[2745] in Athena Bugs
Mwm and Resource manager brokenness
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barr3y Jaspan)
Wed Aug 9 09:32:24 1989
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 89 09:31:55 -0400
From: Barr3y Jaspan <bjaspan@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, testers@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: epeisach@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Sometime last term, jik and I discovered (and reported) a bug in the X
resource manager that has now bitten. The problem is that user
defaults do not always override those in the app-defaults directory;
specificaly, if a resource in the app-defaults file is as specific or
more specific than one in the user's .Xresources file, the app-default
will win. For example, the Mwm default resource file contains this
line:
Mwm*icon*fontList: *-times-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*
My .Xresource file contains this line:
Mwm*icon*fontList: -adobe-times-medium-i-*--24-*
The Mwm default file's setting wins, and today all my icons appeared
in 12 point Times-Roman, instead of 24 point Times-Italic. This is
WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG! My specification should have overridden the
default.
When I changed my .Xresources file to contain this line:
Mwm*icon.fontList: -adobe-times-medium-i-*--24-*
everything worked just fine (my icons came up in the right font.)
This bug does affects not only mwm but every program that uses an
app-default file and the user's .Xresources file (in other words, jst
about every X program.)
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
---------------------
1) The bug in the resource manager needs to be fixed. (I suppose
this isn't an athena job but a Consortium job.. whatever.)
2) Until it is, every application default file must be changed so
that all resources are specified with "*" instead of ".". In this
way, users will be able to control the resources.
3) The consultants must know about this so they will understand the
problem when a user reports that s/he cannot set a resource
specification like s/he should be able to.
Barr3y
