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1FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 1RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
2 Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
3 My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
4 Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
5 "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
6 interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
7
8 I use Gentoo, and I have a problem...
9 There are three big problems with Gentoo Linux: first of all, most if
10 not all Gentoo systems are completely broken (missing or mismatched
11 header files, broken compiler etc. are just the tip of the iceberg);
12 secondly, the Gentoo maintainer thinks it is a good idea to add broken
13 patches to the code; and lastly, it should be called Gentoo GNU/Linux.
14
15 For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo.
16 Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
17 unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
18
19 Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
20 Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
21 simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
22 should give you tabs:
23
24 urxvt -pe tabbed
25
26 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
27
28 It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
29 managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
30 it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
31 or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
32 (murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
33
2 How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using? 34 How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
3 The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape 35 The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
4 sequence "ESC[8n" sets the window title to the version number. 36 sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When
37 using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
5 38
39 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
40 Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
41 you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
42 that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
43 design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
44 loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
45 characters.
46
47 Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
48 scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
49 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
50 kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if
51 full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets
52 worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
53
54 How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
55 Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
56 listening socket and then fork.
57
58 How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
59 If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
60 the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
61
62 #!/bin/sh
63 urxvtc "$@"
64 if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
65 urxvtd -q -o -f
66 urxvtc "$@"
67 fi
68
69 This tries to create a new terminal, and if fails with exit status 2,
70 meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and
71 re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the
72 existing daemon.
73
74 How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular
75xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.
76 The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
77 "COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
78 programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
79 variable to decide whether or not to use colour.
80
81 How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
82 If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
83 insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
84 snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
85 wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
86 then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
87 a regular xterm.
88
89 Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
90 snippets:
91
92 # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
93 [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
94 if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
95 stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
96 echo -n '^[Z'
97 read term_id
98 stty icanon echo
99 if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
100 echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
101 read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
102 fi
103 fi
104
105 How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
106 You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
107 one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
108 Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
109
110 Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
111 I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
112 bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
113 that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
114 being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
115 startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
116 unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
117 iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
118
119 text data bss drs rss filename
120 98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
121 188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
122
123 When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
124 and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
125 libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
126
127 text data bss drs rss filename
128 163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
129 1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
130
131 The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
132 encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
133 and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
134 encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
135 compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
136 memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
137 a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
138 when not used.
139
140 Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
141 one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
142 more memory.
143
144 Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
145 still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
146 gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
147 (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
148 a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
149 out), it fares extremely well *g*.
150
151 Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
152 Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
153 had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
154 fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
155 even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
156
157 My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
158 the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
159 are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
160 unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
161
162 Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
163 in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to write programs in
164 C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this is
165 not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on my
166 system with a minimal config:
167
168 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
169 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
170 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
171 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
172
173 And here is rxvt-unicode:
174
175 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
176 libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
177 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
178 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
179 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
180
181 No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
182 except maybe libX11 :)
183
184 Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
185 I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
186 First of all, please address all transparency related issues to Sasha
187 Vasko at sasha@aftercode.net and do not bug the author about it. Also,
188 if you can't get it working consider it a rite of passage: ... and you
189 failed.
190
191 Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
192 descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
193
194 1. Use transparent mode:
195
196 Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
197 urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
198
199 That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
200 support, or you are unable to read.
201
202 2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
203 to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
204 your picture with gimp or any other tool:
205
206 convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
207 urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
208
209 That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack AfterImage support, or you
210 are unable to read.
211
212 3. Use an ARGB visual:
213
214 urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
215
216 This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
217 doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
218 there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
219 necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
220 that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
221
222 4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
223
224 xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
225 -set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
226
227 Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
228 by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
229 your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
230
231 Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
232 Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
233 character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
234 use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
235 will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
236 wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
237 characters.
238
239 All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
240 however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
241 bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
242 way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
243 wrong in these cases).
244
245 It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
246 or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
247 using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
248 work, you might be forced to use a different font.
249
250 All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
251 bounding box data is correct.
