
  It consists of the following fields:


  ╖  fndry - font foundry, the company or individual which made the font

  ╖  fmly - font family, the popular nickname of the font

  ╖  wght - font weight (bold, medium, etc.)

  ╖  slant - font slant (italics, oblique, roman (normal), etc.)

  ╖  sWdth - font width (normal, condensed, extended, etc.)

  ╖  adstyl - additional style (sans serif, serif, etc.)

  ╖  pxlsz - pixel size, the number of pixels vertically in a character


  ╖  ptSz - approximate point size of the text (similar to pxlsz)

  ╖  resx - horizontal resolution, in dpi

  ╖  resy - vertical resolution, in dpi

  ╖  spc - spacing, only useful, apparently, in the Schumacher fonts

  ╖  avgWidth - average character width of the font

  ╖  rgstry - the recognized registry that lists the font

  ╖  encdng - nationality encoding

  In light of this chaos, the program xfontsel (the default X Window
  font selection program) will come in enormously useful to you.  Try
  launching it right now. You will see a strange nothing helpful in the
  main window, but try holding the left button down on the fndry button.
  If all your fonts are in order, you will see a menu of selections such
  as adobe and b&h and bitstream and so forth. Select one such as b&h
  and you will notice that the font in the lower window changes to
  something intelligible. This is generally the way you will select
  fonts with this program, starting from the left, which is the most
  general selection, and moving toward the right, to the more specific
  options. Selecting an option toward the rightmost end will not make
  much sense before the foundry, for instance, is selected, because the
  options are generally ordered by their dependence on each other.

  When you go to select from the fmly selection, you will see most of
  the options greyed out, and only three remaining. That means that
  these three are the only families of font made by this foundry. Some
  families appear under more than one foundry, for instance, both Adobe
  and Bitstream make a variation of the Courier font. Now you can select
  the wght, and so forth. After you get far enough you will have
  narrowed it down to the font that you want.  You don't necessarily
  have fill in all the options to choose a single font, there's not that
  many fonts on your system! The options that you do not select will be
  represented by a * indicating that any option will do in that spot.

  When you are happy with your font selection, you can hit the select
  button, and your selection will be placed in the X clipboard, ready to
  be pasted into your document or whatever you are working on. For
  instance, go to your xterm window and type in something like xterm
  -font  followed by an opening quotation mark. Then point to that spot
  on your screen, and click your middle mouse button (or click both the
  left and right, if you're middle-button impaired).  This will paste
  the selection from the clipboard, which should be the font you just
  selected. Then enter the closing quote, and hit Enter. For instance, a
  nice big xterm with a Courier font specified would look like this:
  xterm -font "-adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" A fresh
  xterm should the pop up using the font that you selected.

  The utility xfd is very helpful for examining a font.  If you launch
  it with a command line such as xfd -fn fixed, it will show you the
  character set for the font, much like the keycaps utility on a
  Macintosh.  Note that you can also limit the number of fonts that you
  want xfontsel to display with the command line option -pattern,
  followed by a quoted font specification, as discussed above.


  7.2.  Font Aliases and Configuration

  Sometimes it gets tiresome to remember all of the long font names, and
  very impractical too. Luckily, it is not necessary to type in a
  hundred keystrokes or so just to get the font name you want, for X
  provides something called font aliases.
  If you look in the directory /usr/X11R6/lib/fonts/misc/fonts.alias,
  you will find shortcut names for many of the fonts. For example, 8x16
  is listed as a shortcut for -sony-fixed-medium-r-
  normal--16-120-100-100-c-80-iso8859-1, and anywhere you enter 8x16 as
  an X font resource or at a command line for a font name, the long
  version of the font will be substituted.  The 75dpi and 100dpi
  directories have similar aliases to take advantage of, on most systems
  the Lucida Sans font has a nice shortcut.

  If you add fonts or aliases to your system, you will have to issue a
  few commands (probably as root).  If you add fonts, you will have to
  issue the following two commands (these are examples, you will have to
  put in the correct directory, or perhaps leave it off altogether, to
  have your fonts re-read correctly.



        mkfontdir /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc
        xset fp rehash





  If you change the alias file for a font, you may only have to issue
  the last command above, but it may be a good idea to issue them both,
  to be sure.  With the xset command you can explicitly issue a font
  path you wish the server to use, you can delete a specific directory
  from your font path, see the man page for more information.

