XPLACES(X) X Version 11 XPLACES(X)
1 Feb 1988
NAME
xplaces - take snapshot of personal X window configuration and print
command lines for all X applications
SYNOPSIS
xplaces [-display displayname] [-id window-id]
DESCRIPTION
xplaces prints on standard output the command lines used to startup
the X applications presently running and their geometry. The output,
after a little editing, can be used in an initialization file.
EXAMPLE
Here is a configuration example:
DISPLAY=unix:0.0; export DISPLAY
xterm -sb -geometry 80x9+1+19 -title console -name console -C \
-display unix:0 -e /e/moraes/.x11startup.bw2 &
xclock -geometry 100x100+1048+0 &
rcmd neat.ai /ai/bin/X11/xterm -display gerrard.csri:0 \
-geometry 80x57+291+26 -ls &
xterm -geometry 80x56+310+53 -e rlogin bay.csri &
xterm -geometry 80x51+410+128 -title gerrard.csri &
This will start up a console terminal window (which receives
redirected console output, preventing it from messing up the display),
a clock and three terminal windows, one of which is started up by the
shell script rcmd which starts up a command on a remote machine,
putting it in the background. Rcmd is useful only if the application
on the remote machine has no use for standard output and error because
they get redirected to /dev/null.
On the CSRI and ANT Suns, the recommended way of running X11 is by
``x11''. In that case, the console xterm is automatically started up
by the x11 script, so that command must be removed from the xplaces
output, and the remaining xterms (and other applications can be added
to the x11start file.
OPTIONS
xplaces is Xlib based, and accepts only the following two arguments.
-display displayname
where displayname describes the display to use, and is in one
of the standard forms. See X(1) for more details. The default
is determined by the environment variable DISPLAY.
-id window-id
which asks for the command string to start a particular
window. Note that the window-id specified may be the window
id of a parent if the window really holding the command string
property (WM_COMMAND) and xplaces will find it correctly by
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XPLACES(X) X Version 11 XPLACES(X)
1 Feb 1988
recursive search through the window hierarchy. the window-id
may be specified either as a decimal number, or as a
hexadecimal number (prefixed by 0x) which makes it possible to
use the output of xlswins, or xwininfo with this option.
SEE ALSO
x11(x), X(x), xprop(x), xlswins(x)
The Inter Client Communication Conventions Manual.
DIAGNOSTICS
xplaces will complain about top level windows without commands
associated with them, and print the name and class of such windows. It
also complains about various X errors that may occur, and will die
with an error message if used with incorrect arguments.
BUGS
xplaces can only print the command line for application well behaved
Xt applications, or applications that accept -geometry, and -iconic,
and set WM_COMMAND and WM_NORMAL_HINTS.
It can get confused if you use ambiguous options (-g for geometry,
etc)
With some window managers, it cannot locate icons. Blame for this lies
solely with the window managers!
AUTHOR
The first version was by Ken Yap (ken@cs.rochester.edu)
This version was rewritten to deal with a much wider range of window
manager and application behaviour by Mark Moraes
(moraes@csri.toronto.edu)
- 2 - Formatted: November 2, 2025
