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Revision: 1.12
Committed: Thu Feb 17 12:06:21 2005 UTC (19 years, 3 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-5_3, rel-5_2
Changes since 1.11: +6 -5 lines
Log Message:
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File Contents

# 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 root 1.11 long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)
55     and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".
56 root 1.9
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 root 1.11 :co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
68 root 1.1 :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 root 1.12 :RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
71     :as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
72     :cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
73     :dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
74     :i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
75     :is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
76 root 1.11 :k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
77     :k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
78     :kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
79     :kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
80     :mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
81     :sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
82     :te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
83     :us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
84 root 1.1 :vs=\E[?25h:
85    
86     Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
87     The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
88     decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration
89     file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file
90     (among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
91    
92     TERM rxvt-unicode
93    
94     to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
95    
96     alias ls='ls --color=auto'
97    
98     to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
99    
100     Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
101     Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
102     Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
103     Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
104     distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
105     setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
106     Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
107     furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,
108     so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I
109     log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on
110     how to do this).
111    
112 root 1.9 My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
113     Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
114     specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
115     caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
116     and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
117     compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
118     please report if that helped.
119    
120 root 1.1 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
121     Unicode does not seem to work?
122     If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character
123     but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program
124     output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale
125     settings.
126    
127     Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
128     programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the
129     login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the
130 root 1.9 locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
131     is not going to work.
132 root 1.1
133     The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will
134     likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in
135     your .profile.
136    
137     printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"
138    
139     If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification
140     not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command
141 root 1.9 which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale
142     settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).
143     If it displays something like:
144 root 1.1
145     locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
146    
147     Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
148    
149     If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly
150     then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs
151     just don't support locales :(
152    
153     Why do some characters look so much different than others?
154     How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
155     Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
156     Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
157     your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
158     want to display.
159    
160     rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
161 root 1.9 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
162     bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
163     don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
164     artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
165     has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
166     indeed look correct.
167 root 1.1
168     In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
169     list, e.g.:
170    
171     rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
172    
173     When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
174     font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
175     the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
176     up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
177     X-server.
178    
179 root 1.9 The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
180     base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
181     size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
182 root 1.1
183     Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
184     This is because there is a difference between script and language --
185     rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
186     is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
187 root 1.9 first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
188     font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
189     Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
190     so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
191     look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
192     still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
193     the japanese font.
194 root 1.1
195     The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
196     font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
197     list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
198     japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
199     first.
200    
201 root 1.9 In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
202     runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
203     different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
204     interface for this has been designed yet).
205    
206     Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
207     "Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
208 root 1.1
209     Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
210     Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
211     character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
212     terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
213     Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
214     just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
215     that redraws adjacent characters.
216    
217     All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
218     however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
219     bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
220     correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
221     unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
222    
223     It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
224     freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
225     might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
226     that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
227    
228     All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
229     bounding box data is correct.
230    
231     My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
232     The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
233     set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
234     by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
235     your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
236     keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
237     then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
238    
239     In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
240     than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
241    
242     I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
243     14755
244     Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
245     international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
246     advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
247     other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
248     telnet escape character and so on.
249    
250     How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
251 root 1.9 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
252     settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
253     effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
254     bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
255     the effect:
256 root 1.1
257 root 1.9 URxvt.colorBD: white
258     URxvt.colorIT: green
259 root 1.1
260     Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
261     can I fix that?
262 root 1.9 For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
263     weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
264     the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
265     of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
266     without very good reasons.
267 root 1.1
268 root 1.9 In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
269 root 1.1 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
270     will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
271     features.
272    
273     I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
274     Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
275     in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
276     it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
277     requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
278    
279     As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
280     nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
281 root 1.9 representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
282     respect to standards.
283 root 1.1
284     However, "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support
285     multi-language apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and
286     non-standardized) representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to
287     convert between wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and
288     any other encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for
289     each and every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t
290     into anything except the current locale encoding.
291    
292     Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
293     by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
294     handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
295     doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
296     OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
297     emulator).
298    
299     The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
300     the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
301 root 1.9 to carry complete replacements for them :)
302 root 1.1
303     How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
304     Is there an option to switch encodings?
305     Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,
306     and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't
307     even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to
308     terminal I/O.
309    
310     The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
311     selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
312     this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
313     such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
314 root 1.9 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
315     "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,
316     locale-independent table under all locales).
317 root 1.1
318     Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.
319     All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree
320     in the interpretation of characters.
321    
322     Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,
323     nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
324    
325     On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
326     contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an
327     already-installed locale. Common names for locales are
328     "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.
329     "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")
330     are also common.
331    
332     Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
333     encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
334 root 1.9 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to
335     rxvt-unicode.
336 root 1.1
337     If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you
338     start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
339    
340     Can I switch locales at runtime?
341 root 1.9 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
342 root 1.1 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
343    
344     printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
345    
346 root 1.9 See also the previous answer.
347 root 1.1
348     Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in
349 root 1.9 one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it
350     (e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which
351     first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
352 root 1.1
353     printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
354     xjdic -js
355     printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
356    
357 root 1.9 You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
358     except for some locales where character width differs between
359     program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.
