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Revision 1.16 by root, Wed Jul 13 03:08:57 2005 UTC vs.
Revision 1.71 by root, Wed Dec 31 14:40:24 2014 UTC

1	FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS	1	RXVT-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 two big problems with Gentoo Linux: first, most if not all
		10	Gentoo systems are completely broken (missing or mismatched header
		11	files, broken compiler etc. are just the tip of the iceberg); secondly,
		12	it should be called Gentoo GNU/Linux.
		13
		14	For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo.
		15	Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
		16	unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
		17
		18	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
		19	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
		20	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
		21	should give you tabs:
		22
		23	urxvt -pe tabbed
		24
		25	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
		26
		27	It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
		28	managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
		29	it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
		30	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
		31	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
		32
2	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	33	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
3	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape	34	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
4	sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number.	35	sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When
		36	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
5		37
6	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	38	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
7	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large	39	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
8	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode.	40	you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
9	Before reporting a bug to the original rxvt-unicode author please	41	that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
10	download and install the genuine version	42	design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
11	(<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the	43	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
12	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	44	characters.
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		45
16	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	46	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
17	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	47	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
18	also a bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for	48	bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
19	other users that might encounter the same issue.	49	kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if
		50	full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets
		51	worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
20		52
		53	How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
		54	Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
		55	listening socket and then fork.
		56
		57	How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
		58	If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
		59	the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
		60
		61	#!/bin/sh
		62	urxvtc "$@"
		63	if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
		64	urxvtd -q -o -f
		65	urxvtc "$@"
		66	fi
		67
		68	This tries to create a new terminal, and if fails with exit status 2,
		69	meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and
		70	re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the
		71	existing daemon.
		72
		73	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular
		74	xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.
		75	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
		76	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
		77	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
		78	variable to decide whether or not to use colour.
		79
		80	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
		81	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
		82	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
		83	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
		84	wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
		85	then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
		86	a regular xterm.
		87
		88	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
		89	snippets:
		90
		91	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
		92	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
		93	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
		94	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
		95	printf "\eZ"
		96	read term_id
		97	stty icanon echo
		98	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
		99	printf '\e[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
		100	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
		101	fi
		102	fi
		103
		104	How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
		105	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
		106	one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
		107	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
		108
		109	Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
		110	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
		111	bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
		112	that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
		113	being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
		114	startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
		115	unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
		116	iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
		117
		118	text data bss drs rss filename
		119	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
		120	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
		121
		122	When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
		123	and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
		124	libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
		125
		126	text data bss drs rss filename
		127	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
		128	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
		129
		130	The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
		131	encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
		132	and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
		133	encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
		134	compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
		135	memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
		136	a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
		137	when not used.
		138
		139	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
		140	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
		141	more memory.
		142
		143	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
		144	still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
		145	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
		146	(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
		147	a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
		148	out), it fares extremely well *g*.
		149
		150	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
		151	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
		152	had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
		153	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
		154	even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
		155
		156	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
		157	the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
		158	are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
		159	unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
		160
		161	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
		162	in C that use gobs of memory, and certainly possible to write programs
		163	in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this
		164	is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on
		165	my system with a minimal config:
		166
		167	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		168	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
		169	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
		170	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		171
		172	And here is rxvt-unicode:
		173
		174	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		175	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
		176	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
		177	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
		178	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		179
		180	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
		181	except maybe libX11 :)
		182
		183	Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
		184	I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
		185	First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
		186	so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
		187	may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
		188	rite of passage: ... and you failed.
		189
		190	Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
		191	descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
		192
		193	1. Use transparent mode:
		194
		195	Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
		196	urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
		197
		198	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
		199	support, or you are unable to read. This method requires that the
		200	background-setting program sets the _XROOTPMAP_ID or ESETROOT_PMAP_ID
		201	property. Compatible programs are Esetroot, hsetroot and feh.
		202
		203	2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
		204	to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
		205	your picture with gimp or any other tool:
		206
		207	convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
		208	urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
		209
		210	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack GDK-PixBuf support, or you
		211	are unable to read.
		212
		213	3. Use an ARGB visual:
		214
		215	urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
		216
		217	This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
		218	doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
		219	there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
		220	necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
		221	that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
		222
		223	4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
		224
		225	xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
		226	-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
		227
		228	Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
		229	by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
		230	your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
		231
		232	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
		233	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
		234	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
		235	use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
		236	will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
		237	wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
		238	characters.
		239
		240	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
		241	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
		242	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
		243	way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
		244	wrong in these cases).
		245
		246	It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
		247	or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
		248	using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
		249	work, you might be forced to use a different font.