252
253 How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
254 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
255 ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
256 make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
257 rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
258
259 URxvt.colorBD: white
260 URxvt.colorIT: green
261
262 Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
263 For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
264 colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
265 standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
266 course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
267 good reasons.
268
269 In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
270 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
271 fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
272
273 Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
274 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
275 same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
276
277 printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
278
279 This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
280 japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
281 japanese fonts would only be in your way.
282
283 You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
284
285 Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
286 Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
287 example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
288 Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
289 enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
290
291 URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
292 URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
293
294 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
295 Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
296 is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
297 antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
298 memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
299
300 Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
301 Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
302 fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
303 because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
304 antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
305 look best that way.
306
307 If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
308
309 What's with this bold/blink stuff?
310 If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
311 standard foreground colour.
312
313 For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
314 blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
315 "--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
316
317 On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
318 foreground/background colours.
319
320 color0-7 are the low-intensity colours.
321
322 color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colours.
323
324 I don't like the screen colours. How do I change them?
325 You can change the screen colours at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
326 resources (or as long-options).
327
328 Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
329 the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
330
331 URxvt.color0: #000000
332 URxvt.color1: #A80000
333 URxvt.color2: #00A800
334 URxvt.color3: #A8A800
335 URxvt.color4: #0000A8
336 URxvt.color5: #A800A8
337 URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
338 URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
339
340 URxvt.color8: #000054
341 URxvt.color9: #FF0054
342 URxvt.color10: #00FF54
343 URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
344 URxvt.color12: #0000FF
345 URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
346 URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
347 URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
348
349 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colours.
350
351 URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
352 URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
353 URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
354 URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
355 URxvt.color0: #000000
356 URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
357 URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
358 URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
359 URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
360 URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
361 URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
362 URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
363 URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
364 URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
365 URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
366 URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
367 URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
368 URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
369
370 They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
371
372 Why do some characters look so much different than others?
373 See next entry.
374
375 How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
376 Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
377 Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
378 system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
379 display.
380
381 rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
382 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
383 bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
384 resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
385 intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
386 the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
387
388 In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
389 e.g.:
390
391 urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
392
393 When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
394 If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
395 font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
396 search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
397
398 The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
399 base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
400 which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
401
402 Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
403 This is because there is a difference between script and language --
404 rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
405 it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
406 japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
407 Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
408 characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
409 non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
410 font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
411 for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
412
413 The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
414 list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
415 preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
416 first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
417
418 In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
419 runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
420 fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
421 has been designed yet).
422
423 Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
424 I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
425
426 How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
427 We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
428 like:
429
430 urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
431
432 Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
433 The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
434 If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
435 setting:
436
437 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
438
439 If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
440 more.
441
442 To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
443 pattern:
444
445 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
446
447 Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClick* combination also
448 selects words like the old code.
449
450 I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
451 You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
452 perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
453 rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
454
455 If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
456 identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
457 PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
458 disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
459 perl-ext-common resource:
460
461 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
462
463 This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
464 extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
465 scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
466 combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
467
468 URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
469
470 The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
471 See next entry.
472
473 During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
474 These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
475 circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
476 line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
477 but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
478 some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
479
480 You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
481 extension:
482
483 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
484
485 My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
486 Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
487 specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
488 caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
489 how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
490 compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
491 report if that helped.
492
493 My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
494 The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
495 correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your
496 input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
497 method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
498 support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
499 will continue without an input method.
500
501 In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than
502 one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
503
504 If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
505 compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
506 don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
507
508 I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
509 Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
510 international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
511 advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
512 other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
513 escape character and so on.
514
515 Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
516 Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
517 editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. I've heard
518 that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise specified. A quick
519 check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are
520 depressed.
521
522 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
523 Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
524 keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
525 two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
526
527 Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
528 debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
529 correct choice :).
530
531 Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
532 value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
533 wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell),
534 then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in
535 <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as your stty
536 setting).
