xterm pointer resources

[Tim Writer]

David Tilbrook <dt-hKuJ9UrQZDM at public.gmane.org> writes:

> I recently was forced to upgrade to Redhat 9 (my disk crashed)
> which has meant that I've been spending a lot of time trying
> to recover and discover things that no longer work or need to be
> installed.
> 
> One problem is that my xterm pointer
> resources no longer appear to work.
> 
> I have settings:
> 
> 	xterm.*.pointerColor: red
> 	xterm.*.pointerColorBackground: brown
> 	xterm.*.pointerShape: xterm
> 
> Changing the pointerShape does take affect the pointer used,
> however, the changing the Color resources appears to do
> nothing.
> 
> They used to work and still do on freebsd.
> 
> Does anyone know of other controls (e.g., other resources,
> environment variables, files, xterm flags, etc.) that might
> affect the pointer *Color* [sic] settings?

What GUI enviroment are you using?  KDE (and I suspect GNOME) installs its
own X resources which can conflict/override your own settings.  For example,
in the KDE control panel "Appearance & Themes/Colors" dialog, there's a
checkbox labled "Apply colors to non-KDE applications".  You can uncheck this
but then you may find you have to do a lot of tweaking of other non-KDE
apps.  Instead, I solve these kind of problems with a script like this:

    % cat .kde/Autostart/Load_Xresources
    #!/bin/sh
    xresources="$HOME/.Xresources"
    # undefine predefined symbols to prevent name clashes
    cppflags="-UELF -Ui386 -Ulinux -Uunix"

    # Remove some resources that KDE gets wrong
    xrdb -query | egrep -v '^xterm\*background:' | xrdb -load $cppflags

    # Merge in my resources file
    if [ -r "$xresources" ]; then
        xrdb -merge -I$HOME $cppflags "$xresources"
    fi

Similar techniques should work in GNOME.

HTH,

-- 
tim writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>                                  starnix inc.
905.771.0017 ext. 225                           thornhill, ontario, canada
http://www.starnix.com              professional linux services & products
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