1 |
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS |
2 |
Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat? |
3 |
I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause |
4 |
extra bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you |
5 |
can see that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables |
6 |
always being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) |
7 |
after startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is |
8 |
a bit unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding |
9 |
conversion, iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode. |
10 |
|
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text data bss drs rss filename |
12 |
98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything |
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188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything |
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|
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When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves |
16 |
xft and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 |
17 |
and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so. |
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|
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text data bss drs rss filename |
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163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything |
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1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything |
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|
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The very large size of the text section is explained by the |
24 |
east-asian encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but |
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nothing else and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core |
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fonts that use those encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k |
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emergency buffer that my c++ compiler allocates (but of course |
28 |
doesn't use unless you are out of memory). Also, using an xft font |
29 |
instead of a core font immediately adds a few megabytes of RSS. Xft |
30 |
indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even when not used. |
31 |
|
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Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of |
33 |
one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use |
34 |
more memory. |
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|
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Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), |
37 |
this still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like |
38 |
gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or |
39 |
konsole (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after |
40 |
exit, plus half aminute of startup time, including the hundreds of |
41 |
warnings it spits out), it fares extremely well *g*. |
42 |
|
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Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool? |
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Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: |
45 |
I had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a |
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fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). |
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Put even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++. |
48 |
|
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My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but |
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in the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability |
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limits are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale |
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support and unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than |
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C++ itself. |
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|
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Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write |
56 |
programs in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to |
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write programs in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large |
58 |
libraries, but this is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is |
59 |
what rxvt links against on my system with a minimal config: |
60 |
|
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libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) |
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libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000) |
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libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000) |
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/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) |
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|
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And here is rxvt-unicode: |
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|
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libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) |
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libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000) |
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libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000) |
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libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000) |
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/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) |
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|
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No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in |
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statically), except maybe libX11 :) |
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|
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Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode? |
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rxvt-unicode does not directly support tabs. It will work fine with |
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tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing |
80 |
programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into |
81 |
other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming |
82 |
"Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt) |
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terminal as an example embedding application. |
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|
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How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using? |
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The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape |
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sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. |
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When using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the |
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daemon. |
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|
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I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem... |
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The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large |
93 |
patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode. |
94 |
Before reporting a bug to the original rxvt-unicode author please |
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download and install the genuine version |
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(<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the |
97 |
problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific |
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to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the |
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Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug). |
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|
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For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and |
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probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's |
103 |
also a bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for |
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other users that might encounter the same issue. |
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|
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When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? |
107 |
The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely |
108 |
available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same |
109 |
problem often arises). |
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|
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The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, |
112 |
this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp): |
113 |
|
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REMOTE=remotesystem.domain |
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infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti" |
116 |
|
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... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system, |
118 |
|
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If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set |
120 |
"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of |
121 |
problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and |
122 |
different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen |
123 |
applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, |
124 |
though. |
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|
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If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) |
127 |
you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or |
128 |
use a resource to set it: |
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|
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URxvt.termName: rxvt |
131 |
|
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If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also |
133 |
replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one. |
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|
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"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry. |
136 |
Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it |
137 |
by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again. |
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|
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"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt. |
140 |
I need a termcap file entry. |
141 |
One reason you might want this is that some distributions or |
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operating systems still compile some programs using the |
143 |
long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) |
144 |
and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode". |
145 |
|
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You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many |
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cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's |
148 |
infocmp program like this: |
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|
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infocmp -C rxvt-unicode |
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|
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Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above: |
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|
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rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\ |
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:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\ |
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:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\ |
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:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\ |
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:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\ |
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:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\ |
160 |
:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\ |
161 |
:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\ |
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:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\ |
163 |
:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\ |
164 |
:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\ |
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:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\ |
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:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\ |
167 |
:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\ |
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:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\ |
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:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\ |
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:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\ |
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:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\ |
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:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\ |
173 |
:vs=\E[?25h: |
174 |
|
175 |
Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output? |
176 |
The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to |
177 |
decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration |
178 |
file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file |
179 |
(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add: |
180 |
|
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TERM rxvt-unicode |
182 |
|
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to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add: |
184 |
|
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alias ls='ls --color=auto' |
186 |
|
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to your ".profile" or ".bashrc". |
188 |
|
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Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode? |
190 |
Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic? |
191 |
Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly? |
192 |
Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged |
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distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by |
194 |
setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features. |
195 |
Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux) |
196 |
furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, |
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so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I |
198 |
log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on |
199 |
how to do this). |
200 |
|
201 |
My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output? |
202 |
Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no |
203 |
specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is |
204 |
caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether |
205 |
and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a |
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compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and |
207 |
please report if that helped. |
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|
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Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding? |
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Unicode does not seem to work? |
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If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character |
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but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program |
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output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale |
214 |
settings. |
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|
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Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the |
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programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the |
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login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the |
219 |
locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this |
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is not going to work. |
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|
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The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will |
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likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in |
224 |
your .profile. |
225 |
|
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printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" |
227 |
|
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If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification |
229 |
not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command |
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which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale |
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settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). |
232 |
If it displays something like: |
233 |
|
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locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ... |
235 |
|
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Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system. |
237 |
|
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If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly |
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then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs |
240 |
just don't support locales :( |
241 |
|
242 |
Why do some characters look so much different than others? |
243 |
How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts? |
244 |
Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine. |
245 |
Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of |
246 |
your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you |
247 |
want to display. |
248 |
|
249 |
rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font. |
250 |
Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks |
251 |
bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that |
252 |
don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the |
253 |
artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it |
254 |
has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain |
255 |
indeed look correct. |
256 |
|
257 |
In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font |
258 |
list, e.g.: |
259 |
|
260 |
rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3... |
261 |
|
262 |
When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base |
263 |
font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to |
264 |
the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed |
265 |
up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the |
266 |
X-server. |
267 |
|
268 |
The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the |
269 |
base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell |
270 |
size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work. |
271 |
|
272 |
Why do some chinese characters look so different than others? |
273 |
This is because there is a difference between script and language -- |
274 |
rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output |
275 |
is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode |
276 |
first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese |
277 |
font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. |
278 |
Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, |
279 |
so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will |
280 |
look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will |
281 |
still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in |
282 |
the japanese font. |
283 |
|
284 |
The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your |
285 |
font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font |
286 |
list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a |
287 |
japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font |
288 |
first. |
289 |
|
290 |
In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at |
291 |
runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using |
292 |
different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no |
293 |
interface for this has been designed yet). |
294 |
|
295 |
Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see |
296 |
"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document). |
297 |
|
298 |
Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings? |
299 |
Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that |
300 |
character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for |
301 |
terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. |
302 |
Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are |
303 |
just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used |
304 |
that redraws adjacent characters. |
305 |
|
306 |
All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes, |
307 |
however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed |
308 |
bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the |
309 |
correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which |
310 |
unfortunately is wrong in these cases). |
311 |
|
312 |
It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft, |
313 |
freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you |
314 |
might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If |
315 |
that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font. |
316 |
|
317 |
All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their |
318 |
bounding box data is correct. |
319 |
|
320 |
On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide. |
321 |
Seems to be a known bug, read |
322 |
<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the |
323 |
following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working: |
324 |
|
325 |
#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x) |
326 |
|
327 |
My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working. |
328 |
The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not |
329 |
set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported |
330 |
by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and |
331 |
your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose |
332 |
keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual), |
333 |
then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method. |
334 |
|
335 |
In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more |
336 |
than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None. |
337 |
|
338 |
I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO |
339 |
14755 |
340 |
Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on |
341 |
international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your |
342 |
advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for |
343 |
other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default |
344 |
telnet escape character and so on. |
345 |
|
346 |
How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much? |
347 |
First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal |
348 |
settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these |
349 |
effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and |
350 |
bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate |
351 |
the effect: |
352 |
|
353 |
URxvt.colorBD: white |
354 |
URxvt.colorIT: green |
355 |
|
356 |
Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how |
357 |
can I fix that? |
358 |
For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very |
359 |
weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than |
360 |
the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, |
361 |
of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours |
362 |
without very good reasons. |
363 |
|
364 |
In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo |
365 |
definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which |
366 |
will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode |
367 |
features. |
368 |
|
369 |
I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all. |
370 |
Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined |
371 |
in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements |
372 |
it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" |
373 |
requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode. |
374 |
|
375 |
As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl |
376 |
nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal |
377 |
representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with |
378 |
respect to standards. |
379 |
|
380 |
However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" |
381 |
and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t. |
382 |
|
383 |
"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language |
384 |
apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized) |
385 |
representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between |
386 |
wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other |
387 |
encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and |
388 |
every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into |
389 |
anything except the current locale encoding. |
390 |
|
391 |
Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this |
392 |
by carrying their own replacement functions for character set |
393 |
handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or |
394 |
doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the |
395 |
OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal |
396 |
emulator). |
397 |
|
398 |
The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in |
399 |
the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app |
400 |
to carry complete replacements for them :) |
401 |
|
402 |
I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc. |
403 |
Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst |
404 |
problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem. |
405 |
|
406 |
How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin? |
407 |
rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using |
408 |
the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no |
409 |
longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a |
410 |
single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or |
411 |
"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as |
412 |
the old libW11 emulation. |
413 |
|
414 |
At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any |
415 |
multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are |
416 |
likely limited to 8-bit encodings. |
417 |
|
418 |
How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use? |
419 |
Is there an option to switch encodings? |
420 |
Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, |
421 |
and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't |
422 |
even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to |
423 |
terminal I/O. |
424 |
|
425 |
The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for |
426 |
selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating |
427 |
this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties |
428 |
such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*. |
429 |
Applications not using that info will have problems (for example, |
430 |
"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own, |
431 |
locale-independent table under all locales). |
432 |
|
433 |
Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. |
434 |
All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree |
435 |
in the interpretation of characters. |
436 |
|
437 |
Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, |
438 |
nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like. |
439 |
|
440 |
On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable |
441 |
contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an |
442 |
already-installed locale. Common names for locales are |
443 |
"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. |
444 |
"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german") |
445 |
are also common. |
446 |
|
447 |
Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the |
448 |
encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e. |
449 |
"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to |
450 |
rxvt-unicode. |
451 |
|
452 |
If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you |
453 |
start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category. |
454 |
|
455 |
Can I switch locales at runtime? |
456 |
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets |
457 |
rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE". |
458 |
|
459 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS |
460 |
|
461 |
See also the previous answer. |
462 |
|
463 |
Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in |
464 |
one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it |
465 |
(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which |
466 |
first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later: |
467 |
|
468 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS |
469 |
xjdic -js |
470 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8 |
471 |
|
472 |
You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine, |
473 |
except for some locales where character width differs between |
474 |
program- and rxvt-unicode-locales. |
475 |
|
476 |
Can I switch the fonts at runtime? |
477 |
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has |
478 |
the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect |
479 |
immediately: |
480 |
|
481 |
printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic" |
482 |
|
483 |
This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer |
484 |
a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, |
485 |
where japanese fonts would only be in your way. |
486 |
|
487 |
You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching. |
488 |
|
489 |
Why do italic characters look as if clipped? |
490 |
Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For |
491 |
example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera |
492 |
Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might |
493 |
be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this: |
494 |
|
495 |
URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true |
496 |
URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true |
497 |
|
498 |
My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do? |
499 |
You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest |
500 |
of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale": |
501 |
|
502 |
URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP |
503 |
|
504 |
Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and |
505 |
still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not |
506 |
be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then, |
507 |
as your input method limits you. |
508 |
|
509 |
Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits. |
510 |
Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by |
511 |
design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory |
512 |
leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering |
513 |
at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally |
514 |
succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, |
515 |
however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides |
516 |
cooperate. |
517 |
|
518 |
So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers. |
519 |
|
520 |
Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that? |
521 |
Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for |
522 |
