1 |
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS |
2 |
The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select |
3 |
single words? |
4 |
If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following |
5 |
setting: |
6 |
|
7 |
URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+) |
8 |
|
9 |
If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and |
10 |
more. |
11 |
|
12 |
To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this |
13 |
pattern: |
14 |
|
15 |
URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+) |
16 |
|
17 |
Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClik* combination also |
18 |
selects words like the old code. |
19 |
|
20 |
I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I |
21 |
change/disable it? |
22 |
You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the |
23 |
perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps |
24 |
rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory. |
25 |
|
26 |
If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to |
27 |
identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section |
28 |
PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the rxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to |
29 |
disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this |
30 |
perl-ext-common resource: |
31 |
|
32 |
URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup |
33 |
|
34 |
This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup |
35 |
extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example, |
36 |
scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other |
37 |
combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource: |
38 |
|
39 |
URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s |
40 |
|
41 |
The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how |
42 |
do I switch this off? |
43 |
During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor |
44 |
outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this? |
45 |
These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal |
46 |
circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the |
47 |
line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment, |
48 |
but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in |
49 |
some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly. |
50 |
|
51 |
You can permamently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline" |
52 |
extension: |
53 |
|
54 |
URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline |
55 |
|
56 |
Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources? |
57 |
Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X |
58 |
applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads |
59 |
resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will |
60 |
ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read |
61 |
$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display. |
62 |
|
63 |
If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources |
64 |
are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after |
65 |
every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources). |
66 |
|
67 |
Also consider the form resources have to use: |
68 |
|
69 |
URxvt.resource: value |
70 |
|
71 |
If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of |
72 |
specifying resources), make sure you understand wether and why it works. |
73 |
If unsure, use the form above. |
74 |
|
75 |
I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong? |
76 |
First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode, |
77 |
so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you |
78 |
may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a |
79 |
rite of passage: ... and you failed. |
80 |
|
81 |
Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option |
82 |
descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it! |
83 |
|
84 |
1. Use inheritPixmap: |
85 |
|
86 |
Esetroot wallpaper.jpg |
87 |
rxvt -ip -tint red -sh 40 |
88 |
|
89 |
That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting |
90 |
support, or you are unable to read. |
91 |
|
92 |
2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you |
93 |
to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever |
94 |
your picture with gimp: |
95 |
|
96 |
convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.xpm |
97 |
rxvt -pixmap background.xpm -pe automove-background |
98 |
|
99 |
That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack XPM and Perl support, or |
100 |
you are unable to read. |
101 |
|
102 |
3. Use an ARGB visual: |
103 |
|
104 |
rxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc |
105 |
|
106 |
This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that |
107 |
doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't |
108 |
there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the |
109 |
neccessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, |
110 |
but that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place. |
111 |
|
112 |
4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job: |
113 |
|
114 |
xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \ |
115 |
-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000 |
116 |
|
117 |
Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000 |
118 |
by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and |
119 |
your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces. |
120 |
|
121 |
Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat? |
122 |
I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra |
123 |
bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see |
124 |
that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always |
125 |
being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after |
126 |
startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit |
127 |
unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion, |
128 |
iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode. |
129 |
|
130 |
text data bss drs rss filename |
131 |
98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything |
132 |
188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything |
133 |
|
134 |
When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves xft |
135 |
and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my |
136 |
libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so. |
137 |
|
138 |
text data bss drs rss filename |
139 |
163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything |
140 |
1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything |
141 |
|
142 |
The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian |
143 |
encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else |
144 |
and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those |
145 |
encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++ |
146 |
compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of |
147 |
memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds |
148 |
a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even |
149 |
when not used. |
150 |
|
151 |
Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of |
152 |
one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use |
153 |
more memory. |
154 |
|
155 |
Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this |
156 |
still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like |
157 |
gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole |
158 |
(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half |
159 |
a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits |
160 |
out), it fares extremely well *g*. |
161 |
|
162 |
Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool? |
163 |
Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I |
164 |
had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a |
165 |
fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put |
166 |
even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++. |
167 |
|
168 |
My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in |
169 |
the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits |
170 |
are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and |
171 |
unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself. |
172 |
|
173 |
Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs |
174 |
in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to write programs in |
175 |
C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this is |
176 |
not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on my |
177 |
system with a minimal config: |
178 |
|
179 |
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) |
180 |
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000) |
181 |
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000) |
182 |
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) |
183 |
|
184 |
And here is rxvt-unicode: |
185 |
|
186 |
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) |
187 |
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000) |
188 |
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000) |
189 |
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000) |