  Another common problem is that some distributions (notably Red Hat
  5.2, at the moment) come with the fonts configured in the wrong order.
  If you take a look at your /etc/XF86Config (it may be somewhere else
  in some distributions, unfortunately, and I'm not sure where it is in
  Red Hat at the moment, so maybe locate it...)  Take a look at this
  file if you fonts are ugly in X (as in, very difficult to read even at
  large sizes).  You will see a bunch of entries that look something
  like this:



        FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
        FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
        FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
        FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
        FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"





  The important thing to note here is that we have the unscaled
  bitmapped fonts (the directories misc, 75dpi, 100dpi) before the
  scaled fonts (such as Type1 and Speedo).  Bitmapped fonts are
  preferred for the X Server, because scaled fonts don't look very
  pretty for common use, they're better for things like The Gimp or
  Netscape, perhaps.  You should also do a sanity check to see that
  these directories all do, in fact exist, and if you have modified any
  lately, you might need to (as root) go in and issue an mkfontdir *
  command in the fonts directory.


  7.3.  Using Type 1 Fonts in X

  The font types X generally accepts are of limited use, considering
  that about the only place you'll find fonts of that kind used are in
  the X Window System itself, and unfortunately most media junkies and
  fontaholics work in operating systems that prefer other formats.  Type
  1 fonts, most commonly used in conjunction with PostScript document
  formats, can be found for free on the internet with considerable ease.
  Try  <ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/fonts/> for starters.

  To make use of these fonts is not that difficult, and graphics
  programs like GIMP will take advantage of them tremendously, and best
  of all, the Linux X servers understand Type 1 fonts ``out of the
  box.''  To use them, first unpack the archive using the appropriate
  commands, and put the fonts with a .pfb extension in
  /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/type1/ on your system. Then, add mention of
  those fonts in the fonts.scale file in that directory, using the
  format for the other fonts, already there. Then save the file.

  Now, you should be able to mkfontdir to tell the X server about the
  updates, and then run xset fp rehash to re-read the font path. If this
  doesn't work for you, you might have to restart X to see the changes.

  If you find yourself using Type 1 fonts a lot, and for things other
  than just X (GhostScript, for instance, can handle this font format as
  well), you'll want to check out the type1inst utility by James
  Macnicol. This program can configure Type 1 fonts for GhostScript and
  X, and it can also generate sample sheets for your fonts, and does
  most of the work of configuration for you. This program can usually be
  found at  <ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/xutils/>.


  7.4.  Using TrueType Fonts in X

  If you have been using an operating system such as Windows or the
  MacOS, you may have lots of fonts sitting on your computer already
  that are TrueType fonts. TrueType fonts are considered best on
  smaller,  low-resolution displays, such as your computer monitor, and
  attempt to  provide nice features like shading and antialiasing,
  making your display look smoother. It is also really easy to find
  cheap TrueType fonts in bulk, and CD's featuring upwards of 500 fonts
  in the TrueType format are common in computer stores.

  X does not understand TrueType fonts, and has no innate capability (at
  present) to do so, and so it needs a separate program to do the font
  rendering for it.  There is a FreeType library to do this, but if you
  just want to use them on your computer, all you will need is a program
  called xfstt, the X font server for TrueType.  This program should be
  available at  <ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts/>.

  Installation is fairly straightforward.  Extract the archive, and make
  the file, and then make install. You may get a few errors that don't
  make sense after the second command; ignore them.  What you need to do
  next is create a writable directory called /usr/ttfonts and put some
  of your .ttf fonts there, just to make sure it's going to work.  Then
  synchronize the font server with the command xfstt --sync.

  If you got no errors there, run the font server in the background with
  the command xfstt & and tell your X11 server about the font service
  with the command xset fp+ unix/:7100.  If you got no errors, you
  should be able to run Netscape, the GIMP, even xfontsel, and have
  those fonts available to you. Your biggest problem may be finding the
  font you want, but that's not really a bad thing.

