Why doesn't .Xdefaults work

[Collins Richey]

I'm not sure how long this has been going on, but it's got me buffaloed.

I have the following in ~/.Xdefaults, and this used to work:

# this is .Xdefaults
aterm*background '#ffffe0'
aterm*foreground blue
aterm*font vga11x19 
aterm*loginShell True
aterm*savedLines 500

Now it is ignored for all of my window managers - kde, xfce, xxxbox, wmaker, and all I get an ugly little bright white window that is not even invoked as a login shell.

I've also tried this as ~/.Xdefaults-<hostname>, but no difference.

As a temporary workaround, I have atstart, but I shouldn't have to do this:

#!/bin/bash
aterm -bg '#ffffe0' -fg blue -font vga11x19 -ls &

Any ideas?

--
Collins