Re: configure XTERM

From: Stephane CHAZELAS (this.address_at_is.invalid)
Date: 10/30/03 

Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:16:41 +0100

2003/10/29, 21:19(-08), Mike:
[...]
> Couple of questions:
> 1) when i am in an Xterm window and i want to shell out to a new XTERM
> window, how can i ensure that the new windows opens with the settings
> i specified above? i know i can create a script to do this..but was
> wondering if there was a way to change the default behavior of xterm
> when it opens.

You can configure xterm using X resources. X resources
can be installed in the X server memory and queried by
applications (such as xterm), see man xrdb.

They can also be but in a file that every application reads
(named ~/.Xdefaults or ~/.Xdefaults-<hostname>), or in a file
per application located somewhere in a path that looks like
/path/to/app-defaults (see man X for all the details).

For example, the resource for your command line can be written:

XTerm*saveLines: 1000
XTerm*background: black
XTerm*foreground: green
XTerm*pointerColor: red
XTerm.VT100.geometry: 80x32
XTerm*scrollBar: true
XTerm*font: 8x13
XTerm*rightScrollBar: true

xterm reads the SHELL environment variable to know which shell
to start.

>
> 2) the part of the command above which reads "-e 'bash --login -i'"
> was taken from the Cygwin.bat file. this apparently causes the
> /etc/profile script to excutes and sets Xterm to open at my home
> directory. my question is what does 'bash --login -i' mean? i did a
> man on bash, but it doesn't really explain in depth what the --login
> parameter does. thanks.

This runs a login shell, you generally run one login shell per
session, at the entry point (when you log in). Running a login
shell in a xterm doesn't make much sense unless every command
you run is run from this xterm (i.e. xterm is the ancestor of
all your further processes). Well, at least it is true in a Unix
environment, I don't know for MS Windows.

> 3) when i type something like 'xlsfonts | more', i get a message that
> more is not a known command. why is this?

Maybe it is not installed, or maybe it's in a place your shell
is not aware of. Shells locate commands to run using the "PATH"
environment variable.

> 4) is there a good tutorial that explains the difference between
> .bashrc, .bash_profile, etc/profile and etc/bash.bashrc files are?

I don't find bash much consistEnt about its startup files, you
may prefer switching to the zsh shell which is more user
friendly featureful and consistent. 

-- 
Stéphane                      ["Stephane.Chazelas" at "free.fr"]

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