190 |
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) |
191 |
|
192 |
No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically), |
193 |
except maybe libX11 :) |
194 |
|
195 |
Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode? |
196 |
Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a |
197 |
simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these |
198 |
should give you tabs: |
199 |
|
200 |
rxvt -pe tabbed |
201 |
|
202 |
URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed |
203 |
|
204 |
It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window |
205 |
managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow |
206 |
it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed |
207 |
or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt |
208 |
(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application. |
209 |
|
210 |
How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using? |
211 |
The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape |
212 |
sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When |
213 |
using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon. |
214 |
|
215 |
I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem... |
216 |
The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large |
217 |
patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but |
218 |
unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to |
219 |
the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine |
220 |
version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce |
221 |
the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific |
222 |
to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian |
223 |
Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug). |
224 |
|
225 |
For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and |
226 |
probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a |
227 |
bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users |
228 |
that might encounter the same issue. |
229 |
|
230 |
I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any |
231 |
recommendation? |
232 |
You should build one binary with the default options. configure now |
233 |
enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them |
234 |
runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling |
235 |
them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter |
236 |
should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely |
237 |
more in the future) depends on it. |
238 |
|
239 |
You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" resources |
240 |
system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful |
241 |
behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty |
242 |
"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the |
243 |
perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it. |
244 |
|
245 |
If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one |
246 |
with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with |
247 |
"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of |
248 |
encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used). |
249 |
|
250 |
I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe? |
251 |
It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly |
252 |
install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now. |
253 |
|
254 |
When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork |
255 |
into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some |
256 |
systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges |
257 |
immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep |
258 |
privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains |
259 |
things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers). |
260 |
|
261 |
This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very |
262 |
early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before |
263 |
main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should |
264 |
result in very little risk. |
265 |
|
266 |
When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? |
267 |
The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available |
268 |
as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often |
269 |
arises). |
270 |
|
271 |
The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this |
272 |
can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp): |
273 |
|
274 |
REMOTE=remotesystem.domain |
275 |
infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti" |
276 |
|
277 |
... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system, |
278 |
|
279 |
If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set |
280 |
"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of |
281 |
problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different |
282 |
colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice |
283 |
quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though. |
284 |
|
285 |
If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you |
286 |
can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a |
287 |
resource to set it: |
288 |
|
289 |
URxvt.termName: rxvt |
290 |
|
291 |
If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace |
292 |
the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one. |
293 |
|
294 |
"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry. |
295 |
Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by |
296 |
"enacs=\E[0@" and try again. |
297 |
|
298 |
"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt. |
299 |
I need a termcap file entry. |
300 |
One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating |
301 |
systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap |
302 |
library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry |
303 |
for "rxvt-unicode". |
304 |
|
305 |
You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many cases. |
306 |
You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp program |
307 |
like this: |
308 |
|
309 |
infocmp -C rxvt-unicode |
310 |
|
311 |
Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above: |
312 |
|
313 |
rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\ |
314 |
:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\ |
315 |
:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\ |
316 |
:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\ |
317 |
:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\ |
318 |
:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\ |
319 |
:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\ |
320 |
:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\ |
321 |
:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\ |
322 |
:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\ |
323 |
:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\ |
324 |
:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\ |
325 |
:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\ |
326 |
:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\ |
327 |
:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\ |
328 |
:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\ |
329 |
:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\ |
330 |
:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\ |
331 |
:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\ |
332 |
:vs=\E[?25h: |
333 |
|
334 |
Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output? |
335 |
The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to |
336 |
decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration |
337 |
file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file (among |
338 |
with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add: |
339 |
|
340 |
TERM rxvt-unicode |
341 |
|
342 |
to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add: |
343 |
|
344 |
alias ls='ls --color=auto' |
345 |
|
346 |
to your ".profile" or ".bashrc". |
347 |
|
348 |
Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode? |
349 |
Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic? |
350 |
Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly? |
351 |
Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged |
352 |
distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by |
353 |
setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features. |
354 |
Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux) |
355 |
furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so |
356 |
you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in |
357 |
to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do |
358 |
this). |
359 |
|
360 |
My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output? |
361 |
Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no |
362 |
specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is |
363 |
caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether and |
364 |
how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a |
365 |
compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please |
366 |
report if that helped. |
367 |
|
368 |
Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding? |
369 |
