Window Border Thickness

gcvisel · 02-18-2008, 02:20 PM

Anybody out there know how to change the thickness of window borders in Ubuntu? My old eyes can't always grab the border to resize things, and in Winders (gasp!) I could change it in Display controls. How do you do it here? I can't find that anywhere.

Thanks!
Spook

tronayne · 02-19-2008, 08:07 AM

If you create (or edit) the content of the file .Xresources in your home directory, you can set attributes. For example, from man X:

Code:

           bitmap*Dashed:  off
           XTerm*cursorColor:  gold
           XTerm*multiScroll:  on
           XTerm*jumpScroll:  on
           XTerm*reverseWrap:  on
           XTerm*curses:  on
           XTerm*Font:  6x10
           XTerm*scrollBar: on
           XTerm*scrollbar*thickness: 5
           XTerm*multiClickTime: 500
           XTerm*charClass:  33:48,37:48,45-47:48,64:48
           XTerm*cutNewline: off
           XTerm*cutToBeginningOfLine: off
           XTerm*titeInhibit:  on
           XTerm*ttyModes:  intr ^c erase ^? kill ^u
           XLoad*Background: gold
           XLoad*Foreground: red
           XLoad*highlight: black
           XLoad*borderWidth: 0
           emacs*Geometry:  80x65-0-0
           emacs*Background:  rgb:5b/76/86
           emacs*Foreground:  white
           emacs*Cursor:  white
           emacs*BorderColor:  white
           emacs*Font:  6x10
           xmag*geometry: -0-0
           xmag*borderColor:  white

(I think you're interested in borderWidth.)

When you set a resource attribute, you need to add or merge whatever you change with

Code:

xrdb -merge ${HOME}/.Xresources

to update the server. Be sure to look at the Resource Manager Functions section of the X manual page too. This may happen automagically when you log in; look at the file .xinitrc in your home directory which should look something like this:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# $XConsortium: xinitrc.cpp,v 1.4 91/08/22 11:41:34 rws Exp $

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
    xrdb -merge $sysresources
fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f $userresources ]; then
    xrdb -merge $userresources
fi

if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $usermodmap
fi

# Start the window manager:
startkde

Note that it looks for content in $HOME/.Xresource and runs the xrdb utility whenever you log in.

It's a little tricky and you probably want to read as much as you can of the manual page and try the examples to see what happens but that should get you started in the right direction; bear in mind that you're setting attributes for individual programs (as above) or for every program (see the manual page).

Hope this helps some.