  If everything seems to be working fine, at this point you will want to
  configure your system so that the fonts will be working when you start
  X.  If you are just starting X from the command line, this is easy.
  All you have to do is add the two commands from the previous paragraph
  to your .xinitrc file, in that order.  When you next start X, it
  should work just fine.  If you are starting X via xdm, you will need
  to add /usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt & to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0. Got
  that? Then add xset vp+ unix/:7100 as well.

  Bear in mind that the installation of a TrueType font server can be
  tricky business. Remember that the order that you issue the above
  commands is important. The font server must be started before X is
  started, otherwise you will run into problems. Be sure to read the FAQ
  file that came with the distribution, and the xfstt man page too.


  7.5.  Colors

  Let's go back to our terminal window and try some more things. Try
  opening an xterm with a command line like the following:



        xterm -fg darkslateblue -bg red3 &





  While that window may not be pretty, and you may not do much of your
  best work in it, it demonstrates one interesting theme of X, the names
  of the colors.  While not very precise, this is a nice way to remember
  the colors more easily than remembering a series of hexadecimal
  numbers. Note that color names are never case-sensitive.

  If you're interested in the gory details, or want to see the samples,
  or even want to replace those silly color names with your own for some
  strange reason, you can find the file listing all the colors with
  their hexadecimal representation in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt on your
  system. There are also some extremely useful utilities with names like
  xcolorsel and such. They can be found in the usual locations, on
  <http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/> and elsewhere.

  A more precise way of specifying colors is through the numerical
  definition.  This consists of a color space name and a set of values
  in the following syntax:

  <colorspace-name>:<value>/.../<value>

  An RGB Device, which you will most likely be using, is specified with
  the prefix "rgb:" and has the following syntax:

  rgb:<red>/<green>/<blue> , where <color> is a 1 to 4 digit hexadecimal
  number.

  As an example, you might represent the color red with rgb:ffff/0/0.
  For backward compatibility, you can also specify red with a syntax
  such as #ff0000 or #ffff00000000, and you will likely be seeing that
  (older) syntax a lot.


  8.  The X Resources

  We will at this point consider some finer modifications to your
  system. Configuring the window manager only gets you so far. The
  window manager lets you customize everything that happens outside the
  windows, the frames, the borders, the buttons, the desktop... but what
  about making the inside of the windows pretty? The only way to do this
  is by modifying the X Resources for your system.

  X Resources provide a mechanism for storing default values for program
  resources and tailoring your windowing environment to your favored
  look and feel. Resources are specified as text strings that are read
  in from various places when an application is run. Program components
  are named in a hierarchical fashion, with each object in the hierarchy
  identified by a class as well as an instance name. At the top level of
  the hierarchy is the class and instance name of the application
  itself. By convention, the class name of the application is the same
  as the program name, but with the first letter capitalized (e.g.
  Bitmap or Emacs) although some programs that begin with the letter
  ``X'' also capitalize the second letter for historical reasons (e.g.
  XTerm).


  8.1.  X Resources: The Basics

  Let's try a few examples to ease you into the world of resources.
  Start by opening an xterm window. Most likely you have one open
  already, can open one with a menu selection, or may wish to backtrack
  a bit in this document to get your bearings! Type something like this
  into the xterm window:



        xterm -background blue &





  This command should have resulted in another xterm window popping up
  on your screen, but this time with a blue background. ``Wow,'' you
  say, ``that's amazing!'' Yes, indeed it is.

  We'll need a little more background for our next example. Type exit in
  that xterm (which will close that window) and go back to the original
  window that you typed that command in. Try this: hold the Ctrl key and
  then hold the left mouse button. Now try that with the middle mouse
  button. Now the right.  All xterm windows give you options to try
  while they are running. With the right button, for instance, you can
  change the font of the window. Notice the color of these menus. Now
  try this example:



        xterm -xrm 'xterm*fontMenu*background: green' &





  This time, it just looks like a normal xterm window. But if you try
  holding Ctrl and the right mouse button in that window, you will see
  that this menu (the ``fontMenu'' mentioned in the above example) is
  green.  What just happened?  If you look at the man page for xterm,
  you will see many command-line options, such as -background or -font,
  that you can set when you launch any given window in X, listed after
  the options just for xterm windows. These particular options are
  called X Toolkit Options, and they apply to just about anything in X.