360    
361 root 1.1 Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
362 root 1.9 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has
363     the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect
364     immediately:
365 root 1.1
366     printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
367    
368     This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer
369     a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,
370     where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
371    
372     You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
373    
374     Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
375     Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
376     example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera
377 root 1.9 Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might
378     be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
379 root 1.1
380 root 1.9 URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
381     URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
382 root 1.1
383     My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
384     You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest
385     of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
386    
387     URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
388    
389     Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and
390     still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not
391     be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,
392     as your input method limits you.
393    
394 root 1.10 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
395     Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
396     design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
397     leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering
398     at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally
399     succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,
400     however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides
401     cooperate.
402    
403     So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
404    
405 root 1.1 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
406 root 1.9 Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for
407     something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure
408     out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a
409     resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no
410     Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find
411     a font for your characters.
412 root 1.1
413     Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
414     scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will
415     use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to
416     almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will
417     then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
418     it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
419    
420     Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
421     Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,
422     as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to
423     disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialiasing=false"), which
424     saves lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
425    
426     Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
427     Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
428     fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core
429     fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It
430     has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
431     thinks they look best that way.
432    
433     If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
434    
435     Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
436     Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing
437     some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.
438     I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
439     specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
440     or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
441    
442     What's with this bold/blink stuff?
443     If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using
444     the standard foreground colour.
445    
446     For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the
447     text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard
448     colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be
449     ignored.
450    
451     On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set
452     high-intensity foreground/background colors.
453    
454     color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
455    
456     color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
457    
458     I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
459     You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
460     resources (or as long-options).
461    
462     Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,
463     including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
464    
465 root 1.9 URxvt.color0: #000000
466     URxvt.color1: #A80000
467     URxvt.color2: #00A800
468     URxvt.color3: #A8A800
469     URxvt.color4: #0000A8
470     URxvt.color5: #A800A8
471     URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
472     URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
473    
474     URxvt.color8: #000054
475     URxvt.color9: #FF0054
476     URxvt.color10: #00FF54
477     URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
478     URxvt.color12: #0000FF
479     URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
480     URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
481     URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
482 root 1.1
483 root 1.9 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described
484     (not by me) as "pretty girly".
485 root 1.1
486     URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
487     URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
488     URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
489     URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
490     URxvt.color0: #000000
491     URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
492     URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
493     URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
494     URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
495     URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
496     URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
497     URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
498     URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
499     URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
500     URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
501     URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
502     URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
503     URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
504    
505 root 1.9 How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?
506     Despite it's name, rxvtd is not a real daemon, but more like a
507     server that answers rxvtc's requests, so it doesn't background
508     itself.
509    
510     To ensure rxvtd is listening on it's socket, you can use the
511     following method to wait for the startup message before continuing:
512    
513     { rxvtd & } | read
514    
515 root 1.1 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
516     Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
517     BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
518     question) there are two standard values that can be used for
519     Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
520    
521     Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
522     debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
523     only correct choice :).
524    
525     Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
526     value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
527     wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
528     shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
529     CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
530     your stty setting).
531    
532     For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
533    
534     # use Backspace = ^H
535     $ stty erase ^H
536     $ rxvt
537    
538     # use Backspace = ^?
539     $ stty erase ^?
540     $ rxvt
541    
542 root 1.9 Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
543 root 1.1
544     For an existing rxvt-unicode:
545    
546     # use Backspace = ^H
547     $ stty erase ^H
548     $ echo -n "^[[36h"
549    
550     # use Backspace = ^?
551     $ stty erase ^?
552     $ echo -n "^[[36l"
553    
554     This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
555     but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
556     value properly reflects that.
557    
558     The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
559     problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
560     the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
561 root 1.9 vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
562     termcap/terminfo.
563 root 1.1
564     Some other Backspace problems:
565    
566     some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
567     expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
568     help.
569    
570     Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
571    
572     I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
573     There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
574     Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
575     option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
576 root 1.2 associated with keysyms.
577 root 1.1
578 root 1.9 Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
579     URxvt"
580 root 1.1
581 root 1.9 URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
582     URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
583     URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
584     URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
585     URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
586     URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
587     URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
588     URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
589     URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
590     URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
591     URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
592     URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
593     URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
594     URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
595     URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
596     URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
597     URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
598     URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
599 root 1.3 URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
600 root 1.9 URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
601 root 1.3
602     See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
603 root 1.1
604     I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
605     do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
606     following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
607     KP_Insert == Insert
608     F22 == Print
609     F27 == Home
610     F29 == Prior
611     F33 == End
612     F35 == Next
613    
614     Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
615     possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
616     the keys as required for your particular machine.
617    
618 root 1.9 How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
619     I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
620 root 1.1 rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
621     can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
622     slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
623     whether or not to use color.
624    
625     How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
626     If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
627     insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
628     snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
629     rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
630     these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
631     distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
632    
633     Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
634     script snippets:
635    
636     # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
637     [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
638     if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
639     stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
640     echo -n '^[Z'
641     read term_id
642     stty icanon echo
643     if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
644     echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
645     read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
646     fi
647     fi
648    
649     How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
650     You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
651     /usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
652     Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
653    
654     My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
655     Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
656     channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
657     be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
658     FAQs :).
659