		250
		251	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
		252	bounding box data is correct.
		253
		254	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
		255	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
		256	("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
		257	make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
		258	rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
		259
		260	URxvt.colorBD: white
		261	URxvt.colorIT: green
		262
		263	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
		264	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
		265	colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
		266	standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
		267	course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
		268	good reasons.
		269
		270	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
		271	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
		272	fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
		273
		274	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
		275	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
		276	same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
		277
		278	printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
		279
		280	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
		281	japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
		282	japanese fonts would only be in your way.
		283
		284	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
		285
		286	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
		287	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
		288	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
		289	Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
		290	enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
		291
		292	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		293	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		294
		295	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
		296	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
		297	is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
		298	antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
		299	memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
		300
		301	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
		302	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
		303	fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
		304	because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
		305	antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
		306	look best that way.
		307
		308	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
		309
		310	What's with this bold/blink stuff?
		311	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
		312	standard foreground colour.
		313
		314	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
		315	blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
		316	"--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
		317
		318	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
		319	foreground/background colours.
		320
		321	color0-7 are the low-intensity colours.
		322
		323	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colours.
		324
		325	I don't like the screen colours. How do I change them?
		326	You can change the screen colours at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
		327	resources (or as long-options).
		328
		329	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
		330	the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
		331
		332	URxvt.color0: #000000
		333	URxvt.color1: #A80000
		334	URxvt.color2: #00A800
		335	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
		336	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
		337	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
		338	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
		339	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
		340
		341	URxvt.color8: #000054
		342	URxvt.color9: #FF0054
		343	URxvt.color10: #00FF54
		344	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
		345	URxvt.color12: #0000FF
		346	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
		347	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
		348	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
		349
		350	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colours.
		351
		352	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
		353	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
		354	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
		355	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
		356	URxvt.color0: #000000
		357	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
		358	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
		359	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
		360	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
		361	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
		362	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
		363	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
		364	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
		365	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
		366	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
		367	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
		368	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
		369	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
		370
		371	They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
		372
		373	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
		374	See next entry.
		375
		376	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
		377	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
		378	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
		379	system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
		380	display.
		381
		382	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
		383	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
		384	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
		385	resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
		386	intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
		387	the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
		388
		389	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
		390	e.g.:
		391
		392	urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
		393
		394	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
		395	If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
		396	font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
		397	search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
		398
		399	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
		400	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
		401	which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
		402
		403	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
		404	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
		405	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
		406	it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
		407	japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
		408	Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
		409	characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
		410	non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
		411	font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
		412	for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
		413
		414	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
		415	list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
		416	preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
		417	first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
		418
		419	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
		420	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
		421	fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
		422	has been designed yet).
		423
		424	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
		425	I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
		426
		427	How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
		428	We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
		429	like:
		430
		431	urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
		432
		433	Why is the cursor now blinking in emacs/vi/...?
		434	This is likely caused by your editor/program's use of the "cvvis"
		435	terminfo capability. Emacs uses it by default, as well as some versions
		436	of vi and possibly other programs.
		437
		438	In emacs, you can switch that off by adding this to your ".emacs" file:
		439
		440	(setq visible-cursor nil)
		441
		442	For other programs, if they do not have an option, your have to remove
		443	the "cvvis" capability from the terminfo description.
		444
		445	When urxvt first added the blinking cursor option, it didn't add a
		446	"cvvis" capability, which served no purpose before. Version 9.21
		447	introduced "cvvis" (and the ability to control blinking independent of
		448	cursor shape) for compatibility with other terminals, which
		449	traditionally use a blinking cursor for "cvvis". This also reflects the
		450	intent of programs such as emacs, who expect "cvvis" to enable a
		451	blinking cursor.
		452
		453	Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
		454	The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
		455	If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
		456	setting:
		457
		458	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
		459
		460	If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
		461	more.
		462
		463	To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
		464	pattern:
		465
		466	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
		467
		468	Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClick* combination also
		469	selects words like the old code.
		470
		471	I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
		472	You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
		473	perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
		474	rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
		475
		476	If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
		477	identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
		478	PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
		479	disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
		480	perl-ext-common resource:
		481
		482	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
		483
		484	This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
		485	extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
		486	scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
		487	combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
		488
		489	URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
		490
		491	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		492	See next entry.
		493
		494	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		495	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		496	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		497	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		498	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		499	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		500
		501	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		502	extension:
		503
		504	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		505
		506	My numeric keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		507	Some Debian GNU/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		508	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		509	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		510	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		511	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		512	report if that helped.
		513
		514	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		515	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		516	correctly, or you specified a preeditType that is not supported by your
		517	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		518	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		519	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		520	will continue without an input method.
