1 |
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS |
2 |
The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words? |
3 |
If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following |
4 |
setting: |
5 |
|
6 |
URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+) |
7 |
|
8 |
If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and |
9 |
more. |
10 |
|
11 |
To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this |
12 |
pattern: |
13 |
|
14 |
URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+) |
15 |
|
16 |
Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClik* combination also |
17 |
selects words like the old code. |
18 |
|
19 |
I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it? |
20 |
You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the |
21 |
perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps |
22 |
rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory. |
23 |
|
24 |
If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to |
25 |
identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section |
26 |
PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the rxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to |
27 |
disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this |
28 |
perl-ext-common resource: |
29 |
|
30 |
URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup |
31 |
|
32 |
This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup |
33 |
extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example, |
34 |
scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other |
35 |
combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource: |
36 |
|
37 |
URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s |
38 |
|
39 |
The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off? |
40 |
See next entry. |
41 |
|
42 |
During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this? |
43 |
These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal |
44 |
circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the |
45 |
line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment, |
46 |
but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in |
47 |
some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly. |
48 |
|
49 |
You can permamently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline" |
50 |
extension: |
51 |
|
52 |
URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline |
53 |
|
54 |
Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources? |
55 |
Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X |
56 |
applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads |
57 |
resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will |
58 |
ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read |
59 |
$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display. |
60 |
|
61 |
If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources |
62 |
are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after |
63 |
every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources). |
64 |
|
65 |
Also consider the form resources have to use: |
66 |
|
67 |
URxvt.resource: value |
68 |
|
69 |
If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of |
70 |
specifying resources), make sure you understand wether and why it works. |
71 |
If unsure, use the form above. |
72 |
|
73 |
I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong? |
74 |
First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode, |
75 |
so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you |
76 |
may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a |
77 |
rite of passage: ... and you failed. |
78 |
|
79 |
Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option |
80 |
descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it! |
81 |
|
82 |
1. Use inheritPixmap: |
83 |
|
84 |
Esetroot wallpaper.jpg |
85 |
rxvt -ip -tint red -sh 40 |
86 |
|
87 |
That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting |
88 |
support, or you are unable to read. |
89 |
|
90 |
2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you |
91 |
to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever |
92 |
your picture with gimp: |
93 |
|
94 |
convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.xpm |
95 |
rxvt -pixmap background.xpm -pe automove-background |
96 |
|
97 |
That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack XPM and Perl support, or |
98 |
you are unable to read. |
99 |
|
100 |
3. Use an ARGB visual: |
101 |
|
102 |
rxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc |
103 |
|
104 |
This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that |
105 |
doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't |
106 |
there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the |
107 |
neccessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, |
108 |
but that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place. |
109 |
|
110 |
4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job: |
111 |
|
112 |
xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \ |
113 |
-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000 |
114 |
|
115 |
Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000 |
116 |
by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and |
117 |
your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces. |
118 |
|
119 |
Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat? |
120 |
I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra |
121 |
bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see |
122 |
that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always |
123 |
being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after |
124 |
startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit |
125 |
unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion, |
126 |
iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode. |
127 |
|
128 |
text data bss drs rss filename |
129 |
98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything |
130 |
188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything |
131 |
|
132 |
When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves xft |
133 |
and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my |
134 |
libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so. |
135 |
|
136 |
text data bss drs rss filename |
137 |
163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything |
138 |
1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything |
139 |
|
140 |
The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian |
141 |
encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else |
142 |
and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those |
143 |
encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++ |
144 |
compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of |
145 |
memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds |
146 |
a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even |
147 |
when not used. |
148 |
|
149 |
Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of |
150 |
one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use |
151 |
more memory. |
152 |
|
153 |
Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this |
154 |
still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like |
155 |
gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole |
156 |
(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half |
157 |
a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits |
158 |
out), it fares extremely well *g*. |
159 |
|
160 |
Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool? |
161 |
Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I |
162 |
had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a |
163 |
fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put |
164 |
even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++. |
165 |
|
166 |
My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in |
167 |
the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits |
168 |
are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and |
169 |
unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself. |
170 |
|
171 |
Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs |
172 |
in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to write programs in |
173 |
C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this is |
174 |
not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on my |
175 |
system with a minimal config: |
176 |
|
177 |
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) |
178 |
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000) |
179 |
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000) |
180 |
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) |
181 |
|
182 |
And here is rxvt-unicode: |
183 |
|
184 |
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) |
