Provided by: x11-utils_7.7+5_amd64 
NAME
editres - a dynamic resource editor for X Toolkit applications
SYNTAX
editres [ -toolkitoption ... ]
OPTIONS
Editres accepts all of the standard X Toolkit command line options (see X(7)). The order of the command
line options is not important.
DESCRIPTION
Editres is a tool that allows users and application developers to view the full widget hierarchy of any X
Toolkit application that speaks the Editres protocol. In addition, editres will help the user construct
resource specifications, allow the user to apply the resource to the application and view the results
dynamically. Once the user is happy with a resource specification editres will append the resource
string to the user's X Resources file.
USING EDITRES
Editres provides a window consisting of the following four areas:
Menu Bar A set of popup menus that allow you full access to editres's features.
Panner The panner allows a more intuitive way to scroll the application tree display.
Message Area Displays information to the user about the action that editres expects of her.
Application Widget Tree This area will be used to display the selected application's widget tree.
To begin an editres session select the Get Widget Tree menu item from the command menu. This will change
the pointer cursor to cross hair. You should now select the application you wish look at by clicking on
any of its windows. If this application understands the editres protocol then editres will display the
application's widget tree in its tree window. If the application does not understand the editres
protocol editres will inform you of this fact in the message area after a few seconds delay.
Once you have a widget tree you may now select any of the other menu options. The effect of each of these
is described below.
COMMANDS
Get Widget Tree
Allows the user to click on any application that speaks the editres protocol and receive its
widget tree.
Refresh Current Widget Tree
Editres only knows about the widgets that exist at the present time. Many applications create
and destroy widgets on the fly. Selecting this menu item will cause editres to ask the
application to resend its widget tree, thus updating its information to the new state of the
application.
For example, xman only creates the widgets for its topbox when it starts up. None of the widgets
for the manual page window are created until the user actually clicks on the Manual Page button.
If you retrieved xman's widget tree before the the manual page is active, you may wish to refresh
the widget tree after the manual page has been displayed. This will allow you to also edit the
manual page's resources.
Dump Widget Tree to a File
For documenting applications it is often useful to be able to dump the entire application widget
tree to an ASCII file. This file can then be included in the manual page. When this menu item
is selected a popup dialog is activated. Type the name of the file in this dialog, and either
select okay, or type a carriage-return. Editres will now dump the widget tree to this file. To
cancel the file dialog, select the cancel button.
Show Resource Box
This command will popup a resource box for the current application. This resource box (described
in detail below) will allow the user to see exactly which resources can be set for the widget
that is currently selected in the widget tree display. Only one widget may be currently
selected; if greater or fewer are selected editres will refuse to pop up the resource box and put
an error message in the Message Area.
Set Resource
This command will popup a simple dialog box for setting an arbitrary resource on all selected
widgets. You must type in the resource name, as well as the value. You can use the Tab key to
switch between the resource name field the resource value field.
Quit Exits editres.
TREE COMMANDS
The Tree menu contains several commands that allow operations to be performed on the widget tree.
Select Widget in Client
This menu item allows you to select any widget in the application; editres will then highlight the
corresponding element the widget tree display. Once this menu item is selected the pointer cursor
will again turn to a crosshair, and you must click any pointer button in the widget you wish to
have displayed. Since some widgets are fully obscured by their children, it is not possible to
get to every widget this way, but this mechanism does give very useful feedback between the
elements in the widget tree and those in the actual application.
Select All
Unselect All
Invert All
These functions allow the user to select, unselect, or invert all widgets in the widget tree.
Select Children
Select Parents
These functions select the immediate parent or children of each of the currently selected widgets.
Select Descendants
Select Ancestors
These functions select all parents or children of each of the currently selected widgets. This is
a recursive search.
Show Widget Names
Show Class Names
Show Widget IDs
Show Widget Windows
When the tree widget is initially displayed the labels of each widget in the tree correspond to
the widget names. These functions will cause the label of all widgets in the tree to be changed
to show the class name, IDs, or window associated with each widget in the application. The widget
IDs, and windows are shown as hex numbers.
