xsettingsd

xsettingsd is a daemon that implements the XSETTINGS specification.

It is intended to be small, fast, and minimally dependent on other libraries. It can serve as an alternative to gnome-settings-daemon for users who are not using the GNOME desktop environment but who still run GTK+ applications and want to configure things such as themes, font antialiasing/hinting, and UI sound effects.

Installation

Requirements:

• C++ compiler
• CMake or SCons
• X11 headers (libx11-dev in Debian)
• GoogleTest (optional, libgtest-dev in Debian)

To compile and install using CMake:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/path ..
make
make install

To run tests:

make test

To delete all installed files:

make uninstall

Alternatively, you can compile xsettingsd and dump_xsettings using SCons:

sudo apt-get install scons g++ libstdc++-dev libx11-dev
scons xsettingsd dump_xsettings

Configuration

You may wish to dump your existing settings to use as a starting point. To do this, check that gnome-settings-daemon (or another program that implements XSETTINGS) is running and run the dump_xsettings program. Your current settings should be printed to stdout in xsettingsd's configuration format. To use this as your initial configuration, redirect the output of the program:

dump_xsettings >~/.xsettingsd

At startup, xsettingsd reads its configuration from $HOME/.xsettingsd by default. If it encounters any errors, it exits; otherwise it becomes the XSETTINGS manager on all screens.

After modifying the .xsettingsd file, you can trigger a configuration reload by sending a HUP signal to xsettingsd, e.g.

killall -HUP xsettingsd

If there in a problem with the new configuration, xsettingsd will continue using the previous version.

The format for the configuration file is simple. Setting names and their corresponding values are whitespace-separated, with at most one setting per line.

• Integer values appear as bare decimal numbers.
• String values are double-quoted.
• Color values are (R, G, B, A) or (R, G, B) tuples, where each value ranges between 0 and 65535 (omitting the alpha value results in full opacity).
• Full-line comments can be started with a # character.

Here is an example .xsettingsd file:

# Configure our fonts.
Xft/Antialias 1
Xft/HintStyle "hintfull"
Xft/Hinting 1
Xft/RGBA "none"
Xft/lcdfilter "none"
# Create a color setting (haven't seen these used anywhere, though).
MyFavoriteColor (33667, 48059, 38036, 32768) # not really my favorite!
EscapedQuote "here's how to put a \" in a string!"

Running

If you are using a ~/.xsession file to control which programs are executed when you start an X session, you can add the following near the top of it:

/path/to/xsettingsd &

Settings

The following table lists some of things that can be configured in GTK+ applications using XSETTINGS. The Details column lists the corresponding properties in the GtkSettings class.

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/XSettingsRegistry/ also lists standardized settings.

Other Notes

Some applications (e.g. Firefox 3) don't seem to use XSETTINGS to control text rendering. You can try additionally putting something like the following in ~/.fonts.conf:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <match target="font" >
 <edit mode="assign" name="rgba">
 <const>none</const>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
 <edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
 <bool>true</bool>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
 <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
 <const>hintfull</const>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
 <edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
 <bool>true</bool>
 </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

and in ~/.Xresources or ~/.Xdefaults:

Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.hinting: 1
Xft.rgba: none
Xft.hintstyle: hintfull

(Tweak the values to your own preferences, of course.)