Unicode does not seem to work? |
370 |
If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but |
371 |
getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output |
372 |
is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings. |
373 |
|
374 |
Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the |
375 |
programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the |
376 |
login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the locale |
377 |
to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this is not |
378 |
going to work. |
379 |
|
380 |
The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely |
381 |
run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your |
382 |
.profile. |
383 |
|
384 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" |
385 |
|
386 |
If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not |
387 |
supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which |
388 |
displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as |
389 |
it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays |
390 |
something like: |
391 |
|
392 |
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ... |
393 |
|
394 |
Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system. |
395 |
|
396 |
If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then |
397 |
you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't |
398 |
support locales :( |
399 |
|
400 |
Why do some characters look so much different than others? |
401 |
How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts? |
402 |
Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine. |
403 |
Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your |
404 |
system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to |
405 |
display. |
406 |
|
407 |
rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font. |
408 |
Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks |
409 |
bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't |
410 |
resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial |
411 |
intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe |
412 |
the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct. |
413 |
|
414 |
In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list, |
415 |
e.g.: |
416 |
|
417 |
rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3... |
418 |
|
419 |
When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font. |
420 |
If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next |
421 |
font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this |
422 |
search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server. |
423 |
|
424 |
The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the |
425 |
base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size, |
426 |
which must be the same due to the way terminals work. |
427 |
|
428 |
Why do some chinese characters look so different than others? |
429 |
This is because there is a difference between script and language -- |
430 |
rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as |
431 |
it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a |
432 |
japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display. |
433 |
Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese |
434 |
characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first |
435 |
non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese |
436 |
font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font |
437 |
for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font. |
438 |
|
439 |
The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font |
440 |
list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a |
441 |
preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font |
442 |
first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first. |
443 |
|
444 |
In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at |
445 |
runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different |
446 |
fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this |
447 |
has been designed yet). |
448 |
|
449 |
Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can |
450 |
I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document). |
451 |
|
452 |
Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings? |
453 |
Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that |
454 |
character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal |
455 |
use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode |
456 |
will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too |
457 |
wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent |
458 |
characters. |
459 |
|
460 |
All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes, |
461 |
however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed |
462 |
bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct |
463 |
way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is |
464 |
wrong in these cases). |
465 |
|
466 |
It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft, freetype, |
467 |
or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try |
468 |
using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't |
469 |
work, you might be forced to use a different font. |
470 |
|
471 |
All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their |
472 |
bounding box data is correct. |
473 |
|
474 |
On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide. |
475 |
Seems to be a known bug, read |
476 |
<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the |
477 |
following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working: |
478 |
|
479 |
#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x) |
480 |
|
481 |
My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working. |
482 |
The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set |
483 |
correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your |
484 |
input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input |
485 |
method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not |
486 |
support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode |
487 |
will continue without an input method. |
488 |
|
489 |
In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than |
490 |
one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None. |
491 |
|
492 |
I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755 |
493 |
Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on |
494 |
international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your |
495 |
advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for |
496 |
other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet |
497 |
escape character and so on. |
498 |
|
499 |
How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much? |
500 |
First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings |
501 |
("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then |
502 |
make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise |
503 |
rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect: |
504 |
|
505 |
URxvt.colorBD: white |
506 |
URxvt.colorIT: green |
507 |
|
508 |
Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that? |
509 |
For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird |
510 |
colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the |
511 |
standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of |
512 |
course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very |
513 |
good reasons. |
514 |
|
515 |
In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo |
516 |
definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will |
517 |
fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features. |
518 |
|
519 |
I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all. |
520 |
Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in |
521 |
your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it, |
522 |
wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that |
523 |
wchar_t is represented as unicode. |
524 |
|
525 |
As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl nor |
526 |
does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal representation of |
527 |
wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards. |
528 |
|
529 |
However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and |
530 |
"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t. |
531 |
|
532 |
"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps |
533 |
in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized) |
534 |
representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t |
535 |
(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without |
536 |
implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There |
537 |
simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current |
538 |
locale encoding. |
539 |
|
540 |
Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by |
541 |
carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with |
542 |
them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple |
543 |
conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements |
544 |
encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator). |
545 |
|
546 |
The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the |
547 |
system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry |
548 |
complete replacements for them :) |
549 |
|
550 |
I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc. |
551 |
Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst |
552 |
problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem. |
553 |
|
554 |
How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin? |
555 |
rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the |
556 |
X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer |
557 |
supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single |
558 |
font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or |
559 |
"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the |
560 |
old libW11 emulation. |
561 |
|
562 |
At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any |
563 |
multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are |
564 |
likely limited to 8-bit encodings. |
565 |
|
566 |
How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use? |
567 |
Is there an option to switch encodings? |
568 |
Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no |
569 |
specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know |
570 |
about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O. |
571 |
|
572 |
The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for |
573 |
selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating |
574 |
this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties |
575 |
such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*. |
576 |
Applications not using that info will have problems (for example, |
577 |
"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own, |
578 |
locale-independent table under all locales). |
579 |
|
580 |
Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All |
581 |
programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the |
582 |
interpretation of characters. |
583 |
|
584 |
Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor |
585 |
is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like. |
586 |
|
587 |
On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable |
588 |
contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed |
589 |
locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", |
590 |
"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. |
591 |
"de" or "german") are also common. |
592 |
|
593 |
Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the |
594 |
encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e. |
595 |
"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode. |
596 |
|
597 |
If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start |
598 |
rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category. |
599 |
|
600 |
Can I switch locales at runtime? |
601 |
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets |
602 |
rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE". |
603 |
|
604 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS |
605 |
|
606 |
See also the previous answer. |
607 |
|
608 |
Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one |
609 |
locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g. |
610 |
UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first |
611 |
switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later: |
612 |
|
613 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS |
614 |
xjdic -js |
615 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8 |
616 |
|
617 |
You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine, |
618 |
except for some locales where character width differs between program- |
619 |
and rxvt-unicode-locales. |
620 |
|
621 |
Can I switch the fonts at runtime? |
622 |
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the |
623 |
same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately: |
624 |
|
625 |
printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic" |
626 |
|
627 |
This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a |
628 |
japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where |
629 |
japanese fonts would only be in your way. |
630 |
|
631 |
You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching. |
632 |
|
633 |
Why do italic characters look as if clipped? |
634 |
Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For |
635 |
example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans |
636 |
Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might be to |
637 |
enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this: |
638 |
|
639 |
URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true |
640 |
URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true |
641 |
|
642 |
My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do? |
643 |
You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of |
644 |
the terminal, using the resource "imlocale": |
645 |
|
646 |
URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP |
647 |
|
648 |
Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still |
649 |
use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not be able |
650 |
to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then, as your input |
651 |
method limits you. |
652 |
|
653 |
Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits. |
654 |
Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by |
655 |
design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory |
656 |
leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at |
657 |
exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while |
658 |
SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes |
659 |
cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate. |
660 |
|
661 |
So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers. |
662 |
|
663 |
Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that? |
664 |
Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something |
665 |
you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings |
666 |
that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by |
667 |
design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be |
668 |
loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your |
669 |
characters. |
670 |
|
671 |
Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger |
672 |
scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6 |
673 |
bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a |
674 |
kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if |
675 |
full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets |
676 |
worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell. |
677 |
|
678 |
Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? |
679 |
Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it |
680 |
is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable |
681 |
antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of |
682 |
memory and also speeds up rendering considerably. |
683 |
|
684 |
Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong? |
685 |
Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to |
686 |
fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core |
687 |
fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has |
688 |
antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they |
689 |
look best that way. |
690 |
|
691 |
If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually. |
692 |
|
693 |
Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works. |
694 |
Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some |
695 |
editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. I've heard |
696 |
that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise specified. A quick |
697 |
check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are |
698 |
depressed. |
699 |
|
700 |
What's with this bold/blink stuff? |
701 |
If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the |
702 |
standard foreground colour. |
703 |
|
704 |
For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text |
705 |
blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard colours. |
706 |
Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be ignored. |
707 |
|
708 |
On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity |
709 |
foreground/background colors. |
710 |
|
711 |
color0-7 are the low-intensity colors. |
712 |
|
713 |
color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors. |
714 |
|
715 |
I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them? |
716 |
You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults |
717 |
resources (or as long-options). |
718 |
|
719 |
Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including |
720 |
the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow: |
721 |
|
722 |
URxvt.color0: #000000 |
723 |
URxvt.color1: #A80000 |
724 |
URxvt.color2: #00A800 |
725 |
URxvt.color3: #A8A800 |
726 |
URxvt.color4: #0000A8 |
727 |
URxvt.color5: #A800A8 |
728 |
URxvt.color6: #00A8A8 |
729 |
URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8 |
730 |
|
731 |
URxvt.color8: #000054 |
