DTSTYLE(1)

📦
version 2.5.3 · 2 versions
, in nixos 26.05

💖 NAME

dtstyle — the CDE Style Manager, bestie. That's the manual name, that's the whole vibe.

✨ SYNOPSIS

dtstyle

No flags, no args, no extra little friends. Just dtstyle doing her thing. 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION

Note: There are no style manager specific options that can be specified in the command line.

Okay so dtstyle provides interactive customization of visual elements and system behavior for the desktop through the style manager. She's literally here to let you tweak the desktop and make it feel like yours.

This component consists of the UI and supporting code that allows the end user to interactively customize most of the visual elements and system behavior for the CDE. This component also helps define some resource utilization conventions. The style manager's main window, which consists of an iconic interface, is invoked from the Front Panel. The style manager window contains icons representing customization in several areas. Iconic. 👑

🌸 Key Supported Tasks

  • Colors — Sets the color palette that is used for window colors in the workspace.
  • Fonts — Sets the application font sizes as applications are started.
  • Backdrop — Sets the backdrops for workspaces.
  • Keyboard — Sets the keyboard's key click volume and character repeat capability.
  • Mouse — Sets the mouse button click settings, double-click speed, pointer acceleration and pointer movement threshold.
  • Beep — Sets the beeper volume, tone, and duration.
  • Screen — Sets the screen lock and time-out intervals, chooses the screen saver client(s) to be run at time out and/or screen lock and previews the selected screen saver client(s) to the user.
  • Window — Sets the window focus policy, window raise policy and iconification policy (in an icon box or on the desktop).
  • Startup — Sets the session startup policy.

💅 OPTIONS

There are no style manager specific options that can be set from the command line. Like, none. Zero. The command line is not where the customization lives, bestie. ✨

🎀 RESOURCES

🌟 New Resources

  • imServerHosts — Class/Type: ImServerHosts/string; Access: G; Default: NULL.

💜 imserverHosts

A comma-separated list of IM server hosts. That's the whole tea. 🫶

🫶 Style Manager specific resources

The style manager used the following resources to control its appearance and behavior.

  • writeXrdbImmediate — Class: WriteXrdbImmediate; Type: Boolean; Default: True.

🔥 writeXrdbImmediate

Controls when new font size or new mouse double-click time resources are used. If True, new resources are used when new clients start. If False, new resources are used at the next session (after logout, with "Resume Current Session" selected in the Startup dialog).

The following resources are specified in Dtstyle (dtstyle's app-defaults file).

  • mainRC.orientation — Class: XmNorientation; Type: string; Default: HORIZONTAL.
  • componentList — Class: ComponentList; Type: string; Default: (See description).
  • secondaryColorSetId — Class: SecondaryColorSetId; Type: int; Default: 6.
  • toneScale.maximum — Class: XmCMaximum; Type: int; Default: 9000.
  • toneScale.minimum — Class: XmCMaximum; Type: int; Default: 82.
  • durationScale.maximum — Class: XmCMaximum; Type: int; Default: 25.

🌈 mainRC.orientation

Controls the layout of the style manager main window. If this resource is set to VERTICAL then the style manager main window is displayed vertically.

🍓 componentList

Specifies the locale-specific Style Manager components with a list of component keywords separated by spaces. Valid component keywords include: Color, Font, Backdrop, Keyboard, Mouse, Audio, Screen, Window, and Startup.

Default in the C locale: Color Font Backdrop Keyboard Mouse Beep Screen Dtwm Startup. Default in the Japanese locale: Color Font Backdrop Keyboard Mouse Beep Screen Dtwm Startup I18N.

🧚 secondaryColorSetId

Specifies the color to be used for the menubar and all menus and dialogs of the dtstyle application.

⭐ toneScale.maximum

Specifies the maximum value to be used for the tone slider in the Beep dialog.

🌙 toneScale.minimum

Specifies the minimum value to be used for the tone slider in the Beep dialog.