In addition there are keyboard accelerators for each of the Tree operations. If the input focus is over
an individual widget in the tree, then that operation will only effect that widget. If the input focus
is in the Tree background it will have exactly the same effect as the corresponding menu item.
The translation entries shown may be applied to any widget in the application. If that widget is a child
of the Tree widget, then it will only affect that widget, otherwise it will have the same effect as the
commands in the tree menu.
Flash Active Widgets
This command is the inverse of the Select Widget in Client command, it will show the user each
widget that is currently selected in the widget tree, by flashing the corresponding widget in the
application numFlashes (three by default) times in the flashColor.
Key Option Translation Entry
-
space Unselect Select(nothing)
w Select Select(widget)
s Select Select(all)
i Invert Select(invert)
c Select Children Select(children)
d Select Descendants Select(descendants)
p Select Parent Select(parent)
a Select Ancestors Select(ancestors)
N Show Widget Names Relabel(name)
C Show Class Names Relabel(class)
I Show Widget IDs Relabel(id)
W Show Widget Windows Relabel(window)
T Toggle Widget/Class Name Relabel(toggle)
Clicking button 1 on a widget adds it to the set of selected widgets. Clicking button 2 on a
widget deselects all other widgets and then selects just that widget. Clicking button 3 on a
widget toggles its label between the widget's instance name the widget's class name.
USING THE RESOURCE BOX
The resource box contains five different areas. Each of the areas, as they appear on the screen, from
top to bottom will be discussed.
The Resource Line
This area at the top of the resource box shows the current resource name exactly as it would
appear if you were to save it to a file or apply it.
The Widget Names and Classes
This area allows you to select exactly which widgets this resource will apply to. The area
contains four lines, the first contains the name of the selected widget and all its ancestors, and
the more restrictive dot (.) separator. The second line contains less specific the Class names of
each widget, and well as the less restrictive star (*) separator. The third line contains a set
of special buttons called Any Widget which will generalize this level to match any widget. The
last line contains a set of special buttons called Any Widget Chain which will turn the single
level into something that matches zero or more levels.
The initial state of this area is the most restrictive, using the resource names and the dot
separator. By selecting the other buttons in this area you can ease the restrictions to allow
more and more widgets to match the specification. The extreme case is to select all the Any
Widget Chain buttons, which will match every widget in the application. As you select different
buttons the tree display will update to show you exactly which widgets will be effected by the
current resource specification.
Normal and Constraint Resources
The next area allows you to select the name of the normal or constraint resources you wish to set.
Some widgets may not have constraint resources, so that area will not appear.
Resource Value
This next area allows you to enter the resource value. This value should be entered exactly as
you would type a line into your resource file. Thus it should contain no unescaped new-lines.
There are a few special character sequences for this file:
\n - This will be replaced with a newline.
\### - Where # is any octal digit. This will be replaced with a single byte that contains this
sequence interpreted as an octal number. For example, a value containing a NULL byte can be
stored by specifying \000.
\<new-line> - This will compress to nothing.
\\ - This will compress to a single backslash.
Command Area
This area contains several command buttons, described in this section.
Set Save File
This button allows the user to modify file that the resources will be saved to. This button will
bring up a dialog box that will ask you for a filename; once the filename has been entered, either
hit carriage-return or click on the okay button. To pop down the dialog box without changing the
save file, click the cancel button.
Save This button will append the resource line described above to the end of the current save file. If
no save file has been set the Set Save File dialog box will be popped up to prompt the user for a
filename.
Apply This button attempts to perform a XtSetValues call on all widgets that match the resource line
described above. The value specified is applied directly to all matching widgets. This behavior
is an attempt to give a dynamic feel to the resource editor. Since this feature allows users to
put an application in states it may not be willing to handle, a hook has been provided to allow
specific applications to block these SetValues requests (see Blocking Editres Requests below).