537
538 For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
539
540 # use Backspace = ^H
541 $ stty erase ^H
542 $ urxvt
543
544 # use Backspace = ^?
545 $ stty erase ^?
546 $ urxvt
547
548 Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l".
549
550 For an existing rxvt-unicode:
551
552 # use Backspace = ^H
553 $ stty erase ^H
554 $ echo -n "^[[36h"
555
556 # use Backspace = ^?
557 $ stty erase ^?
558 $ echo -n "^[[36l"
559
560 This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
561 if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
562 properly reflects that.
563
564 The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
565 problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
566 Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
567 Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
568
569 Some other Backspace problems:
570
571 some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
572 Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
573
574 Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
575
576 I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
577 There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
578 you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
579 use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
580 keysyms.
581
582 Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
583
584 URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
585 URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
586 URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
587 URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
588 URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
589 URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
590 URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
591 URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
592 URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
593 URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
594 URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
595 URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
596 URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
597 URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
598 URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
599 URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
600 URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
601 URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
602 URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
603 URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
604
605 See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
606
607 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 map
608 KP_Insert == Insert
609 F22 == Print
610 F27 == Home
611 F29 == Prior
612 F33 == End
613 F35 == Next
614
615 Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
616 possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
617 keys as required for your particular machine.
618
619 Terminal Configuration
620 Can I see a typical configuration?
621 The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
622 that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
623
624 As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
625 time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
626 author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
627 certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
628
629 URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
630 URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
631
632 These are just for testing stuff.
633
634 URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
635 URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
636
637 This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
638 the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
639 type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
640 with correct-looking fonts.
641
642 URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
643 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
644 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
645 URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
646 URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
647 URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
648
649 This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
650 directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
651 develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
652 write.
653
654 The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
655 and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
656 relevant file and go to the error line number.
657
658 URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
659 URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
660
661 As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
662 author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
663 apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
664 scrollback buffer.
665
666 URxvt.background: #000000
667 URxvt.foreground: gray90
668 URxvt.color7: gray90
669 URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
670 URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
671 URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
672 URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
673
674 Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
675 but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
676 foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
677 colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
678
679 URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
680
681 Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
682 but is mostly a nice effect.
683
684 URxvt.geometry: 154x36
685 URxvt.loginShell: false
686 URxvt.meta: ignore
687 URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
688
689 Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
690 manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
691
692 URxvt.saveLines: 8192
693
694 A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
695
696 URxvt.mapAlert: true
697
698 The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
699 iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
700
701 URxvt.visualBell: true
702
703 The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
704
705 URxvt.insecure: true
706
707 Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
708
709 URxvt.pastableTabs: false
710
711 I once thought this is a great idea.
712
713 urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
714 -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
715 -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
716 [codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
717 xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
718 xft:Code2000:antialias=false
719 urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
720 urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
721 urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
722
723 I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
724 overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
725 the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
726 different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
727 characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
728 XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
729 I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
730 italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
731 Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
732
733 Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
734 my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
735 (Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
736 bold and normal fonts.
737
738 Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
739 class name. That is because I use different configs for different
740 purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
741 uses these defaults:
742
743 IRC*title: IRC
744 IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
745 IRC*saveLines: 0
746 IRC*mapAlert: true
747 IRC*font: suxuseuro
748 IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
749 IRC*colorBD: white
750 IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
751 IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
752
753 "Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
754 "suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
755 keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
756 (e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
757
758 The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
759 "xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
760 file for different hosts, for example, on ym main desktop, I use:
761
762 URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
763 URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
764 URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
765 URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
766 URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
767
768 The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
769 in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
770 immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
771 same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
772 combinations :->
773
774 Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
775 Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
776 applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
777 resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
778 ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
779 $HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
780
781 If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
782 are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
783 every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
784
785 Also consider the form resources have to use:
786
787 URxvt.resource: value
788
789 If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
790 specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
791 works. If unsure, use the form above.