something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure |
523 |
out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a |
524 |
resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no |
525 |
Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find |
526 |
a font for your characters. |
527 |
|
528 |
Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger |
529 |
scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will |
530 |
use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to |
531 |
almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will |
532 |
then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" |
533 |
it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell. |
534 |
|
535 |
Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? |
536 |
Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, |
537 |
as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to |
538 |
disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves |
539 |
lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably. |
540 |
|
541 |
Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong? |
542 |
Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to |
543 |
fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core |
544 |
fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It |
545 |
has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author |
546 |
thinks they look best that way. |
547 |
|
548 |
If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually. |
549 |
|
550 |
Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works. |
551 |
Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing |
552 |
some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. |
553 |
I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise |
554 |
specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt |
555 |
or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7) |
556 |
|
557 |
What's with this bold/blink stuff? |
558 |
If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using |
559 |
the standard foreground colour. |
560 |
|
561 |
For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the |
562 |
text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard |
563 |
colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be |
564 |
ignored. |
565 |
|
566 |
On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set |
567 |
high-intensity foreground/background colors. |
568 |
|
569 |
color0-7 are the low-intensity colors. |
570 |
|
571 |
color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors. |
572 |
|
573 |
I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them? |
574 |
You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults |
575 |
resources (or as long-options). |
576 |
|
577 |
Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, |
578 |
including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow: |
579 |
|
580 |
URxvt.color0: #000000 |
581 |
URxvt.color1: #A80000 |
582 |
URxvt.color2: #00A800 |
583 |
URxvt.color3: #A8A800 |
584 |
URxvt.color4: #0000A8 |
585 |
URxvt.color5: #A800A8 |
586 |
URxvt.color6: #00A8A8 |
587 |
URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8 |
588 |
|
589 |
URxvt.color8: #000054 |
590 |
URxvt.color9: #FF0054 |
591 |
URxvt.color10: #00FF54 |
592 |
URxvt.color11: #FFFF54 |
593 |
URxvt.color12: #0000FF |
594 |
URxvt.color13: #FF00FF |
595 |
URxvt.color14: #00FFFF |
596 |
URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF |
597 |
|
598 |
And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described |
599 |
(not by me) as "pretty girly". |
600 |
|
601 |
URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1 |
602 |
URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1 |
603 |
URxvt.background: #0e0e0e |
604 |
URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1 |
605 |
URxvt.color0: #000000 |
606 |
URxvt.color8: #8b8f93 |
607 |
URxvt.color1: #dc74d1 |
608 |
URxvt.color9: #dc74d1 |
609 |
URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7 |
610 |
URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7 |
611 |
URxvt.color3: #dfe37e |
612 |
URxvt.color11: #dfe37e |
613 |
URxvt.color5: #9e88f0 |
614 |
URxvt.color13: #9e88f0 |
615 |
URxvt.color6: #73f7ff |
616 |
URxvt.color14: #73f7ff |
617 |
URxvt.color7: #e1dddd |
618 |
URxvt.color15: #e1dddd |
619 |
|
620 |
How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way? |
621 |
Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the |
622 |
listening socket and then fork. |
623 |
|
624 |
What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour? |
625 |
Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the |
626 |
BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following |
627 |
question) there are two standard values that can be used for |
628 |
Backspace: "^H" and "^?". |
629 |
|
630 |
Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the |
631 |
debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only |
632 |
only correct choice :). |
633 |
|
634 |
Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the |
635 |
value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode |
636 |
wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote |
637 |
shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to |
638 |
CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as |
639 |
your stty setting). |
640 |
|
641 |
For starting a new rxvt-unicode: |
642 |
|
643 |
# use Backspace = ^H |
644 |
$ stty erase ^H |
645 |
$ rxvt |
646 |
|
647 |
# use Backspace = ^? |
648 |
$ stty erase ^? |
649 |
$ rxvt |
650 |
|
651 |
Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7). |
652 |
|
653 |
For an existing rxvt-unicode: |
654 |
|
655 |
# use Backspace = ^H |
656 |
$ stty erase ^H |
657 |
$ echo -n "^[[36h" |
658 |
|
659 |
# use Backspace = ^? |
660 |
$ stty erase ^? |
661 |
$ echo -n "^[[36l" |
662 |
|
663 |
This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, |
664 |
but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo |
665 |
value properly reflects that. |
666 |
|
667 |
The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace |
668 |
problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, |
669 |
the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the |
670 |
vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied |
671 |
termcap/terminfo. |
672 |
|
673 |
Some other Backspace problems: |
674 |
|
675 |
some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) |
676 |
expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for |
677 |
help. |
678 |
|
679 |
Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner. |
680 |
|
681 |
I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them? |
682 |
There are some compile-time selections available via configure. |
683 |
Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" |
684 |
option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings |
685 |
associated with keysyms. |
686 |
|
687 |
Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name |
688 |
URxvt" |
689 |
|
690 |
URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~ |
691 |
URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~ |
692 |
URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'> |
693 |
URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/> |
694 |
URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;> |
695 |
URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`> |
696 |
URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,> |
697 |
URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.> |
698 |
URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`> |
699 |
URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab> |
700 |
URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return> |
701 |
URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return> |
702 |
URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space> |
703 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up> |
704 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down> |
705 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left> |
706 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right> |
707 |
URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 > |
708 |
URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz > |
709 |
URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007 |
710 |
|
711 |
See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource. |
712 |
|
713 |
I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How |
714 |
do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the |
715 |
following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize. |
716 |
KP_Insert == Insert |
717 |
F22 == Print |
718 |
F27 == Home |
719 |
F29 == Prior |
720 |
F33 == End |
721 |
F35 == Next |
722 |
|
723 |
Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various |
724 |
possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap |
725 |
the keys as required for your particular machine. |
726 |
|
727 |
How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? |
728 |
I need this to decide about setting colors etc. |
729 |
rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you |
730 |
can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED, |
731 |
slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide |
732 |
whether or not to use color. |
733 |
|
734 |
How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable? |
735 |
If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled |
736 |
insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script |
737 |
snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of |
738 |
rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in |
739 |
these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to |
740 |
distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm. |
741 |
|
742 |
Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell |
743 |
script snippets: |
744 |
|
745 |
# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells: |
746 |
[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know |
747 |
if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then |
748 |
stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not |
749 |
echo -n '^[Z' |
750 |
read term_id |
751 |
stty icanon echo |
752 |
if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then |
753 |
echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string |
754 |
read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell |
755 |
fi |
756 |
fi |
757 |
|
758 |
How do I compile the manual pages for myself? |
759 |
You need to have a recent version of perl installed as |
760 |
/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html. |
761 |
Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc". |
762 |
|
763 |
My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human? |
764 |
Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", |
765 |
channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might |
766 |
be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not |
767 |
FAQs :). |
768 |
|