  8.2.  Inside The X Resource Database With editres

  To really get inside the resources of X, we need to run editres. Go
  ahead and launch it (and a sample program to play with) now:



   xclock &
   editres &





  Probably you will see a simple clock, and the rather innocent looking,
  mostly-blank window of editres.  The main window is showing us the
  resource tree of any given window on our desktop, and upon program
  launch, there is none. So let's give it one. Hold down the left button
  on the Commands menu, and select Get Tree. In the top of the window
  will appear Click the mouse pointer on any toolkit client. This
  message is more than it seems, and it is a hint to us that not all X
  applications are toolkit clients (though most of the basic ones are,
  and the program will usually tell us if it is not in the manual page).
  The mouse cursor will turn to a crosshair, and wait for you to click
  on another window.

  For this example, let's first click on the xclock. You will see a
  couple things appear in the editres window. These are the configurable
  branches that the toolkit sees. Click on the bottom right one (clock).
  It should invert.  Now select ``Show Resource Box'' from the
  ``Commands'' menu. You will see another window pop up, with the
  heading ".xclock.clock.unknown". Bingo!

  >From here you can toy with the configuration options of the main
  xclock window. First, click on ``Set Save File'' at the bottom, and
  put in a filename such as /home/yourname/resources, to indicate that
  you're testing some of the resources here. Now click on ``foreground''
  and put in ``blue'' next to the ``Enter Resource Value:'' prompt. Then
  hit ``Apply'' at the bottom. The minute notches around the clock
  should turn blue. Go to ``background'' and enter ``navajowhite'' (or
  whatever color you prefer). The apply that. As you can see, we can
  configure the whole window just fine this way. But if you were to try
  launching another xclock, it would appear just as this one appeared
  before any changes. We need to save these changes.

  Click ``Save'' and then ``Popdown Resource Box'' (a fancy name indeed
  for the ``Close'' function!). If you view the file you just created
  (cat /home/yourname/resources perhaps) you will see all those
  resources spelled out, in correct X Toolkit format, for your
  convenience. But that does us little good, for if you try launching
  another xclock, it will still look Plain Jane. So here is the last and
  final step in loading in your resources:



        xrdb -merge /home/yourname/resources





  This command merges the resources we just wrote into the X Resource
  Database (xrdb) for your session of X Window.  That means that for all
  future invocations of the X applications we modified, our changes will
  take place, and remain binding. So if you run another xclock, it will
  look as nice as you have just now set it up, every time you run it.
  Mind you, xrdb is a complex program, and you may want to have a look
  at the man page before moving on, or playing around with it some more.
  If you added the modification to .xinitrc listed earlier in this
  document, to load the resources automatically on X startup, you should
  only have to worry about the xrdb command when you make changes during
  your X session.

  8.3.  The Anatomy of X Resources

  As you can see we have stumbled across a plethora of configuration
  options here. This method of configuring X, as has been stated, offers
  nearly limitless possibilities, and an equivalent amount of confusion.
  To get some picture of the scope of the resources in just the X
  Toolkit Intrinsics alone, run the program viewres, and play around
  with it a bit. This program graphically displays the tree of resources
  in the Xt Library.

  If you read the manual page for X, you will find a rather obscure
  definition of the exact syntax for defining resources it understands.
  We can simplify this quite a bit and break it down into this essential
  syntax definition:

  <program><binding><widget><binding><widget><...><resource>:<value>

  That doesn't really seem that simple, actually. Well, let's define
  some things about what has just been said, and it will all start to
  make sense after all. You can peek ahead to the examples in the next
  section as you read along, if you wish.

  The program in this definition is the invocation of an application in
  the resource database. This would be XTerm for an invocation of xterm,
  emacs for an invocation of the emacs text editor, or a user-defined
  name that was given when the applications was launched with the -name
  command line option. In this way you can define separate resources for
  xterms which will be used in different ways. Which is pretty cool,
  really.

