27.10 X Resources

Historically, XEmacs has used the X resource application class ‘Emacs’ for its resources. Unfortunately, GNU Emacs uses the same application class, and resources are not compatible between the two Emacsen. This sharing of the application class often leads to trouble if you want to run both variants.

SXEmacs uses the class ‘SXEmacs’ if it finds any SXEmacs resources in the resource database when the X connection is initialized. Otherwise, it will use the class ‘Emacs’ for backwards compatibility. The variable x-emacs-application-class may be consulted to determine the application class being used.

The examples in this section assume the application class is ‘Emacs’.

The Emacs resources are generally set per-frame. Each Emacs frame can have its own name or the same name as another, depending on the name passed to the make-frame function.

You can specify resources for all frames with the syntax:

Emacs*parameter: value

or

Emacs*EmacsFrame.parameter:value

You can specify resources for a particular frame with the syntax:

Emacs*FRAME-NAME.parameter: value