.Xdefaults and xfce4

[Harry Putnam]

Experimenting on a newly installed rh9.  and xfce4. Moving up from
rh7.3 and xfce[3].  I find my old .Xdefautls file is ignored.
Started investigating and someone told me it needs to be .Xresources
now.  My tests indicate that is not the case.  .Xresources
.xresources are both ignored.

.Xdefaults trys to work but once xfce4 is started it is also ignored.

Let me explain that a bit:

I have 2 xterms started from ,xfce4/xinitrc.  Somewhat indirectly in
that a little perl script is called in .xinitrc like this:

[from xinitrc]
  [...]
  date +"%m%d%y_%T" >> start.log
  /home/reader/Desktop/Autostart/start.pl 2>&1|tee -a ./start.log
  [...]

start.pl reads a file with a list of apps and command line syntax
and loops thru starting them.  Currently just xterms.  So those two
xterms are present when the xfce desktop comes up.

Now here is where it gets funky.  Those first two xterms obey my
.Xdefaults settings.  But starting further xterms from inside xfce4
desktop and those new xterms DO NOT obey my .Xdefaults but revert to
settings found in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm

It would appear from that evidence that xfce4 is doing something to
block .Xdefaults.  But I'm not sure of the role gnome may play in all
this.  I have gnome installed but using xfce4 as desktop.  Starting it
from console mode with startxfce4.

Does anyone here really know what all happens as regards xresources
when starting startxfce4 from a console login?