Doubts about creating a .Xresources file.

Question

I want to customize the look and feel of my xterm and have read that the way to do it is creating a .Xresources file and saving there the desired configuration. I've also learned that this file can control so much more than just the look of xterm, for example the screensaver and the mouse, among other things. My question would then be: if I create a .Xresources file and just write the settings for xterm, what happens to my screensaver, mouse and other stuff controled by .Xresources?

Solution

Only the values you explicitly define in your $HOME/.Xresources will override the system defaults.

So you could specify some settings as sugested by the Arch Wiki, and they would apply to any instances of xterm opened by your user, but all other settings would remain unchanged.