perlperltk

Why does a second running copy of perl tk script does not pick up Xresources

When I run a two instances of the same perl tk script at the same time, the second one does not pick up the X resources. How can I fix this? For example (for simplicity):

my $mw = MainWindow->new(-title => 'Menu');
$mw->Label(-text => 'hello world')->pack;
MainLoop;

My Xresources file has:

weird*font: clean
weird*foreground: steel blue
weird*background: cornsilk

Here is what the first running copy gives:

Here is what the first running copy gives

Here is what a second copy of the same script running at the same time gives:

Here is what a second copy of the same script gives

Solution

  • I found this in the documentation:

    Every Tk program is automatically assigned a default application name, usually the filename of the program, although the appname method can set the name programmatically. To avoid ambiguities, Tk insists that application names be unique and appends a number if needed,

    To find your own application name, use the name method, and to see a list of active Tk programs, use interps:

    my $name = $mw->name;
my(@interps) = $mw->interps;

    So I think what this means, is that unless you know there will only ever be one copy of the program running at any one time, you must assign a class to the main window, and use that class name rather than the program name as the first qualifier in Xresorces.