  The binding can be one of two characters to separate the widgets and
  such.  If you use a . (period), you get a tight binding, which means
  that one widget is directly above or below the other in the widget
  hierarchy. This also has the highest precedence of the specification
  methods. If you use a * (asterisk), you get a so-called loose binding,
  and you will skip any number of widgets in the hierarchy, and it will
  attempt to match the next possible widget defined.

  The widget entries are items in the widget tree, in order of most-
  specific to least-specific, that they appear in the widget tree,
  visible with editres.  Any single widget entry can also be replaced
  with a ? (question mark) to skip a single widget definition, and match
  any possible widget item.

  The resource item must be specified, and cannot be replaced with the ?
  character. This is the most-specific item in the hierarchy, and
  usually contains items like the actual color to define, actual font to
  define, and so forth.  In fact, everything else before the resource in
  this definition can be left out and replaced with a single asterisk,
  but the actual resource to define must be present. If you just put an
  asterisk and the most-specific resource name, such as *background:
  blue, X will attempt to define that resource globally, for all its
  clients, if possible.

  Following the colon is the value entry. This entry defines what the
  resource will be set to, such as a font name or color value. The value
  can be specified (depending on context) as a boolean, numeric, or text
  data type. The value entry, also, cannot be omitted in a valid
  resource definition.


  8.4.  Making Your Changes Last With .Xdefaults

  There is a magic file you can put in your home directory called
  .Xdefaults. If you copy the lines in the resources file from the last
  example into the .Xdefaults in your home directory, you will never
  have to configure xclock again! While this might not be the finest
  example of its utility, it makes its point. This file can be crammed
  full of every option you prefer for every type of program you run in
  X, and if you take proper care of it, you can still easily go back and
  make slight changes when you need to. But making lots of changes, and
  hunting down lots of subtle resources using editres can be an
  extremely tiring and painstaking procedure. Indeed, sometimes that's
  too much work, and most of these resources are already waiting for
  you, neat and orderly, grouped by program, on your system.

  In the directory /var/X11R6/lib/app-defaults you will find a great
  many files, all named after an X Toolkit program. If you examine these
  files you will find that they contain a great many configuration
  options for each one, and I do mean a great many! You would not want
  all of these options from all of these files in your .Xdefaults file,
  that would be quite tiresome to deal with. These are the defaults, and
  it is from these that you can decide what you would like to see
  changed for your particular configuration.

  The following are some samples from my .Xdefaults file. Notice a few
  things we have not yet mentioned about the resource definition files.
  If a line begins with ! (exclamation point), it is considered a
  comment, and the rest of the line is ignored. If the line begins with
  #include filename, that line is an include directive, and at that
  point in the resources another file will be merged, when it is loaded.
  This can help keep your resource files from becoming too bloated. And
  here are some examples:







































   ! Default resources for me@localhost xterms
   ! start with the generic, move to the specific...
   *Dialog*Text*font:     -b&h-lucida-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *dialog*value*background: white
   *Dialog*Label*font:    -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *MenuButton*font:      -adobe-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *MenuButton*background:        grey80
   *MenuButton*foreground:        black
   *Label.font:           -adobe-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *Label*shadowWidth:    1
   *SmeBSB.font:          -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *SimpleMenu*font:      -adobe-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *OptionMenu*font:      -adobe-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *Command.font:         -linotype-helvetica-bold-r-narrow-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *commandBox*font:      -b&h-lucida-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *Toggle.font:          -adobe-helvetica-bold-o-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   *Form.background:      grey70
   *TransientShell*Dialog.background: grey70
   *Scrollbar.Foreground: grey80
   *Scrollbar.Background: grey50
   *Scrollbar*cursorName: top_left_arrow
   *Scrollbar*width:      16
   *shapeStyle:           Rectangle
   *XlwMenu.shadowThickness: 1
   *shadowWidth:          1

