MirBSD manpage: editres(1)


EDITRES(1)          UNIX Programmer's Manual           EDITRES(1)

NAME

     editres - a dynamic resource editor for X Toolkit applica-
     tions

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 develop-
     ers 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 specifica-
     tions, allow the user to apply the resource to the applica-
     tion 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 win-
     dow.  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.

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     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 des-
             troy 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

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             setting an arbitrary resource on all selected widg-
             ets.  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 opera-
     tions 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 use-
          ful 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 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.

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     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.

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     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 dif-
          ferent 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 nor-
          mal 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 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
          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

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          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, try-
          ing 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 con-
          sidered suspect at best.  Having said that, this is one
          of the neatest features of editres, and I strongly sug-
          gest 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

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     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 applica-
     tion, 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 widg-
             ets.  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.

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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 struc-
     ture.  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

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                         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

     /usr/X11R6/lib/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

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