Re: inconsistency between 4.4-cvs and 4.5 for default install directory of x11 resources (Gnuplot)

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Friday 19 February 2010, Tatsuro MATSUOKA wrote:
> 
> For 4.4-cvs, the file 'Gnuplot' is installed to /etc/X11/app-defaults, however for 4.5, it is
> installed to /usr/local/etc/X11/app-defaults/gnuplot/4.5.

Please help me out here, people!

It seems that no matter where the X11 resources file is installed,
there are complaints.

Perhaps we should not install it at all unless the new explicit 
configuration option is given?

Since it seems very few people understand how this file is used,
perhaps it should be left to packagers who can select the appropriate
installation directory for their particular system configuration?

> As the default prefix is /usr/local so that the style of 4.5 is preferred, I think.

The file is used by the x11 server, which is almost certainly
expecting to look in the root file system, not in ${prefix}/...

Furthermore the source for gplt_x11.c contains a lot of messy
code giving explicit non-default directories for this file in
conditional code for OS2, VMS, and possibly other operating systems.
These are probably all out of date.   On top of that, at some point
some linux distros changed the default name of the user's _own_
resources file from ~/.Xdefaults to ~/.Xresources.  So right now
it is very hard to explain to people where to put the contents
of the Gnuplot.app-defaults file.

I don't know what is the best thing to do with the file during
installation. Help!!!