Understanding resources

Setting resources in the X server

Resources are loaded into the X server by the X resource database client, xrdb. The xrdb client is run automatically by scosession when you log in through scologin or when you run the /usr/bin/startx script from the command line.

The /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup directory contains several display-specific resource files, named for the clients they represent. For example, the ScoHelp file contains resources for the DocView help system and the ScoMail file contains resources for scomail. This directory also contains two other files, Colors and Fonts. These files contain global color and font resources that are used by clients unless they specifically define their own color and font values.

The xrdb client reads the values in these files when scosession is started and loads them into the resource database, storing them directly in the X server. (Technically speaking, the resource values are stored in a data structure referred to as the RESOURCE_MANAGER property of the Root window for that server. This property is simply referred to as the resource database.)

Resources that are stored in the X server are available to all clients, regardless of the machine on which they are run.

While the xrdb client is run by scosession, it can also be invoked interactively, using the following syntax:

xrdb [options] [filename]

When using xrdb, note the following:

The xrdb client takes several options, the most important of which are described in the following sections. You can also refer to the xrdb(XC) manual page for more information on these options.
The optional filename argument specifies the name of a file from which you want xrdb to read resource values. The filename you specify can be any resource file, including the .Xdefaults-hostname file, if you made changes to it during a Graphical Environment session. If no filename is specified, xrdb reads its data from standard input.
NOTE: If you run xrdb during a Graphical Environment session without using the -merge option, you override all of the resources in the resource database that were loaded when you first started the X server.