		521
		522	In this case either do not specify a preeditType or specify more than
		523	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		524
		525	If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
		526	compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
		527	don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
		528
		529	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		530	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		531	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		532	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		533	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		534	escape character and so on.
		535
		536	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		537	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		538	editors prematurely may leave it active. I've heard that tcsh may use
		539	mouse reporting unless it is otherwise specified. A quick check is to
		540	see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are pressed.
		541
		542	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		543	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		544	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		545	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		546
		547	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		548	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		549	correct choice :).
		550
		551	It is possible to toggle between "^H" and "^?" with the DECBKM private
		552	mode:
		553
		554	# use Backspace = ^H
		555	$ stty erase ^H
		556	$ printf "\e[?67h"
		557
		558	# use Backspace = ^?
		559	$ stty erase ^?
		560	$ printf "\e[?67l"
		561
		562	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		563	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		564	properly reflects that.
		565
		566	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		567	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		568	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		569	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		570
		571	Some other Backspace problems:
		572
		573	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		574	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		575
		576	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		577
		578	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		579	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		580	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		581	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		582	keysyms.
		583
		584	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		585
		586	URxvt.keysym.Prior: \033[5~
		587	URxvt.keysym.Next: \033[6~
		588	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[7~
		589	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[8~
		590	URxvt.keysym.Up: \033[A
		591	URxvt.keysym.Down: \033[B
		592	URxvt.keysym.Right: \033[C
		593	URxvt.keysym.Left: \033[D
		594
		595	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		596
		597	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
		598	KP_Insert == Insert
		599	F22 == Print
		600	F27 == Home
		601	F29 == Prior
		602	F33 == End
		603	F35 == Next
		604
		605	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		606	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		607	keys as required for your particular machine.
		608
		609	Terminal Configuration
		610	Can I see a typical configuration?
		611	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		612	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		613
		614	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		615	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		616	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		617	certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
		618
		619	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
		620	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
		621
		622	These are just for testing stuff.
		623
		624	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		625	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		626
		627	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		628	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		629	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		630	with correct-looking fonts.
		631
		632	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		633	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		634	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		635	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		636	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		637	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		638
		639	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		640	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		641	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		642	write.
		643
		644	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		645	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		646	relevant file and go to the error line number.
		647
		648	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		649	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		650
		651	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		652	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		653	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		654	scrollback buffer.
		655
		656	URxvt.background: #000000
		657	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		658	URxvt.color7: gray90
		659	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		660	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		661	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		662	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		663
		664	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		665	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		666	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		667	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		668
		669	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		670
		671	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		672	but is mostly a nice effect.
		673
		674	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		675	URxvt.loginShell: false
		676	URxvt.meta: ignore
		677	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		678
		679	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		680	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		681
		682	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		683
		684	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		685
		686	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		687
		688	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		689	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		690
		691	URxvt.visualBell: true
		692
		693	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		694
		695	URxvt.insecure: true
		696
		697	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		698
		699	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		700
		701	I once thought this is a great idea.
		702
		703	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		704	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		705	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		706	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		707	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		708	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		709	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		710	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		711	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		712
		713	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		714	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		715	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		716	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		717	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		718	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		719	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		720	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		721	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		722
		723	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		724	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		725	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		726	bold and normal fonts.
		727
		728	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		729	class name. That is because I use different configs for different
		730	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		731	uses these defaults:
		732
		733	IRC*title: IRC
		734	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		735	IRC*saveLines: 0
		736	IRC*mapAlert: true
		737	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		738	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		739	IRC*colorBD: white
		740	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		741	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		742
		743	"Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		744	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		745	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		746	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		747
		748	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		749	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		750	file for different hosts, for example, on my main desktop, I use:
		751
		752	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		753	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		754	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		755	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		756	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		757
		758	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		759	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		760	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		761	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		762	combinations :->
		763
		764	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		765	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		766	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		767	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		768	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		769	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		770
		771	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		772	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		773	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		774
		775	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		776
		777	URxvt.resource: value
		778
		779	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		780	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		781	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		782
21	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	783	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	784	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
23	available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same	785	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
24	problem often arises).	786	arises).
25		787
26	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	788	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
27	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	789	can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
		790	well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
		791	the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
		792	user and root):
28		793
29	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	794	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
30	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	795	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
31		796
32	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	797	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		798	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
33		799
34	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	800	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	801	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
36	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	802	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
37	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	803	colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
38	applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,	804	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
39	though.