💫 durationScale.maximum

Specifies the maximum value to be used for the duration slider in the Beep dialog.

🎀 fileMenu.exit.accelerator

Specifies the accelerator key for the Exit menu option of the style manager main window.

🎀 fileMenu.exit.acceleratorText

Specifies the text for the accelerator key that appears next to the Exit menu option of the style manager main window.

👑 dtstyle Specific Resources

The following font resources are specified in Dtstyle.

  • numFonts — Class: NumFonts; Type: int; Default: 6.
  • systemFont1 — Class: SystemFont1; Type: FontList; Default: see SF1 below.
  • systemFont2 — Class: SystemFont2; Type: FontList; Default: see SF2 below.
  • systemFont3 — Class: SystemFont3; Type: FontList; Default: see SF3 below.
  • systemFont4 — Class: SystemFont4; Type: FontList; Default: see SF4 below.
  • systemFont5 — Class: SystemFont5; Type: FontList; Default: see SF5 below.
  • systemFont6 — Class: SystemFont6; Type: FontList; Default: see SF6 below.
  • systemFont7 — Class: SystemFont7; Type: FontList; Default: see SF7 below.
  • userFont1 — Class: UserFont1; Type: FontList; Default: see UF1 below.
  • userFont2 — Class: UserFont2; Type: FontList; Default: see UF2 below.
  • userFont3 — Class: UserFont3; Type: FontList; Default: see UF3 below.
  • userFont4 — Class: UserFont4; Type: FontList; Default: see UF4 below.
  • userFont5 — Class: UserFont5; Type: FontList; Default: see UF5 below.
  • userFont6 — Class: UserFont6; Type: FontList; Default: see UF6 below.
  • userFont7 — Class: UserFont7; Type: FontList; Default: see UF7.

🌸 numFonts

Specifies the number of System/User Font alias pairs presented in the Font dialog. The default is 7.

Yes, the table says 6 and this description says 7. Both are literally in the original, bestie. I'm not picking a fight with either one. 😭

🦋 systemFont[1-7]

Specifies a SystemFont alias for a particular font size that can be selected in the Font dialog.

The default system font aliases are:

SF1     -dt-interface system-medium-r-normal-xxs*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
SF2     -dt-interface system-medium-r-normal-xs*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
SF3     -dt-interface system-medium-r-normal-s*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
SF4     -dt-interface system-medium-r-normal-m*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
SF5     -dt-interface system-medium-r-normal-l*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
SF6     -dt-interface system-medium-r-normal-xl*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
SF7     -dt-interface system-medium-r-normal-xxl*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:

💜 userFont[1-6]

Specifies a UserFont for a particular font size that can be selected in the Font dialog.

The default user fonts are local specific. For English language-US the defaults are:

UF1     -dt-interface user-medium-r-normal-xxs*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
UF2     -dt-interface user-medium-r-normal-xs*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
UF3     -dt-interface user-medium-r-normal-s*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
UF4     -dt-interface user-medium-r-normal-m*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
UF5     -dt-interface user-medium-r-normal-l*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
UF6     -dt-interface user-medium-r-normal-xl*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:
UF7     -dt-interface user-medium-r-normal-xxl*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*:

🌈 Color and backdrop resources: Global to

The following resources are used by more than one desktop component. The syntax for specifying global resources is: *resource_id.

  • colorUse — Class: ColorUse; Type: int; Default: dynamic*.
  • dynamicColor — Class: DynamicColor; Type: Boolean; Default: true.
  • foregroundColor — Class: ForegroundColor; Type: int; Default: dynamic*.
  • shadowPixmaps — Class: ShadowPixmaps; Type: int; Default: dynamic*.
  • writeXrdbColors — Class: WriteXrdbColors; Type: Boolean; Default: true.
NOTE: The display type determines default.

