On Thu, 8 Feb 2001 17:50:36 -0500 sayeth Thomas Dickey:

> On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 05:27:12PM -0500, M L Riechers wrote:
> > > what about the .Xdefaults?
> > 
> > The .Xdefaults files are still there, but, I believe I'm correct in
> > stating that the only time the .Xdefaults come into play is when the X
> > server, or xdm, or xinit starts, it dumps the contents of .Xdefaults
> > to the X server. This, I believe, happens about one time per
> > initiation of the X window system.
> 
> no - unless you did something like an "xrdb -merge", the .Xdefaults
> file is loaded dynamically for each application as it is started.
> Equivalently, you can set $XAPPLRESDIR to point to your own app-defaults
> directory (so you can maintain resource files individually).

Ach, of course. You're right.  You meant the app default file -- the
one in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm, on each respective
system, if and when, as you point out, we haven't "set $XAPPLRESDIR to
point to your own app-defaults directory."  We haven't done that, and
we haven't modified any of the XTerm app-defaults files. Everything's
stock. But it slipped my mind.

Except that I have in my .Xdefaults (whoops, no, point of confusion:
it's .Xresources; sorry) file, in each of my home directories:

XTerm*Foreground:       greenyellow
XTerm*Background:       dimgrey

But an application's X resources come from so many places (or go to,
it's been so long (sigh)).

And, I say again, one of those places is from the X server process --
and that's where our <XTerm*Foreground:       greenyellow> was coming
from.

Go to mterm, do this and get that:

Wed Feb  7 11:14:13 on mterm.rse.com ~ A) xrdb -query |grep -i term
XTerm*Foreground:       greenyellow
XTerm*Background:       dimgrey
*XTerm*font:    -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-22-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
*XTerm*font5:   -*-*-medium-r-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
*XTerm*font6:   -*-*-medium-r-*-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
*XTerm.geometry:        96x32+10+10

Go to t982, nnwest, do identical, get identical.

Go to t982, do 

 xrdb -remove -

and blow away your X terminal resources (even though I didn't expect
it to work that way -- I believed the documentation).

stay on  t982, do xrdb -query, get nada.
go to  nnwest, do xrdb -query, get the same, exactly nothing.
go to   mterm, do xrdb -query, get the same, blank stares.

go to   t982, lynx and stuff now   works.  No surprise, we did the
xrdb -remove -  there.

go to nnwest, lynx and stuff still works.  No surprise, this is the
1.4.2 machine, and it always worked.

go to  mterm, lynx and stuff now   works.  Surprise, we didn't do
anything on this machine -- but lynx and stuff didn't work just a
little ago.

It occurred to me later that perhaps you meant that I could restore my
X terminal resources from an .Xresources file.  I could -- but that
would have been the initial state of the X terminal resources on X
start, without any of the intervening changes.

(Actually, I was just to darn lazy, and the preceding's just a lame
excuse.)

-Mike