40		805
41	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	806	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
42	you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or	807	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
43	use a resource to set it:	808	resource to set it:
44		809
45	URxvt.termName: rxvt	810	URxvt.termName: rxvt
46		811
47	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	812	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
48	replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.	813	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
49		814
		815	nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
		816	This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
		817	nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
		818	your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
		819
50	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.	820	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
51	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it	821	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
52	by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.	822	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
53		823
54	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	824	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		825	See next entry.
		826
55	I need a termcap file entry.	827	I need a termcap file entry.
56	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	828	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
57	operating systems still compile some programs using the	829	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
58	long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)	830	library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
59	and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	831	for "rxvt-unicode".
60		832
61	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	833	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
62	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's	834	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
63	infocmp program like this:	835	program like this:
64		836
65	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	837	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
66		838
67	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	839	Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
		840	generated by the command above.
68		841
69	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
70	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
71	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
72	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
73	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
74	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
75	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
76	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
77	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
78	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
79	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
80	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
81	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
82	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
83	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
84	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
85	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
86	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
87	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
88	:vs=\E[?25h:
89
90	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?	842	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
91	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	843	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
92	decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration	844	decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
93	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file	845	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
94	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	846	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
95		847
96	TERM rxvt-unicode	848	TERM rxvt-unicode
97		849
98	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	850	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
99		851
100	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	852	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
101		853
102	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	854	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
103		855
104	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	856	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		857	See next entry.
		858
105	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	859	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		860	See next entry.
		861
106	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	862	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
107	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	863	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
108	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	864	distributions break rxvt-unicode by setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which
109	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	865	doesn't have these extra features. Unfortunately, some of these
110	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
111	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	866	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
112	so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I	867	you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
113	log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on	868	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
114	how to do this).	869	this).
115		870
116	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	871	Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
117	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
118	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
119	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
120	and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
121	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
122	please report if that helped.
123
124	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?	872	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		873	See next entry.
		874
125	Unicode does not seem to work?	875	Unicode does not seem to work?
126	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	876	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
127	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	877	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
128	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	878	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
129	settings.
130		879
131	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	880	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
132	programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the	881	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
133	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	882	while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
134	locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this	883	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
135	is not going to work.	884	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
136		885
137	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	886	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
138	likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in	887	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
139	your .profile.	888	.profile.
140		889
141	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	890	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
142		891
143	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	892	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
144	not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command	893	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
145	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	894	displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
146	settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).	895	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
147	If it displays something like:	896	something like:
148		897
149	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	898	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
150		899
151	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	900	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
152		901
153	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	902	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
154	then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs	903	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
155	just don't support locales :(	904	support locales :(
156		905
157	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
158	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
159	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
160	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
161	your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
162	want to display.
163
164	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
165	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
166	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
167	don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
168	artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
169	has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
170	indeed look correct.
171
172	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
173	list, e.g.:
174
175	rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
176
177	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
178	font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
179	the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
180	up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
181	X-server.
182
183	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
184	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
185	size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
186
187	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
188	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
189	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
190	is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
191	first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
192	font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
193	Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
194	so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
195	look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
196	still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
197	the japanese font.
198
199	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
200	font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
201	list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
202	japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
203	first.
204
205	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
206	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
207	different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
208	interface for this has been designed yet).
209
210	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
211	"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
212
213	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
214	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
215	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
216	terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
217	Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
218	just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
219	that redraws adjacent characters.
220
221	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
222	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
223	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
224	correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
225	unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
226
227	It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
228	freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
229	might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
230	that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
231
232	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
233	bounding box data is correct.
234
235	On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
236	Seems to be a known bug, read
237	<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
238	following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
239
240	#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
241
242	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
243	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
244	set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
245	by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
246	your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
247	keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
248	then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
249
250	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
251	than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
252
253	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
254	14755
255	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
256	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
257	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
258	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
259	telnet escape character and so on.
260
261	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
262	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
263	settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
264	effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
265	bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
266	the effect:
267
268	URxvt.colorBD: white
269	URxvt.colorIT: green
270
271	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
272	can I fix that?
273	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
274	weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
275	the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
276	of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
277	without very good reasons.
278
279	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
280	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
281	will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
282	features.
283
284	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
285	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
286	in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
287	it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
288	requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
289
290	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
291	nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
292	representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
293	respect to standards.
294
295	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
296	and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
297
298	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
299	apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
300	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
301	wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
302	encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
303	every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
304	anything except the current locale encoding.
305
306	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
307	by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
308	handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
309	doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
310	OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
311	emulator).
312
313	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
314	the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
315	to carry complete replacements for them :)
316
317	I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
318	Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
319	problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
320
321	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
322	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using
323	the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no
324	longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a
325	single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
326	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as
327	the old libW11 emulation.