792
6 When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? 793 When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
7 The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely 794 The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
8 available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same 795 as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
9 problem often arises). 796 arises).
10 797
11 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, 798 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
12 this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp): 799 can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
800 well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
801 the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
802 user and root):
13 803
14 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain 804 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
15 infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti" 805 infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
16 806
17 ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system, 807 One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
808 $HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
18 809
19 If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set 810 If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
20 "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of 811 "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
21 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and 812 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
22 different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen 813 colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
23 applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, 814 quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
24 though.
25 815
26 If you always want to do this you can either recompile rxvt-unicode 816 If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
27 with the desired TERM value or use a resource to set it: 817 can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
818 resource to set it:
28 819
29 URxvt.termName: rxvt 820 URxvt.termName: rxvt
30 821
31 If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also 822 If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
32 replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one. 823 the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
33 824
825 nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
826 This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
827 nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
828 your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
829
830 "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
831 Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
832 "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
833
834 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
835 See next entry.
836
34 I need a termcap file entry. 837 I need a termcap file entry.
838 One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
839 systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
840 library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
841 for "rxvt-unicode".
842
35 You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many 843 You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
36 cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's 844 cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
37 infocmp program like this: 845 program like this:
38 846
39 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode 847 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
40 848
41 OR you could this termcap entry: 849 Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
850 generated by the command above.
42 851
43 rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
44 :am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
45 :co#80:it#8:li#24:\
46 :AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
47 :K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
48 :RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=^O:al=\E[L:\
49 :as=^N:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:\
50 :cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:dl=\E[M:do=^J:\
51 :ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:\
52 :im=\E[4h:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
53 :k0=\E[21~:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:\
54 :k5=\E[15~:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:\
55 :kD=\E[3~:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:\
56 :ke=\E[?1l\E>:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:\
57 :ku=\EOA:le=^H:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:\
58 :nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:\
59 :st=\EH:ta=^I:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:\
60 :up=\E[A:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
61 :vs=\E[?25h:
62
63 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output? 852 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
64 The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to 853 The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
65 decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration 854 decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
66 file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file 855 file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
67 (among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add: 856 with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
68 857
69 TERM rxvt-unicode 858 TERM rxvt-unicode
70 859
71 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add: 860 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
72 861
73 alias ls='ls --color=auto' 862 alias ls='ls --color=auto'
74 863
75 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc". 864 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
76 865
77 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode? 866 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
867 See next entry.
868
78 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic? 869 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
870 See next entry.
871
79 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly? 872 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
80 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged 873 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
81 distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by 874 distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
82 setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features. 875 setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
83 Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux) 876 Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
84 furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, 877 furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
85 so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I 878 you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
86 log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on 879 to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
87 how to do this). 880 this).
88 881
882 Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
89 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding? 883 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
884 See next entry.
885
90 Unicode does not seem to work? 886 Unicode does not seem to work?
91 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character 887 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
92 but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program 888 getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
93 output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale 889 is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
94 settings.
95 890
96 Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the 891 Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
97 programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the 892 programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
98 login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the 893 while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
99 locale to sth. else, e.h. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this is 894 the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
100 not going to work. 895 is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
101 896
102 The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will 897 The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
103 likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in 898 run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
104 your .profile. 899 .profile.
105 900
106 printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" 901 printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
107 902
108 If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification 903 If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
109 not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command 904 supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
110 which displays this. If it displays sth. like: 905 displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
906 it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
907 something like:
111 908
112 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ... 909 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
113 910
114 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system. 911 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
115 912
116 If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly 913 If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
117 then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs 914 you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
118 just don't support locales :( 915 support locales :(
119 916
120 Why do some characters look so much different than others?
121 How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
122 Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
123 Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
124 your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
125 want to display.
126
127 rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
128 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks bad.
129 Many fonts have totally strange characters that don't resemble the
130 correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
131 intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to
132 believe the font that the characters it contains indeed look
133 correct.