   ! xterm stuff
   xterm*scrollbar.background: grey40
   xterm*foreground: grey90
   xterm*background: grey25
   xterm*cursorColor: white
   xterm*visualbell: on
   ! rxvt stuff (a quicker, better xterm)
   rxvt*color12: steelblue
   rxvt*color15: white
   rxvt*color9: rgb:ff/7f/5f
   rxvt*foreground: grey90
   rxvt*background: grey10
   rxvt*cursorColor: white
   rxvt*font: lucidasanstypewriter-12
   rxvt*loginShell: false
   rxvt*saveLines: 1024
   rxvt*title: shell
   rxvt*geometry: 80x25
   ! Make Xman just a little bit more sane
   xman*topBox: false
   xman*background: lightsteelblue
   xman*foreground: black
   ! xcalc is too bland by default...
   xcalc*Command.font: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
   xcalc*customization: -color
   ! Disallow the <blink> tag in Netscape
   Netscape*blinkingEnabled: False

   ! Merge other resources (example)
   # include $HOME/.otherXresources





  One word of warning with regard to X resources.  KDE users will find
  that their X resources are ignored.  That's right.  They are.  I'm not
  actually aware of any way to get around this at present, nor have I
  looked into it extensively. KDE configures your resources for you, so
  that all your X applications have the same look and feel, sort of.
  This can be very disorienting if you're switching between window
  managers. If anybody knows how to get around this (read: fix it ;)
  please let me know.


  8.5.  Your Own User Resource Directory

  You can also create a directory of resource files, just like the
  system-wide app-defaults directory mentioned above, with one file per
  program. Just create the directory (for our example we'll use app-
  defaults under your home directory,) and then set the environment
  variable XAPPLRESDIR to point to it. A good place to set this variable
  would be in the beginning of your .xinitrc file, for example, put in
  the line export XAPPLRESDIR=$HOME/app-defaults (if your files are
  going to be in an app-defaults directory under your home directory).

  Now, whenever you start an X program, this directory will be searched
  for a file with the same name as the resource name of the program,
  just like the system-wide directory.  This is the client name that you
  used in .Xdefaults files.

  For example, a file called XTerm could contain the line *background:
  gold, and all your xterms would, by default, come up with a gold
  background. This is a nice alternative to a single .Xdefaults file,
  and makes it more clear when trying to decide which settings to
  configure later on, and to find the ones for a certain program. There
  are still uses for the .Xdefaults, though.  It's useful for setting
  resources not bound to a single program, like modifications that you
  would make to turn all of a certain kind of button blue, regardless of
  the application.


  9.  Clients and Application Tips

  We have covered a few clients in X, and this section will cover some
  more.  We will limit our discussion here to the most basic and
  important core items, those which come with X or you are likely to
  find yourself using with X. If you have installed an integrated
  desktop environment such as KDE or GNOME, you will have many others to
  choose from which likely perform many of the same functions. However,
  it is important to know about and understand many of the fundamental
  programs in X, because they can be very useful for working with your
  environment and such.  Also X offers many new options that even your
  normal console applications can take advantage of.


  9.1.  Screen Savers for X

  A common feature of many operating systems is the ability to blank the
  screen after a specified amount of time, and optionally display some
  sort of nifty graphics demo thing, a screen saver.  There are a couple
  ways to do that in X, too.

  The most basic way to use this feature is by putting a command in your
  .xinitrc startup file such as xset dpms 2400 3600 4800.   The xset
  program can configure the screen saving features of  the X server, not
  to be confused with the screen blanking that the  kernel does when you
  are at the text console.  With the dpmi  option, X can use the power
  saving features of your monitor as well.   The first option configures
  how many seconds before the screen blanks,  the second option is how
  many seconds before the power saving  feature starts, and the third
  option is for the "off" mode.  Turning on an option implicitly enables
  the feature, setting a feature  to zero explicitly disables it.

  Many Linux distributions come with xlock preinstalled, or as an
  option.  This is a pretty basic and fairly nice screen saver.  If you
  run it with the -nolock option, you can see some of the modes that it
  offers, and if you leave that option off, it will ask you for a
  password when you move the mouse or press a key, as a security
  feature.  Note that this is no real security, for at a Linux console a
  user could restart the computer or just drop out of X with a
  combination of keystrokes.  The last method can be disabled, however,
  and if you are using xdm, it will offer as much security as your
  login, so it may be that only rebooting will let someone in.

