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Revision: 1.10
Committed: Sun Feb 13 11:07:57 2005 UTC (19 years, 3 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.9: +11 -0 lines
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# User Rev Content
1 root 1.1 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
2     How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
3     The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
4 root 1.9 sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number.
5    
6     I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
7     The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode contains large patches
8     that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode. Before
9     reporting a bug to the original rxvt-unicode author please download
10     and install the genuine version
11     (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the
12     problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific
13     to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the
14     Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
15    
16     For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
17     probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's
18     also a bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for
19     other users that might encounter the same issue.
20 root 1.1
21     When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
22     The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely
23     available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same
24     problem often arises).
25    
26     The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,
27     this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):
28    
29     REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
30     infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
31    
32     ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,
33    
34     If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
35     "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
36     problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and
37     different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen
38     applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,
39     though.
40    
41 root 1.9 If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)
42     you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or
43     use a resource to set it:
44 root 1.1
45     URxvt.termName: rxvt
46    
47     If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also
48     replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.
49    
50 root 1.9 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.
51 root 1.1 I need a termcap file entry.
52 root 1.9 One reason you might want this is that some distributions or
53     operating systems still compile some programs using the
54     long-obsoleted termcap (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely
55     on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".
56    
57 root 1.1 You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many
58     cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's
59     infocmp program like this:
60    
61     infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
62    
63 root 1.9 Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:
64 root 1.1
65     rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
66     :am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
67     :co#80:it#8:li#24:\
68     :AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
69     :K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
70     :RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=^O:al=\E[L:\
71     :as=^N:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:\
72     :cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:dl=\E[M:do=^J:\
73     :ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:\
74     :im=\E[4h:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
75     :k0=\E[21~:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:\
76     :k5=\E[15~:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:\
77     :kD=\E[3~:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:\
78     :ke=\E[?1l\E>:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:\
79     :ku=\EOA:le=^H:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:\
80     :nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:\
81     :st=\EH:ta=^I:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:\
82     :up=\E[A:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
83     :vs=\E[?25h:
84    
85     Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
86     The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
87     decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration
88     file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file
89     (among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
90    
91     TERM rxvt-unicode
92    
93     to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
94    
95     alias ls='ls --color=auto'
96    
97     to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
98    
99     Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
100     Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
101     Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
102     Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
103     distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
104     setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
105     Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
106     furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,
107     so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I
108     log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on
109     how to do this).
110    
111 root 1.9 My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
112     Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
113     specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
114     caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
115     and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
116     compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
117     please report if that helped.
118    
119 root 1.1 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
120     Unicode does not seem to work?
121     If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character
122     but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program
123     output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale
124     settings.
125    
126     Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
127     programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the
128     login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the
129 root 1.9 locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
130     is not going to work.
131 root 1.1
132     The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will
133     likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in
134     your .profile.
135    
136     printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"
137    
138     If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification
139     not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command
140 root 1.9 which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale
141     settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).
142     If it displays something like:
143 root 1.1
144     locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
145    
146     Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
147    
148     If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly
149     then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs
150     just don't support locales :(
151    
152     Why do some characters look so much different than others?
153     How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
154     Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
155     Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
156     your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
157     want to display.
158    
159     rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
160 root 1.9 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
161     bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
162     don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
163     artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
164     has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
165     indeed look correct.
166 root 1.1
167     In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
168     list, e.g.:
169    
170     rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
171    
172     When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
173     font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
174     the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
175     up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
176     X-server.
177    
178 root 1.9 The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
179     base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
180     size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
181 root 1.1
182     Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
183     This is because there is a difference between script and language --
184     rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
185     is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
186 root 1.9 first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
187     font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
188     Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
189     so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
190     look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
191     still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
192     the japanese font.
193 root 1.1
194     The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
195     font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
196     list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
197     japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
198     first.
199    
200 root 1.9 In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
201     runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
202     different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
203     interface for this has been designed yet).