185 |
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000) |
186 |
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000) |
187 |
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000) |
188 |
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) |
189 |
|
190 |
No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically), |
191 |
except maybe libX11 :) |
192 |
|
193 |
Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode? |
194 |
Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a |
195 |
simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these |
196 |
should give you tabs: |
197 |
|
198 |
rxvt -pe tabbed |
199 |
|
200 |
URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed |
201 |
|
202 |
It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window |
203 |
managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow |
204 |
it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed |
205 |
or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt |
206 |
(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application. |
207 |
|
208 |
How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using? |
209 |
The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape |
210 |
sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When |
211 |
using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon. |
212 |
|
213 |
I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem... |
214 |
The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large |
215 |
patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but |
216 |
unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to |
217 |
the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine |
218 |
version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce |
219 |
the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific |
220 |
to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian |
221 |
Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug). |
222 |
|
223 |
For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and |
224 |
probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a |
225 |
bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users |
226 |
that might encounter the same issue. |
227 |
|
228 |
I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation? |
229 |
You should build one binary with the default options. configure now |
230 |
enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them |
231 |
runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling |
232 |
them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter |
233 |
should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely |
234 |
more in the future) depends on it. |
235 |
|
236 |
You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" resources |
237 |
system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful |
238 |
behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty |
239 |
"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the |
240 |
perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it. |
241 |
|
242 |
If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one |
243 |
with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with |
244 |
"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of |
245 |
encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used). |
246 |
|
247 |
I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe? |
248 |
It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly |
249 |
install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now. |
250 |
|
251 |
When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork |
252 |
into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some |
253 |
systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges |
254 |
immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep |
255 |
privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains |
256 |
things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers). |
257 |
|
258 |
This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very |
259 |
early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before |
260 |
main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should |
261 |
result in very little risk. |
262 |
|
263 |
When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? |
264 |
The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available |
265 |
as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often |
266 |
arises). |
267 |
|
268 |
The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this |
269 |
can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp): |
270 |
|
271 |
REMOTE=remotesystem.domain |
272 |
infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti" |
273 |
|
274 |
... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system, |
275 |
|
276 |
If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set |
277 |
"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of |
278 |
problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different |
279 |
colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice |
280 |
quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though. |
281 |
|
282 |
If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you |
283 |
can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a |
284 |
resource to set it: |
285 |
|
286 |
URxvt.termName: rxvt |
287 |
|
288 |
If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace |
289 |
the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one. |
290 |
|
291 |
"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry. |
292 |
Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by |
293 |
"enacs=\E[0@" and try again. |
294 |
|
295 |
"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt. |
296 |
See next entry. |
297 |
|
298 |
I need a termcap file entry. |
299 |
One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating |
300 |
systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap |
301 |
library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry |
302 |
for "rxvt-unicode". |
303 |
|
304 |
You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many cases. |
305 |
You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp program |
306 |
like this: |
307 |
|
308 |
infocmp -C rxvt-unicode |
309 |
|
310 |
Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above: |
311 |
|
312 |
rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\ |
313 |
:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\ |
314 |
:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\ |
315 |
:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\ |
316 |
:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\ |
317 |
:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\ |
318 |
:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\ |
319 |
:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\ |
320 |
:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\ |
321 |
:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\ |
322 |
:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\ |
323 |
:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\ |
324 |
:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\ |
325 |
:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\ |
326 |
:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\ |
327 |
:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\ |
328 |
:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\ |
329 |
:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\ |
330 |
:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\ |
331 |
:vs=\E[?25h: |
332 |
|
333 |
Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output? |
334 |
The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to |
335 |
decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration |
336 |
file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file (among |
337 |
with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add: |
338 |
|
339 |
TERM rxvt-unicode |
340 |
|
341 |
to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add: |
342 |
|
343 |
alias ls='ls --color=auto' |
344 |
|
345 |
to your ".profile" or ".bashrc". |
346 |
|
347 |
Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode? |
348 |
See next entry. |
349 |
|
350 |
Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic? |
351 |
See next entry. |
352 |
|
353 |
Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly? |
354 |
Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged |
355 |
distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by |
356 |
setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features. |
357 |
Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux) |
358 |
furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so |
359 |
you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in |
360 |
