Manual: editres
EDITRES(1) General Commands Manual EDITRES(1)
NAME
editres - a dynamic resource editor for X Toolkit applications
SYNTAX
editres [ -toolkitoption ... ] [-help] [-version]
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.
Editres also accepts the following additional options:
-help Prints a usage message and exits.
-version Prints version info and exits.
DESCRIPTION
Editres is a tool that allows users and application developers to view the full widget hierarchy of any X Toolkit ap‐
plication that speaks the Editres protocol. In addition, editres will help the user construct resource specifica‐
tions, 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 mes‐
sage 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 de‐
scribed 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 dia‐
log is activated. Type the name of the file in this dialog, and either select okay, or type a carriage-re‐
turn. Editres will now dump the widget tree to this file. To cancel the file dialog, select the cancel but‐
ton.
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 se‐
lected in the widget tree display. Only one widget may be currently selected; if greater or fewer are se‐
lected 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 correspond‐
ing 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 individ‐
ual widget in the tree, then that operation will only effect that widget. If the input focus is in the Tree back‐
ground 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 wid‐
gets 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 char‐
acter 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 in‐
terpreted as an octal number. For example, a value containing a NULL byte can be stored by specifying \000.
\ - 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 re‐
quests (see Blocking Editres Requests below).
Unfortunately due to design constraints imposed on the widgets by the X Toolkit and the Resource Manager, try‐
ing to coerce an inherently static system into dynamic behavior can cause strange results. There is no guar‐
antee 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 re‐
source 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 applica‐
tion, 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 nota‐
tion below, indentation indicates hierarchical structure. The widget class name is given first, followed by the wid‐
get 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
.
.
.
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 prop‐
erty.
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
X Version 11 editres 1.0.9 EDITRES(1)