204    
205     Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
206     "Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
207 root 1.1
208     Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
209     Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
210     character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
211     terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
212     Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
213     just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
214     that redraws adjacent characters.
215    
216     All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
217     however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
218     bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
219     correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
220     unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
221    
222     It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
223     freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
224     might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
225     that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
226    
227     All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
228     bounding box data is correct.
229    
230     My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
231     The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
232     set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
233     by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
234     your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
235     keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
236     then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
237    
238     In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
239     than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
240    
241     I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
242     14755
243     Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
244     international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
245     advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
246     other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
247     telnet escape character and so on.
248    
249     How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
250 root 1.9 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
251     settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
252     effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
253     bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
254     the effect:
255 root 1.1
256 root 1.9 URxvt.colorBD: white
257     URxvt.colorIT: green
258 root 1.1
259     Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
260     can I fix that?
261 root 1.9 For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
262     weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
263     the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
264     of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
265     without very good reasons.
266 root 1.1
267 root 1.9 In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
268 root 1.1 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
269     will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
270     features.
271    
272     I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
273     Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
274     in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
275     it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
276     requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
277    
278     As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
279     nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
280 root 1.9 representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
281     respect to standards.
282 root 1.1
283     However, "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support
284     multi-language apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and
285     non-standardized) representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to
286     convert between wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and
287     any other encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for
288     each and every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t
289     into anything except the current locale encoding.
290    
291     Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
292     by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
293     handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
294     doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
295     OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
296     emulator).
297    
298     The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
299     the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
300 root 1.9 to carry complete replacements for them :)
301 root 1.1
302     How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
303     Is there an option to switch encodings?
304     Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,
305     and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't
306     even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to
307     terminal I/O.
308    
309     The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
310     selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
311     this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
312     such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
313 root 1.9 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
314     "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,
315     locale-independent table under all locales).
316 root 1.1
317     Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.
318     All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree
319     in the interpretation of characters.
320    
321     Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,
322     nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
323    
324     On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
325     contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an
326     already-installed locale. Common names for locales are
327     "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.
328     "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")
329     are also common.
330    
331     Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
332     encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
333 root 1.9 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to
334     rxvt-unicode.
335 root 1.1
336     If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you
337     start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
338    
339     Can I switch locales at runtime?
340 root 1.9 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
341 root 1.1 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
342    
343     printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
344    
345 root 1.9 See also the previous answer.
346 root 1.1
347     Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in
348 root 1.9 one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it
349     (e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which
350     first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
351 root 1.1
352     printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
353     xjdic -js
354     printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
355    
356 root 1.9 You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
357     except for some locales where character width differs between
358     program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.
359    
360 root 1.1 Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
361 root 1.9 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has
362     the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect
363     immediately:
364 root 1.1
365     printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
366    
367     This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer
368     a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,
369     where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
370    
371     You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
372    
373     Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
374     Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
375     example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera
376 root 1.9 Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might
377     be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
378 root 1.1
379 root 1.9 URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
380     URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
381 root 1.1
382     My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
383     You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest
384     of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
385    
386     URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
387    
388     Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and
389     still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not
390     be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,
391     as your input method limits you.
392    
393 root 1.10 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
394     Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
395     design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
396     leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering
397     at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally
398     succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,
399     however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides
400     cooperate.
401    
402     So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
403    
404 root 1.1 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
405 root 1.9 Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for
406     something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure
407     out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a
408     resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no
409     Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find
410     a font for your characters.
411 root 1.1
412     Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
413     scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will
414     use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to
415     almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will
416     then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
417     it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
418    
419     Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
420     Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,
421     as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to
422     disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialiasing=false"), which
423     saves lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
424    
425     Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
426     Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
427     fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core
428     fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It
429     has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
430     thinks they look best that way.
431    
432     If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
433    
434     Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
435     Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing
436     some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.
437     I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
438     specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
439     or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
440    
441     What's with this bold/blink stuff?
442     If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using
443     the standard foreground colour.
444    
445     For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the
446     text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard
447     colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be
448     ignored.