to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do |
361 |
this). |
362 |
|
363 |
My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output? |
364 |
Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no |
365 |
specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is |
366 |
caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether and |
367 |
how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a |
368 |
compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please |
369 |
report if that helped. |
370 |
|
371 |
Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding? |
372 |
See next entry. |
373 |
|
374 |
Unicode does not seem to work? |
375 |
If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but |
376 |
getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output |
377 |
is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings. |
378 |
|
379 |
Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the |
380 |
programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the |
381 |
login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the locale |
382 |
to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this is not |
383 |
going to work. |
384 |
|
385 |
The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely |
386 |
run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your |
387 |
.profile. |
388 |
|
389 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" |
390 |
|
391 |
If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not |
392 |
supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which |
393 |
displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as |
394 |
it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays |
395 |
something like: |
396 |
|
397 |
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ... |
398 |
|
399 |
Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system. |
400 |
|
401 |
If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then |
402 |
you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't |
403 |
support locales :( |
404 |
|
405 |
Why do some characters look so much different than others? |
406 |
See next entry. |
407 |
|
408 |
How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts? |
409 |
Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine. |
410 |
Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your |
411 |
system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to |
412 |
display. |
413 |
|
414 |
rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font. |
415 |
Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks |
416 |
bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't |
417 |
resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial |
418 |
intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe |
419 |
the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct. |
420 |
|
421 |
In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list, |
422 |
e.g.: |
423 |
|
424 |
rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3... |
425 |
|
426 |
When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font. |
427 |
If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next |
428 |
font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this |
429 |
search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server. |
430 |
|
431 |
The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the |
432 |
base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size, |
433 |
which must be the same due to the way terminals work. |
434 |
|
435 |
Why do some chinese characters look so different than others? |
436 |
This is because there is a difference between script and language -- |
437 |
rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as |
438 |
it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a |
439 |
japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display. |
440 |
Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese |
441 |
characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first |
442 |
non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese |
443 |
font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font |
444 |
for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font. |
445 |
|
446 |
The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font |
447 |
list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a |
448 |
preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font |
449 |
first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first. |
450 |
|
451 |
In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at |
452 |
runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different |
453 |
fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this |
454 |
has been designed yet). |
455 |
|
456 |
Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can |
457 |
I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document). |
458 |
|
459 |
Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings? |
460 |
Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that |
461 |
character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal |
462 |
use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode |
463 |
will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too |
464 |
wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent |
465 |
characters. |
466 |
|
467 |
All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes, |
468 |
however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed |
469 |
bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct |
470 |
way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is |
471 |
wrong in these cases). |
472 |
|
473 |
It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft, freetype, |
474 |
or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try |
475 |
using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't |
476 |
work, you might be forced to use a different font. |
477 |
|
478 |
All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their |
479 |
bounding box data is correct. |
480 |
|
481 |
On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide. |
482 |
Seems to be a known bug, read |
483 |
<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the |
484 |
following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working: |
485 |
|
486 |
#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x) |
487 |
|
488 |
My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working. |
489 |
The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set |
490 |
correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your |
491 |
input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input |
492 |
method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not |
493 |
support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode |
494 |
will continue without an input method. |
495 |
|
496 |
In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than |
497 |
one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None. |
498 |
|
499 |
I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755 |
500 |
Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on |
501 |
international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your |
502 |
advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for |
503 |
other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet |
504 |
escape character and so on. |
505 |
|
506 |
How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much? |
507 |
First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings |
508 |
("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then |
509 |
make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise |
510 |
rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect: |
511 |
|
512 |
URxvt.colorBD: white |
513 |
URxvt.colorIT: green |
514 |
|
515 |
Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that? |
516 |
For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird |
517 |
colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the |
518 |
standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of |
519 |
course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very |
520 |
good reasons. |
521 |
|
522 |
In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo |
523 |
definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will |
524 |
fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features. |
525 |
|
526 |
I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all. |
527 |
Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in |
528 |
your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it, |
529 |
wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that |
530 |
wchar_t is represented as unicode. |
531 |
|
532 |
As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl nor |
533 |
does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal representation of |
534 |
wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards. |
535 |
|
536 |
However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and |
537 |
"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t. |
538 |
|
539 |
"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps |
540 |
in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized) |
541 |
representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t |
542 |
(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without |
543 |
implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There |
544 |
simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current |
545 |
locale encoding. |
546 |
|
547 |
Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by |
548 |
carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with |
549 |
them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple |
550 |
conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements |
551 |
encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator). |
552 |
|
553 |
The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the |
554 |
system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry |
555 |
complete replacements for them :) |
556 |
|
557 |
I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc. |
558 |
Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst |
559 |
problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem. |
560 |
|
561 |
How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin? |
562 |
rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the |
563 |
X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer |
564 |
supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single |
565 |
font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or |
566 |
"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the |
567 |
old libW11 emulation. |
568 |
|
569 |
At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any |
570 |
multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are |
571 |
likely limited to 8-bit encodings. |
572 |
|
573 |
How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use? |
574 |
See next entry. |
575 |
|
576 |
Is there an option to switch encodings? |
577 |
Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no |
578 |
specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know |
579 |
about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O. |
580 |
|
581 |
The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for |
582 |
selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating |
583 |
this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties |
584 |
such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*. |
585 |
Applications not using that info will have problems (for example, |
586 |
"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own, |
587 |
locale-independent table under all locales). |
588 |
|
589 |
Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All |
590 |
programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the |
591 |
interpretation of characters. |
592 |
|
593 |
Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor |
594 |
is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like. |
595 |
|
596 |
On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable |
597 |
contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed |
598 |
locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", |
599 |
"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. |
600 |
"de" or "german") are also common. |
601 |
|
602 |
Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the |
603 |
encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e. |
604 |
"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode. |
605 |
|
606 |
If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start |
607 |
rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category. |
608 |
|
609 |
Can I switch locales at runtime? |
610 |
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets |
611 |
rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE". |
612 |
|
613 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS |
614 |
|
615 |
See also the previous answer. |
616 |
|
617 |
Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one |
618 |
locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g. |
619 |
UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first |
620 |
switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later: |
621 |
|
622 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS |
623 |
xjdic -js |
624 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8 |
625 |
|
626 |
You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine, |
627 |
except for some locales where character width differs between program- |
628 |
and rxvt-unicode-locales. |
629 |
|
630 |
Can I switch the fonts at runtime? |
631 |
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the |
632 |
same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately: |
633 |
|
634 |
printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic" |
635 |
|
636 |
This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a |
637 |
japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where |
638 |
japanese fonts would only be in your way. |
639 |
|
640 |
You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching. |
641 |
|
642 |
Why do italic characters look as if clipped? |
643 |
Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For |
644 |
example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans |
645 |
Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might be to |
646 |
enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this: |
647 |
|
648 |
URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true |
649 |
URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true |
650 |
|
651 |
My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do? |
652 |
You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of |
653 |
the terminal, using the resource "imlocale": |
654 |
|
655 |
URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP |
656 |
|
657 |
Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still |
658 |
use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not be able |
659 |
to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then, as your input |
660 |
method limits you. |
661 |
|
662 |
Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits. |
663 |
Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by |
664 |
design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory |
665 |
leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at |
666 |
exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while |
667 |
SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes |
668 |
cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate. |
669 |
|
670 |
So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers. |
671 |
|
672 |
Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that? |
673 |
Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something |
674 |
you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings |
675 |
that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by |
676 |
design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be |
677 |
loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your |
678 |
characters. |
679 |
|
680 |
Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger |
681 |
scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6 |
682 |
bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a |
683 |
kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if |
684 |
full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets |
685 |
worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell. |
686 |
|
687 |
Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? |
688 |
Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it |
689 |
is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable |
690 |
antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of |
691 |
memory and also speeds up rendering considerably. |
692 |
|
693 |
Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong? |
694 |
Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to |
695 |
fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core |
696 |
fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has |
697 |
antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they |
698 |
look best that way. |
699 |
|
700 |
If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually. |
701 |
|
702 |
Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works. |
703 |
Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some |
704 |
editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. I've heard |
705 |
that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise specified. A quick |
706 |
check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are |