🎨 ColorUse

Specifies the number of colors to use for the user interface. The default value for this resource is dependent on the number of bit planes available in the display. However, to reduce the number of colors used by the desktop, the default color use for a high color display is MEDIUM_COLOR.

Valid values are:

  • B_W" — Specifies a black and white system. The color palettes use only Black and White (color cells 0 and 1) and icons are displayed as bitonal images. In this configuration four color palettes are available: Black, White, BlackWhite and WhiteBlack. These palettes do not dynamically change. To change a palette, the session must be restarted. This resource value forces shadowPixmaps to True, and foregroundColor to either black or white depending on the palette chosen.
  • LOW_COLOR" — Specifies a low color system. The color palettes use 2 color sets and icons are displayed as bitonal images. The number of color cells can be further reduced by using the resources shadowPixmaps and foregroundColor.
  • MEDIUM_COLOR — Specifies a medium color system. The color palettes use 4 color sets and icons are displayed as bitonal images. The number of color cells can be further reduced by using the resources shadowPixmaps and foregroundColor.
  • HIGH_COLOR — Specifies a high color system. The color palettes use 8 color sets and icons are displayed as multi-color images. The number of color cells can be reduced by using the resources shadowPixmaps and foregroundColor.

Then the original drops this iconic little list, and I'm keeping it exactly as it appears:

  • planes
  • 2-3
  • 4
  • 6
  • 8

🌀 dynamicColor

This resource can have values of True or False. dynamicColor is used to reduce the number of color cells being used. Once a palette has been selected and it is not likely to be changed, dynamicColor can be set to False. If set to False colors cannot be dynamically changed using the Style Manager. A selected palette will take effect the next session. The next time the session comes up, the color server uses Read Only color cells that can be shared by all clients, thus reducing the number of color cells used.

🖤 foregroundColor

This resource can have values of White, Black or Dynamic. foregroundColor causes all text (foreground) to use either pixel 0 or 1 (Black or White) or to have a color cell dedicated to foreground that changes in response to the background color (Dynamic) for each ColorSet. If set to White or Black, the number of color cells used per ColorSet is reduced by 1.

✨ shadowPixmaps

For color systems, this resource can have a value of True or False. If True, topShadowColor and bottomShadowColor use the same pixel as background and topShadowPixmap and bottomShadowPixmap are specified instead of solid color to create the 3D look. This reduces the number of color cells per ColorSet by 2. shadowPixmaps defaults to True for systems with 4 or less color planes (16 or less color cells), and False for systems with more than 4 color planes.

✨ writeXrdbColors ✨

Okay so this resource is the niche one, bestie: only use it if you're running non desktop Motif clients whose color schemes conflict with the desktop colors. It has no impact on clients linked with the desktop Motif library — iconically not their business.

This resource says whether color resource information should be written out. If it's set to False, background and foreground resources are not written out with the values of the current palette. Translation: those above-mentioned clients do not get the desktop colors when they are started. Default is True. Slay.

🎨 Color resources: client specific 🎨

These resources are specified on a per client basis. The syntax is client_name_or_class*resource_id.

Table energy, but make it cute:

  • Name: primaryColorSetId — Class: PrimaryColorSetId — Type: int — Default: 3
  • Name: secondaryColorSetId — Class: SecondaryColorSetId — Type: int — Default: 4

primaryColorSetId

This one specifies the primary color for an application. The primary color is used for the main background areas of the application and all children of the main area. The value of this resource is a number from one to eight that represents a specific color set in a palette. Obsessed.

secondaryColorSetId

This one specifies the secondary color for an application. The secondary color is used for the menubar and all menus and dialogs of the application. This allows dialogs on the screen to be visually associated with their parent applications by matching the dialog color to the menubar. The value of this resource is a number from one to eight that represents a specific color set in a palette. Periodt.

