xterm titles

[Daniel Robitaille]

> How does one specify the title of an xterm?  As best I can tell, it
> always puts "$USER at HOST:$PWD" in the title bar, and ignores the -title
> and -name switches.
> 

You need change the environment variable  PROMPT_COMMAND to something
your prefer.  It is done by default system-wide in /etc/bash.bashrc. 
Just cut and paste and modify the line with PROMPT_COMMAND  and add it
in your ~/.bashrc