134
135 In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
136 list, e.g.:
137
138 rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
139
140 When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
141 font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
142 the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
143 up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
144 X-server.
145
146 The only limitation is that all the fonts must not be larger than
147 the base font, as the base font defines the principal cell size,
148 which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
149
150 Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
151 This is because there is a difference between script and language --
152 rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
153 is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
154 first sees a japanese character, it might choose a japanese font for
155 it. Subsequent japanese characters will take that font. Now, many
156 chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the
157 first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a
158 chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the
159 japanese font for japanese characters that are also chinese.
160
161 The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
162 font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
163 list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
164 japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
165 first.
166
167 In the future it might be possible to switch preferences at runtime
168 (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
169 fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for
170 this has been designed yet).
171
172 Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
173 Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
174 character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
175 terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
176 Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
177 just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
178 that redraws adjacent characters.
179
180 All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
181 however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
182 bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
183 correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
184 unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
185
186 It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
187 freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
188 might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
189 that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
190
191 All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
192 bounding box data is correct.
193
194 My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
195 The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
196 set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
197 by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
198 your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
199 keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
200 then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
201
202 In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
203 than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
204
205 I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
206 14755
207 Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
208 international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
209 advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
210 other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
211 telnet escape character and so on.
212
213 How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
214 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminfo
215 ("urxvt"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then make
216 sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
217 rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
218
219 URxvt*colorBD: white
220 URxvt*colorIT: green
221
222 Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
223 can I fix that?
224 For some unexplainable reason, some programs (i.e. irssi) assume a
225 very weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more
226 than the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right
227 fix is, of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO
228 colours without very good reasons.
229
230 In the meantime, you can either edit your "urxvt" terminfo
231 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
232 will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
233 features.
234
235 I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
236 Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
237 in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
238 it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
239 requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
240
241 As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
242 nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
243 representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely legal.
244
245 However, "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support
246 multi-language apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and
247 non-standardized) representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to
248 convert between wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and
249 any other encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for
250 each and every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t
251 into anything except the current locale encoding.
252
253 Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
254 by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
255 handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
256 doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
257 OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
258 emulator).
259
260 The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
261 the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
262 to carry complete replacements.
263
264 How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use? 917 How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
918 See next entry.
919
265 Is there an option to switch encodings? 920 Is there an option to switch encodings?
266 Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, 921 Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
267 and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't 922 specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
268 even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to 923 about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
269 terminal I/O.
270 924
271 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for 925 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
272 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating 926 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
273 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties 927 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
274 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*. 928 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
929 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
930 "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
931 locale-independent table under all locales).
275 932
276 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. 933 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
277 All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree 934 programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
278 in the interpretation of characters. 935 interpretation of characters.
279 936
280 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, 937 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
281 nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like. 938 is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
282 939
283 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable 940 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
284 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an 941 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
285 already-installed locale. Common names for locales are 942 locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
286 "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. 943 "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
287 "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german") 944 "de" or "german") are also common.
288 are also common.
289 945
290 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the 946 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
291 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e. 947 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
292 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the same for rxvt-unicode. 948 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
293 949
294 If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you 950 If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
295 start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category. 951 rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
296 952
297 Can I switch locales at runtime? 953 Can I switch locales at runtime?
298 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try sth. like this, which sets 954 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
299 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE". 955 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
300 956
301 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS 957 printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
302 958
303 See also the previous question. 959 See also the previous answer.
304 960
305 Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in 961 Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
306 one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support 962 locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
307 UTF-8. For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first 963 UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
308 switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later: 964 switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
309 965
310 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS 966 printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
311 xjdic -js 967 xjdic -js
312 printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8 968 printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
313 969
314 Can I switch the fonts at runtime? 970 You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
315 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try sth. like this, which has the 971 except for some locales where character width differs between program-
316 same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately: 972 and rxvt-unicode-locales.
317 973
318 printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic" 974 I have problems getting my input method working.
975 Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
976 method server.
319 977
320 This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer 978 Here is a checklist:
321 a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,
322 where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
323 979
324 You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching. 980 - Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
981 Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
325 982
326 Why do italic characters look as if clipped? 983 - Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
327 Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For 984 XIM.