🪟 Color resources: dtwm specific 🪟

The following are dtwm-specific resources:

  • Name: activeColorSetId — Class: ActiveColorSetId — Type: int — Default: 1
  • Name: inactiveColorSetId — Class: InactiveColorSetId — Type: int — Default: 2

activeColorSetId

Specifies the active frame color for dtwm. The value of this resource is a number from one to eight, which represents a specific color set in a palette.

inactiveColorSetId

Specifies the inactive frame color for dtwm. The value of this resource is a number from one to eight, which represents a specific color set in a palette.

🗂️ Resources Saved to xrdb by the Style Manager 🗂️

The following resources are written out to xrdb by the style manager:

  • *HelpColorUse — color use mode for help.
  • *ColorUse — color use mode.
  • *ColorPalette — value of current color palette.
  • *MonochromePalette — value of the current palette if it is monochrome.
  • *background — motif resource.
  • *foreground — motif resource.
  • Dtwm.keyboardFocusPolicy — motif resource.
  • Dtwm*focusAutoRaise — motif resource.
  • Dtwm*moveOpaque — motif resource.
  • Dtwm*useIconBox — motif resource.
  • *multiClickTime — motif resource.
  • *enableBtn1Transfer — when set to true button 2 performs adjust operation at the next session.
  • *systemFont: &<systemFont[1-7]> — font displayed in labels and other non-editable text areas.
  • *userFont: &<userFont[1-7]> — font displayed in text widgets.
  • *FontList: &<systemFont[1-7]> — motif resource.
  • *XmText*FontList: &<userFont[1-7]> — motif resource.
  • *XmTextField*FontList: &<userFont[1-7]> — motif resource.
  • *Font: &<systemFont[1-7]> — motif resource.
  • *FontSet: &<systemFont[1-7]> — font resource.
  • *DtEditor*textFontList: &<userFont[1-7]> — dtpad resource.
  • *imServerHosts: &<host_list> — A comma-separated list of input method server hosts.
  • *preeditType: &<method> — Methods are OnTheSpot, OverTheSpot, OffTheSpot, and Root. For details, refer to the description of the XmNpreeditType resource in the VendorShell man page.

🌿 ENVIRONMENT 🌿

DTSCREENSAVERLIST

This environment variable specifies the names of the available screen saver actions (separated by a blank space). Using this variable allows the style manager to query the actions data base and display a list of the available screen saver clients for the user and to invoke screen saver actions for preview of selected screen savers. 💖

📢 BROADCAST MESSAGES 📢

None. Literally none. Silence, gorgeous.

🧷 PROPERTIES AND SELECTIONS 🧷

The style manager uses X properties to communicate with the session manager and the window manager.

🩺 DIAGNOSTICS 🩺

Heads up, bestie: the page literally shows " 10 glued onto some of these messages, so I'm keeping it exactly as it appears. No editing the artifacts, periodt.
  • This will replace your home session with the current session. Continue?" 10 — Startup dialog - Message appears in a warning dialog when the user pushes Set Home Session...
  • A palette named '%s' already exists. This new palette will overwrite the old one. Is this what you want to do?" 10 — Add Palette dialog - Message appears in a warning dialog when an existing palette name is specified.
  • Delete palette '%s'? — Delete Palette dialog - Message appears in a warning dialog when a palette is being deleted.
  • The new double-click time will take effect as applications are restarted. Other mouse values take effect immediately." 10 — Mouse dialog - Message appears in a warning dialog after the user selects a new double-click time and presses OK (and the resource *WriteXrdbImmediate is True).
  • The new double-click time will take effect at your next session. Other mouse values take effect immediately." 10 — Mouse dialog - Message appears in a warning dialog after the user selects a new double-click time and presses OK (and the resource *WriteXrdbImmediate is False).
  • The right and left mouse buttons will switch function immediately after you push OK below. Look at the mouse visual in Style Manager Mouse window for indication of current handedness." 10 — Mouse dialog - Message appears in a warning dialog after the user selects the left-handed or right-handed toggle to change mouse handedness.
  • The function of the middle button will switch at your next session if you push OK below. Note that when the middle button is set to perform the adjust operation, the transfer operation is integrated with the select button by holding down the select button and dragging." 10 — Mouse dialog - Message appears in a warning dialog after the user selects the transfer or adjust toggles to change the function of the middle button.
  • The new Color Use value will take effect at your next session." 10 — ColorUse dialog - Message appears in a warning dialog when the color use mode is changed and OK is pushed.
  • The selected palette will take effect at your next session. — Color dialog - Message appears in a warning dialog when the desktop is running in black and White mode and a new palette is selected in the Color dialog.

