EDITRES(1) X Version 11 (Release 6.6) EDITRES(1)
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(1)). 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 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
<XRoot>/lib/X11/app-defaults/Editres - specifies required
resources
SEE ALSO
X(1), 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
Page 9 (printed 7/20/06)