Customizing the SAS Windowing Environment

Overview of X Resources

X clients usually have characteristics that can be customized; these properties are known as X resources. Because SAS functions as an X Windows client, many aspects of the appearance and behavior of the SAS windowing environment are controlled by X resources. For example, X resources can be used to define a font, a background color, or a window size. The resources for an application, such as SAS, are placed in a resource database.

SAS functions correctly without any modifications to the resource database. However, you might want to change the default behavior or appearance of the interface. There are several ways to specify your customizations. Some methods modify all SAS sessions displayed on a particular X server. Some methods affect all SAS sessions run on a particular host. Other methods affect only a single SAS session.

If you need more information about X Window System clients and X resources, see the documentation provided by your vendor.

Syntax for Specifying X Resources

A resource specification has the following format:

resource-string: value

The resource string usually contains two identifiers and a separator. The first identifier is the client or application name (SAS ), the separator is a period (.) or asterisk (*) character, and the second identifier is the name of the specific resource. The value given can be a Boolean value (True or False ), a number, or a character string, depending on the resource type.

The application name and resource name can both specify an instance value or a class value. A specification for a class applies to a larger scope than a single instance.

The following are sample resource specifications:

SAS.startSessionManager: True
SAS.maxWindowHeight: 100
SAS.awsResizePolicy: grow

See your X Window System documentation for more information about resource specifications.

Top of Page