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I think XResources are great. As a programmer you don't have to design a new configuration language and write a parser for it for every new program. However, wh
by sprash 5y ago
I think XResources are great. As a programmer you don't have to design a new configuration language and write a parser for it for every new program. However, what makes XResources better than all other configuration systems out there is the wildcard operator (e.g. Want all programs to have black background? simply do "*background: #000") and the fact that remotely forwarded programs also use your local configuration values automatically by default.
- throwaway82652 5y agoThe wildcard operator is probably the worst part, because it makes it impossible to know whether any given setting is going to affect any given program. The only way to know is to restart the program and check if something changed or not. It's also impossible to have a reliable way to edit those wildcard properties from a configuration GUI, for the same reason. The better way is to just have an intentional global setting if that's what you're trying to do. On modern Linux those too can be remote forwarded over D-Bus or with any number of other mechanisms. A configuration system based on wildcard or regex matching is always going to be fragile and hard to use.