  A newer and better program is xscreensaver by Jamie Zawinski.  This
  program offers a great many niceties, for instance, it can run its
  processes at a nicer priority level, lessening the load to the system
  while it's running, and it automatically detects when the screen has
  been powered down by xset and doesn't waste processor time. Also, all
  of the graphics routines it calls are modular demos, and you can add
  routines without upgrading the whole package, and it can also call
  other programs, such as xearth or xdaliclock, as modules.

  The latest version of xscreensaver can be found at
  <http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/>.  Once you get it installed and
  ready to go, here are some nice additions you might wish to add to
  your .Xdefaults file:



        !!! some XScreenSaver sample defaults
        ! Time out after 3 minutes, cycle mode after each 2
        xscreensaver.timeout: 3
        xscreensaver.cycle: 2
        ! Run very low priority, and fade between modes
        xscreensaver.nice: 12
        xscreensaver.fadeSeconds: 2






  9.2.  Emacs and XEmacs

  If you are a fan of the text editor EMACS, or just someone who uses it
  a lot, you will find your work even easier in X Windows.  If you have
  not tried XEmacs, you may want to get it for use in X.  There are
  features in XEmacs that are nice even if you are not in X, for
  instance, your text can be colored to match the markup style you are
  editing automatically.  You should give the following modification to
  your .emacs file a shot, and read the info pages for more options.
  Also look for an option to edit faces in the menus.



        (global-font-lock-mode t)
        (setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)






  9.3.  Some Useful Programs and Tricks



     appres
        The appres program prints the resources seen by an application
        (or sub-hierarchy of an application) with the specified class
        and instance names.  It can be used to determine which resources
        a particular program will load.  Useful for debugging your X
        defaults and such.


     rclock
        Many distributions come with this nice replacement for xclock,
        which saves memory, alerts you when your mail comes, and can pop
        up reminder messages and launch programs.  The Battery-Powered
        Mini-HOWTO contains instructions on patching this utility to
        show how much battery is left in your laptop, too.


     rxvt
        A nice replacement for xterm - uses less memory, works faster,
        lets you put in a background pixmap, and lets you switch fonts
        with keyboard hotkeys, rather than menus.


     xcpustate
        Displays CPU state (idle, nice, system, kernel) statistics, as
        well as Ethernet information.


     xearth
        Display the earth on your root window, many options for display
        available. Xscreensaver can use this as a screensaver module,
        for maximum fun.


     xfig
        A vector drawing program, particularly useful for charts and
        documentation. Quite useful but hard to get the hang of at
        first.


     xfontsel
        Font selection utility for X Window.  Try the command xterm -fn
        `xfontsel -print` & to pick a font and then open the xterm
        window using that font.


     xload
        Monitor your memory usage with a moving graph or the lights on
        your keyboard! If you use Window Maker, look for wmmon to do the
        same, but prettier.


     xmag
        A magnifying glass for X, with a couple other useful features.


     xman
        Manual page browser for X.  If the little box it starts with
        gets annoying, launch it with the -notopbox option.


     xmodmap
        Edit and display the keyboard modifier map and keymap table that
        are used by client applications to convert event keycodes into
        keysyms, usually run from user's startup script. An example was
        given earlier in this document, see the man pages for more info.


     xpaint
        Basic bitmap painting program, for any real work you should grab
        GIMP <http://www.gimp.org/>.


     xset
        User preference utility for X. You can change all sorts of stuff
        with this.  For instance, xset s 600 sets the screen to blank
        after ten minutes.


     xsetroot
        Change the color of your desktop.  If you have a color selector
        program like xcolorsel installed, try a command like xsetroot
        -solid `xcolorsel` to pick a color and set your desktop to that
        color.


     xwininfo
        You can run this program and click on any window for lots of
        useful information about it.


     The Intellimouse
        You can use the Intellimouse in X with a great many
        applications.  There is an excellent resource page located at
        <http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/>.



  9.4.  Libraries and Compiling X Applications

  Sooner or later you will have to deal with compiling applications of
  your own. Later, if you just installed a nice distribution of linux,
  and are happy with what you've got, sooner, if you're the kind of
  person who likes to tinker and install. Remember, this is a privelage,
  not a right, so have fun with it!

