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xmsg - X window system message display program.
xmsg [-options
...] -m <message>
The xmsg command is identical in behaviour to the X11R4
version of xmessage but it also builds/installs/runs with X11R5, so it
allows you to have the R4 behaviour on R5 machines. The behaviour of the
standard R5 version of xmessage is significantly different from, and incompatible
with, the R4 version. For the rest of this man page, where you see "xmessage",
substitute "xmsg".
Xmsg opens a window on the screen that will
contain the text of a message from either the command line or stdin. This
text may have a scroll bar along the left side to allow the user to browse
through relatively long messages. Along the lower edge of the message is
list of words with boxes around them. Clicking the left mouse button on
any of these "buttons" (words with boxes around them) will cause the message
to go away. If there is more than one "button" then some state will be
returned to the invoker of the xmessage process via a change of the exit
status of the program.
This program serves two functions. Firstly, it can
be a method for shell scripts to present the user with information much
as 'echo' allows in a tty environment, as well as allowing the user to answer
simple questions. Secondly it allows much of the functionality of 'cat' again
in a windowing versus tty environment.
It should be noted that this program
is intended for short messages, and will be quite slow when asked to handle
long files from stdin. Although xmessage can accept input from stdin, this
input is not allowed to come from a tty. If this is attempted, an error
message will be printed. If xmessage is executed with an incorrect argument
then it will print a usage message to standard output, as well as to an
xmessage window.
These are the command line options
that xmessage understands. Please note that some of these are inherited
from the XToolkit and as the list of default toolkit options changes xmessage
will follow.
- -printlabel
This will cause the program to print the label of the button pressed to
standard output (stdout). I envision this to be useful when popping up
a message to a friend, as in: "ready to go to lunch". This allows you
to know if he clicked the "yes" or the "no" button.
- -noscroll (-nsb)
The scroll bar is active on the text window by default; this causes it
to be removed.
- -buttons <button> <button> ...
This option will cause xmessage to create one button for each argument
that follows it until something starts with a '-'. The string passed to the
button is the name of the Command button widget created and will be the
default text displayed to the user. Since this is the name of the widget
it may be used to change any of the Xresources associated with that button.
- -message <word> <word> ...
This must be the last argument in the command list, as every argument after
this one is assumed to be part of the message. There is no limit to the
length of this message.
- -geometry (height)x(width)+(x_offset)+(y_offset)
Sets the size and location of the window created by xmessage.
-bw <pixels>
- -borderwidth <pixels>
Specifies the width of the border for all windows in xmessage.
-bd <color>
- -bordercolor <color>
Specifies the color of the borders of all windows in xmessage.
-fg <color>
- -foreground <color>
Specifies the foreground color to be used.
-bg <color>
- -background <color>
Specifies the background color to be used.
-fn <font>
- -font <font>
Specifies the font to use for all buttons and text. - -display <host:display[.screen]>
Specifies a display to use other than the default specified by the DISPLAY
environment variable. - -name <name>
Specifies the name to use when retrieving resources.
- -title <title>
Specifies the title of this application.
- -xrm <resource>
Allows a resource to be specified on the command line.
Resource management is an important part of X Toolkit applications,
and xmessage is no exception. All objects in xmessage can have many of
their distinguishing characteristics changed by changing the resources
associated with them. Below is a brief list of the resources and what
they modify.
- foreground
- - foreground color
- background
- - background color
- width
& height
- - size
- borderWidth
- - border width
- borderColor
- - border color
In order
to change the default values for the widget resources you need to have
the names; thus, below I have specified the names of some of the most common
widgets.
- xmessage - (argv[0])
- - shell widget that contains everything displayed.
- text
- - the text window.
- <button name>
- - each of the buttons. "okay" is default.
You can also reference Widgets by class. The important classes for this
application are: Command and Text.
Here are a few examples of how to string
all this information together into a resource specification that can be
used on the command line with the -xrm flag, or added to your .Xresources
file.
- xmessage*Command.foreground: Blue
- All command buttons will be blue.
- xmessage*foreground: Blue
- Everything in the xmessage window has a blue
foreground.
- xmessage*Text.border: Red
- The text widget has a red border.
In
addition Xmessage has a few specific application resources that allow customizations
that are specific to xmessage.
- ScrollText
- A Boolean resource that determines
whether you are allowed to scroll the text widget. The default value is
TRUE.
- printLabel
- A Boolean resource that determines whether or not the label
of the button pressed to exit the program is printed. Default value is
FALSE.
Xmessage errors may be printed into their own xmessage
window. This invocation of xmessage has a different name. This allows its
resources to be specified separately. The name of xmessage error program
is xmessage_error.
Xmessage will exit with status zero (0) when
there is only one button in the list, and it is clicked to exit. If there
is more than one button in the list then the exit status will correspond
to the number of the button pressed, starting at one (1)
for the first
button, and counting up. Zero (0) is not used because no button should
have a preferred place over the others.
See the NOTE
section at the beginning of this man page.
X(1)
, X(8C)
, xmessage(1)
,
echo(1)
, cat(1)
There must be some, somewhere.
Copyright 1988
by Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chris Peterson, MIT Project Athena
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