🚨 ERROR MESSAGES 🚨

  • You must select an item within the Style Manager. — Main window - Message appears in an error dialog when On Item Help is being used and the user clicks on an area outside of the style manager main window area.
  • Couldn't open bitmap directory '%s'. — Backdrop dialog - Message appears in an error dialog when the bitmap directory could not be loaded.
  • There are no backdrop icons available in '%s'. See your System Administrator or the User's Guide for more details." 10 — Backdrop dialog - Message appears in an error dialog when the bitmap directory is empty.
  • The palette name cannot contain these characters: :() [ ] { } &< > ! | ' / \fP" 10 — Color dialog- Messages appear in an error dialog when the specified palette name is not acceptable.
  • The palette name must be 10 characters or less. — Color dialog- Messages appear in an error dialog when the specified palette name is not acceptable.
  • The color portion of the Style Manager will not operate because the color server is not running. Check $HOME/.dt/errorlog." 10 — Color dialog- Messages appear in an error dialog when the color icon is selected and the color server is not running for some reason.
  • The color portion of the Style Manager will not operate because the resource useColorObj is set to False." 10 — Color dialog- Messages can be caused to appear in an error dialog by setting the resource *useColorObj to False and then running dtstyle and trying to post the Color Dialog.
  • The color portion of the Style Manager will not operate because there are no palette files available. Check $HOME/.dt/errorlog." 10 — Color dialog- Messages appears in an error dialog when the color icon is selected and there are no palette files to be found.
  • The new XmNpreeditType value will take effect as applications are restarted." 10 — Message appears in a warning dialog when the user presses the OK button, and the resource *writeXrdbImmediate is True.
  • Your selection will take effect at your next session. — Message appears in a warning dialog when the user presses the OK button after selecting a new Input Method Server, or modifying the IMS Start Mode, or modifying the XmNpreeditType resource value and the resource *writeXrdbImmediate is False.

📁 FILES 📁

  • Icon files — Icons used in the style manger.
  • App-default file — Dtstyle - contains application resources for the style manager.
  • Palette files — Files that contain the default and customized palettes.
  • Backdrop file — Files containing the data for backdrop customization.

The actual paths, bestie:

  • /nix/store/6waxpwr8lzfzc9ka48gl7yh60rqvlkdb-cde-2.5.3/app-defaults/locale/Dtstyle
  • /nix/store/6waxpwr8lzfzc9ka48gl7yh60rqvlkdb-cde-2.5.3/appconfig/icons/locale/DtI18N.{_m.bm,pm,bm}
  • /nix/store/6waxpwr8lzfzc9ka48gl7yh60rqvlkdb-cde-2.5.3/lib/nls/msg/locale/dtstyle.cat

🚫 RESTRICTION 🚫

Only one single copy of dtsyle is permitted to run per CDE session. Attempts to start a second copy of dtsyle will fail and log an error to the $HOME/.dt/errorlog file.

Yes, it says dtsyle — the typo is canon, bestie. 💅

👀 SEE 👀

  • Dtsession — Acts as a color server and runs the screen saver clients.
  • Dtwm — The window manager can be restarted when certain environment customization operations are performed so that changes can take effect.

That's the whole page, bestie 💖 The footer/source line is dtstyle(user cmd) — that's the version/source tag right there, and no separate date is printed on this one, so I'm not inventing one. Periodt. ✨

📦 where this page comes from