Unfortunately due to design constraints imposed on the widgets by the X Toolkit and the Resource
Manager, trying to coerce an inherently static system into dynamic behavior can cause strange
results. There is no guarantee that the results of an apply will be the same as what will happen
when you save the value and restart the application. This functionality is provided to try to
give you a rough feel for what your changes will accomplish, and the results obtained should be
considered suspect at best. Having said that, this is one of the neatest features of editres, and
I strongly suggest that you play with it, and see what it can do.
Save and Apply
This button combines the Save and Apply actions described above into one button.
Popdown Resource Box
This button will remove the resource box from the display.
BLOCKING EDITRES REQUESTS
The editres protocol has been built into the Athena Widget set. This allows all applications that are
linked against Xaw to be able to speak to the resource editor. While this provides great flexibility,
and is a useful tool, it can quite easily be abused. It is therefore possible for any Xaw application to
specify a value for the editresBlock resource described below, to keep editres from divulging information
about its internals, or to disable the SetValues part of the protocol.
editresBlock (Class EditresBlock)
Specifies which type of blocking this application wishes to impose on the editres protocol.
The accepted values are:
all Block all requests.
setValues Block all SetValues requests. As this is the only editres request that actually modifies
the application, this is in effect stating that the application is read-only.
none Allow all editres requests.
Remember that these resources are set on any Xaw application, not editres. They allow individual
applications to keep all or some of the requests editres makes from ever succeeding. Of course, editres
is also an Xaw application, so it may also be viewed and modified by editres (rather recursive, I know),
these commands can be blocked by setting the editresBlock resource on editres itself.
RESOURCES
For editres the available application resources are:
numFlashes (Class NumFlashes)
Specifies the number of times the widgets in the application will be flashed when the Show Active
Widgets command in invoked.
flashTime (Class FlashTime)
Amount of time between the flashes described above.
flashColor (Class flashColor)
Specifies the color used to flash application widgets. A bright color should be used that will
immediately draw your attention to the area being flashed, such as red or yellow.
saveResourcesFile (Class SaveResourcesFile)
This is the file the resource line will be append to when the Save button activated in the
resource box.
WIDGETS
In order to specify resources, it is useful to know the hierarchy of the widgets which compose editres.
In the notation below, indentation indicates hierarchical structure. The widget class name is given
first, followed by the widget instance name.
Editres editres
Paned paned
Box box
MenuButton commands
SimpleMenu menu
SmeBSB sendTree
SmeBSB refreshTree
SmeBSB dumpTreeToFile
SmeLine line
SmeBSB getResourceList
SmeLine line
SmeBSB quit
MenuButton treeCommands
SimpleMenu menu
SmeBSB showClientWidget
SmeBSB selectAll
SmeBSB unselectAll
SmeBSB invertAll
SmeLine line
SmeBSB selectChildren
SmeBSB selectParent
SmeBSB selectDescendants
SmeBSB selectAncestors
SmeLine line
SmeBSB showWidgetNames
SmeBSB showClassNames
SmeBSB showWidgetIDs
SmeBSB showWidgetWindows
SmeLine line
SmeBSB flashActiveWidgets
Paned hPane
Panner panner
Label userMessage
Grip grip
Porthole porthole
Tree tree
Toggle <name of widget in application>
.
.
.
TransientShell resourceBox
Paned pane
Label resourceLabel
Form namesAndClasses
Toggle dot
Toggle star
Toggle any
Toggle name
Toggle class
.
.
.
Label namesLabel
List namesList
Label constraintLabel
List constraintList
Form valueForm
Label valueLabel
Text valueText
Box commandBox
Command setFile
Command save
Command apply
Command saveAndApply
Command cancel
Grip grip
Grip grip
ENVIRONMENT
DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
XENVIRONMENT
to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the
RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
FILES
/etc/X11/app-defaults/Editres
specifies required resources
SEE ALSO
X(7), xrdb(1), Athena Widget Set
RESTRICTIONS
This is a prototype, there are lots of nifty features I would love to add, but I hope this will give you
some ideas about what a resource editor can do.
AUTHOR
Chris D. Peterson, formerly MIT X Consortium