328 example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera 985 For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
329 Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround is to 986 "ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
330 enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
331 987
332 URxvt*italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true 988 - Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
333 URxvt*boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true 989 - Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
990 *starting* rxvt-unicode.
991 When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
992 For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
993 running with this command:
334 994
995 xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
996
997
998
335 My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do? 999 My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
336 You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest 1000 You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
337 of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale": 1001 the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
338 1002
339 URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP 1003 URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
340 1004
341 Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and 1005 Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
342 still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not 1006 use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
343 be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then, 1007 Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
344 as your input method limits you. 1008 in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
345 1009
346 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that? 1010 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
347 Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for sth. you 1011 Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
348 don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings 1012 design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
349 that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by 1013 leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
350 design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be 1014 exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
351 loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your 1015 SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
352 characters. 1016 cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
353 1017
354 Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger 1018 So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
355 scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will
356 use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to
357 almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will
358 then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
359 it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
360 1019
361 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? 1020 Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
362 Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, 1021 I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
363 as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to 1022 The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large
364 disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialiasing=false"), which 1023 patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but
365 saves lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably. 1024 unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to
1025 the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine
1026 version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce
1027 the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific
1028 to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian
1029 Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
366 1030
367 Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong? 1031 For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
368 Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to 1032 probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a
369 fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core 1033 bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users
370 fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It 1034 that might encounter the same issue.
371 has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
372 thinks they look best that way.
373 1035
374 If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually. 1036 I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
1037 You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
1038 enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
1039 runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
1040 them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
1041 should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
1042 more in the future) depends on it.
375 1043
376 Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works. 1044 You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
377 Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing 1045 system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
378 some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. 1046 behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
379 I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise 1047 "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
380 specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt 1048 perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
381 or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
382 1049
383 What's with this bold/blink stuff? 1050 If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
384 If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using 1051 with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
385 the standard foreground colour. 1052 "--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
1053 encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
386 1054
387 For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the 1055 I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
388 text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard 1056 It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
389 colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be 1057 install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
390 ignored.
391 1058
392 On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set 1059 When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
393 high-intensity foreground/background colors. 1060 into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
1061 systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
1062 immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
1063 privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
1064 things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
394 1065
395 color0-7 are the low-intensity colors. 1066 This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
1067 early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
1068 main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
1069 result in very little risk.
396 1070
397 color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors. 1071 I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
1072 Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
1073 your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
1074 whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
1075 wchar_t is represented as unicode.
398 1076
399 I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them? 1077 As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
400 You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults 1078 does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
401 resources (or as long-options). 1079 wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
402 1080
403 Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, 1081 However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
404 including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow: 1082 "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
405 1083
406 URxvt*color0: #000000 1084 "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
407 URxvt*color1: #A80000 1085 in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
408 URxvt*color2: #00A800 1086 representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
409 URxvt*color3: #A8A800 1087 (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
410 URxvt*color4: #0000A8 1088 implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
411 URxvt*color5: #A800A8 1089 simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
412 URxvt*color6: #00A8A8 1090 locale encoding.
413 URxvt*color7: #A8A8A8
414 1091
415 URxvt*color8: #000054 1092 Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
416 URxvt*color9: #FF0054 1093 carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
417 URxvt*color10: #00FF54 1094 them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
418 URxvt*color11: #FFFF54 1095 conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
419 URxvt*color12: #0000FF 1096 encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
420 URxvt*color13: #FF00FF
421 URxvt*color14: #00FFFF
422 URxvt*color15: #FFFFFF
423 1097
424 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described as 1098 The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
425 "pretty girly": 1099 system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
1100 complete replacements for them :)
426 1101
427 URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1 1102 How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
428 URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1 1103 rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
429 URxvt.background: #0e0e0e 1104 X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
430 URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1 1105 supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
431 URxvt.color0: #000000 1106 font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
432 URxvt.color8: #8b8f93 1107 "-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
433 URxvt.color1: #dc74d1 1108 old libW11 emulation.
434 URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
435 URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
436 URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
437 URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
438 URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
439 URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
440 URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
441 URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
442 URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
443 URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
444 URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
445 1109
446 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour? 1110 At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
447 Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the 1111 multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
448 BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following 1112 likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
449 question) there are two standard values that can be used for
450 Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
451 1113
452 Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the 1114 Character widths are not correct.