  First, a few pointers on compiling programs with X. Many newer
  applications, GNU applictions in particular, come with a script in the
  root directory called configure.  This assumes of course that you've
  extracted the file and are in the directory. This program should be
  run as ./configure, and will automatically detect many things about
  your system.  Afterwards, simply running make and perhaps becoming
  root and running make install will get the program up on your system.

  You may have to do a little more tinkering if you do not have a
  configure script available. Many X programs require you to run a
  program to make the Makefile, called xmkmf.  If you don't see a
  Makefile in your directory, this will sometimes work, and will
  generate a suitable configuration for you, and you'll be ready to make
  from there.

  Sometimes you will have run the configure script, and have been warned
  that you lack a library that would be helpful or necessary to properly
  use that application. For instance, I recently installed the
  xscreensaver application, and found that it would support several 3D
  modes if the Mesa library was installed. If you run into this
  situation and want that library installed, the first thing you should
  do is check the CD or installation media for your Linux distribution
  to see if you have the library on there.  That may save you lots of
  trouble trying to compile the library.

  Once you get a library compiled and installed and ready to use, you
  can go back to the directory you were installing your X program from,
  remove the config.cache file, and run the configure script again.
  Hopefully it will find the library you have installed. Sometimes it
  does not, and you have to tinker to get it working. This happens
  occasionally with libraries you download off the net, that do not
  adequately support the Linux File System Standard (most do, however).


  9.5.  Basic X Security

  It has often been said that X has a very simple security model: All or
  Nothing. This is not much of an exaggeration at all. X can be
  configured to use somewhat sophisticated security, via encryption, but
  that is beyond the scope of this HOWTO (for the present).  It is
  assumed that the user is not using any encryption for this discussion.

  First of all, you should try and follow some simple rules when you're
  compiling programs for X (or for any reason, really).  Try not to
  become root any more than necessary.  Configure your programs as a
  normal user with the ./configure && make (or just make if there's no
  configure script), and then issue the single command to install it as
  root by typing su -c "make install", and then typing in the root
  password at the prompt.  That way you won't have to be logged in as
  root, you can just issue a single command, and you're back to your
  normal user prompt. This is a smart, safe way to install software.

  The next thing to think about is running X software as root. Realize
  that X is more or less inherently insecure, and if your primary
  concern for a particular Linux box is security, you really don't want
  to install X at all! Having said that, some folks want to run nice
  fancy configuration programs or package management tools in X. I do
  not recommend starting X as root. It's just not a good idea.  There's
  much, much better ways to do these things!

  If you want to run an X application as root, just log in under your
  normal user account, and launch it from there. As I mentioned above,
  you don't want to be logged in as root any more than absolutely
  necessary. The root user has the ability to do just about anything on
  the system, including about a million ways to destroy it completely.
  Simply go to your xterm or such application and type in a command such
  as su -c "glint -display :0.0" to launch the window on your desktop.
  Now you have a single window running as root, and not the whole
  desktop. You might also want to consider using the complete pathname
  to the program you're running as root, for extra security.


  10.  Bibliography and Other Resources

  There is lots of information on X Window to be found, on your computer
  right now, on the Internet, and in some excellent books available at
  your favorite bookseller. Give some of the following resources a try,
  they have been extremely helpful to the author, and can be extremely
  helpful to you, too.


  ╖  Check the Linux  Documentation Project <http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP>
     website for a lot more documentation on Linux, X, and related
     items.

  ╖  <http://www.x11.org/>is sort of a clearinghouse for all things X.

  ╖  <http://www.themes.org/>is a headquarters for themes for various
     window managers.

  ╖  The X Consortium's web site is  <http://www.x.org/>... or perhaps
     it's moved to  <http://www.opengroup.com/>.

  ╖  XFree86 can be found at <http://www.xfree86.org/>.


  ╖  The O'Reilly series on X Window! Visit  <http://www.ora.com/>for
     the definitive books on X.

  ╖  Much more information on using TrueType with X is at
     <http://www.freetype.org/>.

  ╖  The man pages for X, xterm, XFree86, and for any other clients you
     find yourself using often, are very useful and quite information-
     packed, and highly recommended.  As the oft-repeated saying goes,
     RTFM.

  ╖  There is a Remote X Apps MINI-HOWTO that is very helpful in
     figuring out how to run local and remote clients with X.