732 |
URxvt.color9: #FF0054 |
733 |
URxvt.color10: #00FF54 |
734 |
URxvt.color11: #FFFF54 |
735 |
URxvt.color12: #0000FF |
736 |
URxvt.color13: #FF00FF |
737 |
URxvt.color14: #00FFFF |
738 |
URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF |
739 |
|
740 |
And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described (not by |
741 |
me) as "pretty girly". |
742 |
|
743 |
URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1 |
744 |
URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1 |
745 |
URxvt.background: #0e0e0e |
746 |
URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1 |
747 |
URxvt.color0: #000000 |
748 |
URxvt.color8: #8b8f93 |
749 |
URxvt.color1: #dc74d1 |
750 |
URxvt.color9: #dc74d1 |
751 |
URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7 |
752 |
URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7 |
753 |
URxvt.color3: #dfe37e |
754 |
URxvt.color11: #dfe37e |
755 |
URxvt.color5: #9e88f0 |
756 |
URxvt.color13: #9e88f0 |
757 |
URxvt.color6: #73f7ff |
758 |
URxvt.color14: #73f7ff |
759 |
URxvt.color7: #e1dddd |
760 |
URxvt.color15: #e1dddd |
761 |
|
762 |
How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way? |
763 |
Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the |
764 |
listening socket and then fork. |
765 |
|
766 |
What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour? |
767 |
Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the BackSpace |
768 |
keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are |
769 |
two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?". |
770 |
|
771 |
Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the |
772 |
debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only only |
773 |
correct choice :). |
774 |
|
775 |
Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the |
776 |
value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode |
777 |
wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell), |
778 |
then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in |
779 |
<termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as your stty |
780 |
setting). |
781 |
|
782 |
For starting a new rxvt-unicode: |
783 |
|
784 |
# use Backspace = ^H |
785 |
$ stty erase ^H |
786 |
$ rxvt |
787 |
|
788 |
# use Backspace = ^? |
789 |
$ stty erase ^? |
790 |
$ rxvt |
791 |
|
792 |
Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l". |
793 |
|
794 |
For an existing rxvt-unicode: |
795 |
|
796 |
# use Backspace = ^H |
797 |
$ stty erase ^H |
798 |
$ echo -n "^[[36h" |
799 |
|
800 |
# use Backspace = ^? |
801 |
$ stty erase ^? |
802 |
$ echo -n "^[[36l" |
803 |
|
804 |
This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but |
805 |
if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value |
806 |
properly reflects that. |
807 |
|
808 |
The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace |
809 |
problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the |
810 |
Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for |
811 |
Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo. |
812 |
|
813 |
Some other Backspace problems: |
814 |
|
815 |
some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect |
816 |
Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help. |
817 |
|
818 |
Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner. |
819 |
|
820 |
I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them? |
821 |
There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless |
822 |
you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can |
823 |
use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with |
824 |
keysyms. |
825 |
|
826 |
Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name URxvt" |
827 |
|
828 |
URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~ |
829 |
URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~ |
830 |
URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'> |
831 |
URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/> |
832 |
URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;> |
833 |
URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`> |
834 |
URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,> |
835 |
URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.> |
836 |
URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`> |
837 |
URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab> |
838 |
URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return> |
839 |
URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return> |
840 |
URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space> |
841 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up> |
842 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down> |
843 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left> |
844 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right> |
845 |
URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 > |
846 |
URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz > |
847 |
URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007 |
848 |
|
849 |
See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource. |
850 |
|
851 |
I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. |
852 |
How do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 |
853 |
has the following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize. |
854 |
KP_Insert == Insert |
855 |
F22 == Print |
856 |
F27 == Home |
857 |
F29 == Prior |
858 |
F33 == End |
859 |
F35 == Next |
860 |
|
861 |
Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various |
862 |
possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the |
863 |
keys as required for your particular machine. |
864 |
|
865 |
How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? |
866 |
I need this to decide about setting colors etc. |
867 |
rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you can |
868 |
check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED, slrn, |
869 |
Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide whether |
870 |
or not to use color. |
871 |
|
872 |
How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable? |
873 |
If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled |
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insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script |
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snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode |
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wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets) |
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then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from |
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a regular xterm. |
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|
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Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script |
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snippets: |
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|
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# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells: |
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[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know |
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if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then |
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stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not |
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echo -n '^[Z' |
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read term_id |
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stty icanon echo |
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if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then |
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echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string |
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read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell |
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fi |
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fi |
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|
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How do I compile the manual pages for myself? |
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You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl, |
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one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html. Then go to the doc |
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subdirectory and enter "make alldoc". |
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|
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My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human? |
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Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel |
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"#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be |
904 |
interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :). |
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