Make your settings in .Xdefaults come true

I've been trying to use Xjed recently instead of XEmacs because XEmacs took more than 3 seconds some times to start. If I have to start the editor many times in the day this really matters; and this happens when I use the ExternalEditor for Zope.

Now, to set how big the window should be or how it should look you edit the $HOME/.Xdefaults file. Mine now looks like this:

xjed*Geometry: 90x45+150+50

This means, 90 columns and 45 rows starting in the cartesian corner (150,50). There are loads more settings worth considering.

Now the trick I learned today after googling some mailinglists was how to make these settings stick. Just changing the .Xdefaults file doesn't cut the mustard. No, here's the command:

xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xdefaults

The man page on Xrdb reads:

"Xrdb is used to get or set the contents of the RESOURCE_MANAGER property on the root window of screen 0, or the SCREEN_RESOURCES property on the root window of any or all screens, or every- thing combined."