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

[Hans-Bernhard B. <HBB...@t-...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:
> It seems that no matter where the X11 resources file is installed,
> there are complaints.

I suspect there's just about nothing that can be done about that.  X11 
is too flexible to allow a static choice of an installation location to 
work.  The issue is basically the same with TeX, Emacs, GNU info, and to 
some extent, even man pages.  All these systems need configurable 
environment variables and path search mechanisms to find their own 
files.  There's no way we can reliably second-guess their behaviour.

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

Or install it under ${pkgdatadir}, and let users decide what to about it.

> 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?

Packagers will do that anyway, regardless of whether we consciously 
leave it to them, or not.

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

More to the point, any given X11 server will look wherever the heck it 
chooses to.  And the administrator can override that anytime, at the 
flick of an environment variable.

> some linux distros changed the default name of the user's _own_
> resources file from ~/.Xdefaults to ~/.Xresources.

And nowadays it's more likely to be ~/.Xdefaults-${hostname} or 
something like that instead...

I suspect this is a hopeless situation.  Just plop the file in a place 
where it'll at least do no harm, i.e. below our private $(pkgdatadir), 
and mention the need to put it in a place actually visible to the X11 
server in the INSTALL file.