If your .Xdefaults appears to stop being used after a while, it is
most likely that some program has invoked xrdb, which caches the
information in memory, rather than reading it from the .Xdefaults
file whenever it is needed. Look at the xrdb command, particularly
the -merge, -query, -load, and -remove options.
--
Dan Prener (prener @ ibm.com)