Apple X11 Startup

I have just installed Apple X11 onto my Leopard MacBook Pro. Each time I start X11, it starts up an xterm. I would like this to not happen. After some hunting around, I found the xinitrc file at:

/usr/X11/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc

I commented out everything after the launch of the quartz-wm but as expected, this had no effect - quartz-wm is launched with an "exec" command, so control does not return to the xinitrc file after quartz-wm is started.

I am guessing that there is either a default user xinitrc file somewhere else, or there is a quartz-wm startup file somewhere, and one of these is launching the xterm.

Does anyone know where the launch of the xterm occurs, so that it can be disabled? Thanks.

It been a long time since I worked with X11, but I believe there is a .xinitrc file in your home folder/directory.

Thanks rman, I agree. That was the next place I looked, but was unable to find anything there either. I did make sure to look for hidden files, since the name of the file (.xinitrc) would cause it to be hidden. No joy.

I then did a complete search of the machine for any other xinitrc files but found none. That is what got me wondering if quartz-wm had a startup file of some nature.

The next thing that comes to mind is xinit. I believe it is use to start everything. I don't remember if it was a binary or a script.

.xinitrc is not installed in your home folder by default, you need to create your own.
helpful link: http://homepage.mac.com/sao1/fink/index.html
Scroll down towards the bottom for the xinitrc stuff.
Don't forget to make the file/script executable.

Good idea cradom. I will try that. I have seen many scripts, now that I think of it, that check to see if the user has something in their home dir. If they do, the script runs that. If they don't, it does its default stuff. I will try creating a more or less nil .xinitrc and see what happens.

Oddly now though, I went through all this stuff to be able to install GIMP, which I have done and which works well. When I start GIMP, it causes X11 to start (through a mechanism I haven't figured out yet - is the GIMP executable actually a script - I bet it is). Under these circumstances, X11 does NOT pop up an xterm. So, the plot thickens.

By the way, GIMP 2.4.4 is now avail for Leopard at least, and it seems to work well. Has at least some primitive color management capabilities as well, which is a real improvement over the 2.2.x series.