707 |
depressed. |
708 |
|
709 |
What's with this bold/blink stuff? |
710 |
If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the |
711 |
standard foreground colour. |
712 |
|
713 |
For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text |
714 |
blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard colours. |
715 |
Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be ignored. |
716 |
|
717 |
On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity |
718 |
foreground/background colors. |
719 |
|
720 |
color0-7 are the low-intensity colors. |
721 |
|
722 |
color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors. |
723 |
|
724 |
I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them? |
725 |
You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults |
726 |
resources (or as long-options). |
727 |
|
728 |
Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including |
729 |
the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow: |
730 |
|
731 |
URxvt.color0: #000000 |
732 |
URxvt.color1: #A80000 |
733 |
URxvt.color2: #00A800 |
734 |
URxvt.color3: #A8A800 |
735 |
URxvt.color4: #0000A8 |
736 |
URxvt.color5: #A800A8 |
737 |
URxvt.color6: #00A8A8 |
738 |
URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8 |
739 |
|
740 |
URxvt.color8: #000054 |
741 |
URxvt.color9: #FF0054 |
742 |
URxvt.color10: #00FF54 |
743 |
URxvt.color11: #FFFF54 |
744 |
URxvt.color12: #0000FF |
745 |
URxvt.color13: #FF00FF |
746 |
URxvt.color14: #00FFFF |
747 |
URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF |
748 |
|
749 |
And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described (not by |
750 |
me) as "pretty girly". |
751 |
|
752 |
URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1 |
753 |
URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1 |
754 |
URxvt.background: #0e0e0e |
755 |
URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1 |
756 |
URxvt.color0: #000000 |
757 |
URxvt.color8: #8b8f93 |
758 |
URxvt.color1: #dc74d1 |
759 |
URxvt.color9: #dc74d1 |
760 |
URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7 |
761 |
URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7 |
762 |
URxvt.color3: #dfe37e |
763 |
URxvt.color11: #dfe37e |
764 |
URxvt.color5: #9e88f0 |
765 |
URxvt.color13: #9e88f0 |
766 |
URxvt.color6: #73f7ff |
767 |
URxvt.color14: #73f7ff |
768 |
URxvt.color7: #e1dddd |
769 |
URxvt.color15: #e1dddd |
770 |
|
771 |
How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way? |
772 |
Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the |
773 |
listening socket and then fork. |
774 |
|
775 |
What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour? |
776 |
Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the BackSpace |
777 |
keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are |
778 |
two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?". |
779 |
|
780 |
Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the |
781 |
debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only only |
782 |
correct choice :). |
783 |
|
784 |
Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the |
785 |
value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode |
786 |
wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell), |
787 |
then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in |
788 |
<termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as your stty |
789 |
setting). |
790 |
|
791 |
For starting a new rxvt-unicode: |
792 |
|
793 |
# use Backspace = ^H |
794 |
$ stty erase ^H |
795 |
$ rxvt |
796 |
|
797 |
# use Backspace = ^? |
798 |
$ stty erase ^? |
799 |
$ rxvt |
800 |
|
801 |
Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l". |
802 |
|
803 |
For an existing rxvt-unicode: |
804 |
|
805 |
# use Backspace = ^H |
806 |
$ stty erase ^H |
807 |
$ echo -n "^[[36h" |
808 |
|
809 |
# use Backspace = ^? |
810 |
$ stty erase ^? |
811 |
$ echo -n "^[[36l" |
812 |
|
813 |
This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but |
814 |
if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value |
815 |
properly reflects that. |
816 |
|
817 |
The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace |
818 |
problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the |
819 |
Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for |
820 |
Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo. |
821 |
|
822 |
Some other Backspace problems: |
823 |
|
824 |
some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect |
825 |
Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help. |
826 |
|
827 |
Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner. |
828 |
|
829 |
I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them? |
830 |
There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless |
831 |
you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can |
832 |
use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with |
833 |
keysyms. |
834 |
|
835 |
Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name URxvt" |
836 |
|
837 |
URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~ |
838 |
URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~ |
839 |
URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'> |
840 |
URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/> |
841 |
URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;> |
842 |
URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`> |
843 |
URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,> |
844 |
URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.> |
845 |
URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`> |
846 |
URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab> |
847 |
URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return> |
848 |
URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return> |
849 |
URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space> |
850 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up> |
851 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down> |
852 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left> |
853 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right> |
854 |
URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 > |
855 |
URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz > |
856 |
URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007 |
857 |
|
858 |
See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource. |
859 |
|
860 |
I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize. |
861 |
KP_Insert == Insert |
862 |
F22 == Print |
863 |
F27 == Home |
864 |
F29 == Prior |
865 |
F33 == End |
866 |
F35 == Next |
867 |
|
868 |
Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various |
869 |
possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the |
870 |
keys as required for your particular machine. |
871 |
|
872 |
How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? I need this to decide about setting colors etc. |
873 |
rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you can |
874 |
check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED, slrn, |
875 |
Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide whether |
876 |
or not to use color. |
877 |
|
878 |
How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable? |
879 |
If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled |
880 |
insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script |
881 |
snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode |
882 |
wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets) |
883 |
then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from |
884 |
a regular xterm. |
885 |
|
886 |
Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script |
887 |
snippets: |
888 |
|
889 |
# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells: |
890 |
[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know |
891 |
if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then |
892 |
stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not |
893 |
echo -n '^[Z' |
894 |
read term_id |
895 |
stty icanon echo |
896 |
if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then |
897 |
echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string |
898 |
read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell |
899 |
fi |
900 |
fi |
901 |
|
902 |
How do I compile the manual pages for myself? |
903 |
You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl, |
904 |
one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html. Then go to the doc |
905 |
subdirectory and enter "make alldoc". |
906 |
|
907 |
My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human? |
908 |
Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel |
909 |
"#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be |
910 |
interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :). |
911 |
|