453 debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only 1115 urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
454 only correct choice :). 1116 width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
1117 likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
1118 single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
1119 Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
455 1120
456 Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the 1121 The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
457 value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode 1122 possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
458 wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
459 shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
460 CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
461 your stty setting).
462 1123
463 For starting a new rxvt-unicode: 1124 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
464 1125
465 # use Backspace = ^H
466 $ stty erase ^H
467 $ rxvt
468
469 # use Backspace = ^?
470 $ stty erase ^?
471 $ rxvt
472
473 Toggle with "ESC[36h" / "ESC[36l" as documented in rxvt(7).
474
475 For an existing rxvt-unicode:
476
477 # use Backspace = ^H
478 $ stty erase ^H
479 $ echo -n "^[[36h"
480
481 # use Backspace = ^?
482 $ stty erase ^?
483 $ echo -n "^[[36l"
484
485 This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
486 but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
487 value properly reflects that.
488
489 The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
490 problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
491 the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
492 vt100 for Execute (ESC[3~) and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
493
494 Some other Backspace problems:
495
496 some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
497 expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
498 help.
499
500 Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
501
502 I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
503 There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
504 Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
505 option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
506 associated with keysym 0xFF00 - 0xFFFF (function, cursor keys, etc).
507
508 Here's an example for a tn3270 session started using `rxvt -name
509 tn3270'
510
511 !# ----- special uses ------:
512 ! tn3270 login, remap function and arrow keys.
513 tn3270*font: *clean-bold-*-*--15-*
514
515 ! keysym - used by rxvt only
516 ! Delete - ^D
517 tn3270*keysym.0xFFFF: \004
518
519 ! Home - ^A
520 tn3270*keysym.0xFF50: \001
521 ! Left - ^B
522 tn3270*keysym.0xFF51: \002
523 ! Up - ^P
524 tn3270*keysym.0xFF52: \020
525 ! Right - ^F
526 tn3270*keysym.0xFF53: \006
527 ! Down - ^N
528 tn3270*keysym.0xFF54: \016
529 ! End - ^E
530 tn3270*keysym.0xFF57: \005
531
532 ! F1 - F12
533 tn3270*keysym.0xFFBE: \e1
534 tn3270*keysym.0xFFBF: \e2
535 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC0: \e3
536 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC1: \e4
537 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC2: \e5
538 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC3: \e6
539 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC4: \e7
540 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC5: \e8
541 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC6: \e9
542 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC7: \e0
543 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC8: \e-
544 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC9: \e=
545
546 ! map Prior/Next to F7/F8
547 tn3270*keysym.0xFF55: \e7
548 tn3270*keysym.0xFF56: \e8
549
550 I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
551 do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
552 following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
553 KP_Insert == Insert
554 F22 == Print
555 F27 == Home
556 F29 == Prior
557 F33 == End
558 F35 == Next
559
560 Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
561 possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
562 the keys as required for your particular machine.
563
564 How do I distinguish if I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? I
565 need this to decide about setting colors etc.
566 rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
567 can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
568 slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
569 whether or not to use color.
570
571 How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
572 If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
573 insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
574 snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
575 rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
576 these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
577 distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
578
579 Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
580 script snippets:
581
582 # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
583 [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
584 if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
585 stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
586 echo -n '^[Z'
587 read term_id
588 stty icanon echo
589 if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
590 echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
591 read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
592 fi
593 fi
594
595 How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
596 You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
597 /usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
598 Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
599
600 My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
601 Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
602 channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
603 be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
604 FAQs :).
605

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