Re: Hacking on .Xresources

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

tgruhn2%gmail.com@localhost (Todd Gruhn) writes:

>This can write text to the top of the xterm:
>        xterm*Title:
>Is it possible to get todays date , and pass it in to xterm*Title  ?
>Can this be done  from inside of .Xresources ?


.Xresources is a file that is usually read once when you log in. Your
session script (or the system-wide one) calls the xrdb program for this.

You could add a call like:

date +"xterm*Title: xterm-%Y%m%d" | xrdb

to set the resource value. The result of course will be that
the date whenever you logged in is used statically as the title
of all xterms. It doesn't become a live calendar or clock nor
does it refer to the start of the xterm.


Programs may change the title of xterm at runtime by printing
a special escape sequence. For example in tcsh, if you define

alias xtitle printf "'\e]0;%s\a'"

then

xtitle `date +"xterm-%Y%m%d"`

will change the title to include the current date.

Some people will even put that sequence into their prompt
string, so the title is changed on every command.


You can set "XTerm.vt100.allowTitleOps: false" to prevent this
kind of dynamic title change.