449    
450     On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set
451     high-intensity foreground/background colors.
452    
453     color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
454    
455     color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
456    
457     I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
458     You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
459     resources (or as long-options).
460    
461     Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,
462     including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
463    
464 root 1.9 URxvt.color0: #000000
465     URxvt.color1: #A80000
466     URxvt.color2: #00A800
467     URxvt.color3: #A8A800
468     URxvt.color4: #0000A8
469     URxvt.color5: #A800A8
470     URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
471     URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
472    
473     URxvt.color8: #000054
474     URxvt.color9: #FF0054
475     URxvt.color10: #00FF54
476     URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
477     URxvt.color12: #0000FF
478     URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
479     URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
480     URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
481 root 1.1
482 root 1.9 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described
483     (not by me) as "pretty girly".
484 root 1.1
485     URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
486     URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
487     URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
488     URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
489     URxvt.color0: #000000
490     URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
491     URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
492     URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
493     URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
494     URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
495     URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
496     URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
497     URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
498     URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
499     URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
500     URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
501     URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
502     URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
503    
504 root 1.9 How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?
505     Despite it's name, rxvtd is not a real daemon, but more like a
506     server that answers rxvtc's requests, so it doesn't background
507     itself.
508    
509     To ensure rxvtd is listening on it's socket, you can use the
510     following method to wait for the startup message before continuing:
511    
512     { rxvtd & } | read
513    
514 root 1.1 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
515     Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
516     BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
517     question) there are two standard values that can be used for
518     Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
519    
520     Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
521     debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
522     only correct choice :).
523    
524     Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
525     value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
526     wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
527     shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
528     CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
529     your stty setting).
530    
531     For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
532    
533     # use Backspace = ^H
534     $ stty erase ^H
535     $ rxvt
536    
537     # use Backspace = ^?
538     $ stty erase ^?
539     $ rxvt
540    
541 root 1.9 Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
542 root 1.1
543     For an existing rxvt-unicode:
544    
545     # use Backspace = ^H
546     $ stty erase ^H
547     $ echo -n "^[[36h"
548    
549     # use Backspace = ^?
550     $ stty erase ^?
551     $ echo -n "^[[36l"
552    
553     This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
554     but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
555     value properly reflects that.
556    
557     The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
558     problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
559     the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
560 root 1.9 vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
561     termcap/terminfo.
562 root 1.1
563     Some other Backspace problems:
564    
565     some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
566     expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
567     help.
568    
569     Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
570    
571     I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
572     There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
573     Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
574     option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
575 root 1.2 associated with keysyms.
576 root 1.1
577 root 1.9 Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
578     URxvt"
579 root 1.1
580 root 1.9 URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
581     URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
582     URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
583     URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
584     URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
585     URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
586     URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
587     URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
588     URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
589     URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
590     URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
591     URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
592     URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
593     URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
594     URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
595     URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
596     URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
597     URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
598 root 1.3 URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
599 root 1.9 URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
600 root 1.3
601     See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
602 root 1.1
603     I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
604     do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
605     following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
606     KP_Insert == Insert
607     F22 == Print
608     F27 == Home
609     F29 == Prior
610     F33 == End
611     F35 == Next
612    
613     Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
614     possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
615     the keys as required for your particular machine.
616    
617 root 1.9 How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
618     I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
619 root 1.1 rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
620     can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
621     slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
622     whether or not to use color.
623    
624     How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
625     If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
626     insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
627     snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
628     rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
629     these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
630     distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
631    
632     Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
633     script snippets:
634    
635     # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
636     [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
637     if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
638     stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
639     echo -n '^[Z'
640     read term_id
641     stty icanon echo
642     if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
643     echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
644     read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
645     fi
646     fi
647    
648     How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
649     You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
650     /usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
651     Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
652    
653     My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
654     Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
655     channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
656     be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
657     FAQs :).
658