328
329	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
330	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
331	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
332
333	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?	906	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		907	See next entry.
		908
334	Is there an option to switch encodings?	909	Is there an option to switch encodings?
335	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	910	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
336	and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't	911	specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
337	even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to	912	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
338	terminal I/O.
339		913
340	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	914	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
341	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	915	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
342	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	916	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
343	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.	917	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
344	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	918	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
345	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	919	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
346	locale-independent table under all locales).	920	locale-independent table under all locales).
347		921
348	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	922	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
349	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	923	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
350	in the interpretation of characters.	924	interpretation of characters.
351		925
352	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	926	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
353	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	927	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
354		928
355	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	929	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
356	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	930	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
357	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	931	locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
358	"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.	932	"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
359	"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")	933	"de" or "german") are also common.
360	are also common.
361		934
362	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	935	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
363	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	936	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
364	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	937	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
365	rxvt-unicode.
366		938
367	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	939	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
368	start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.	940	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
369		941
370	Can I switch locales at runtime?	942	Can I switch locales at runtime?
371	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	943	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
372	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	944	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
373		945
374	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	946	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
375		947
376	See also the previous answer.	948	See also the previous answer.
377		949
378	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	950	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
379	one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it	951	locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
380	(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which	952	UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
381	first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:	953	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
382		954
383	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	955	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
384	xjdic -js	956	xjdic -js
385	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	957	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
386		958
387	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	959	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
388	except for some locales where character width differs between	960	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
389	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	961	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
390		962
391	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	963	I have problems getting my input method working.
392	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	964	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
393	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	965	method server.
394	immediately:
395		966
396	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	967	Here is a checklist:
397		968
398	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	969	- Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
399	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	970	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
400	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
401		971
402	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	972	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		973	XIM.
		974	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		975	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
403		976
404	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	977	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
405	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	978	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
406	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	979	*starting* rxvt-unicode.
407	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	980	When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
408	be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:	981	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		982	running with this command:
409		983
410	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	984	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
411	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
412		985
413	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	986	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
414	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest	987	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
415	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	988	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
416		989
417	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	990	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
418		991
419	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	992	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
420	still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not	993	use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
421	be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,	994	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
422	as your input method limits you.	995	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
423		996
424	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.	997	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
425	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by	998	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
426	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory	999	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
427	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering	1000	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
428	at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally	1001	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
429	succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,	1002	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
430	however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides	1003	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
431	cooperate.
432		1004
433	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.	1005	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
434		1006
435	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	1007	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
436	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	1008	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
437	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	1009	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
438	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	1010	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
439	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	1011	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
440	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	1012	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
441	a font for your characters.	1013	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		1014	more in the future) depends on it.
442		1015
443	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	1016	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
444	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will	1017	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
445	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to	1018	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
446	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will	1019	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
447	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"	1020	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
448	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
449		1021
450	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1022	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
451	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1023	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
452	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1024	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
453	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialiasing=false"), which	1025	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
454	saves lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
455		1026
456	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1027	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
457	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1028	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
458	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1029	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
459	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It
460	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
461	thinks they look best that way.
462		1030
463	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1031	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
		1032	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
		1033	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1034	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1035	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1036	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
464		1037
465	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1038	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
466	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1039	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
467	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1040	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
468	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise	1041	result in very little risk.
469	specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
470	or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
471		1042
472	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1043	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
473	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1044	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
474	the standard foreground colour.	1045	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1046	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1047	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
475		1048
476	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1049	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
477	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1050	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
478	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1051	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
479	ignored.
480		1052
481	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1053	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
482	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1054	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
483		1055
484	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1056	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
		1057	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
		1058	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1059	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1060	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1061	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1062	locale encoding.
485		1063
486	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1064	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
		1065	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1066	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1067	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1068	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
487		1069
488	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1070	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
489	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1071	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
490	resources (or as long-options).	1072	complete replacements for them :)
491		1073
492	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1074	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
493	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1075	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
		1076	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
		1077	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
		1078	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
		1079	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
		1080	old libW11 emulation.
494		1081
495	URxvt.color0: #000000	1082	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
496	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1083	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
497	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1084	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
498	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
499	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
500	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
501	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
502	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
503		1085
504	URxvt.color8: #000054	1086	Character widths are not correct.
505	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1087	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
506	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1088	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
507	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1089	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
508	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1090	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
509	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1091	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
510	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
511	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
512		1092
513	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1093	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
514	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1094	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
515		1095
516	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1096	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
517	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
518	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
519	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
520	URxvt.color0: #000000
521	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
522	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
523	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
524	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
525	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
526	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
527	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
528	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
529	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
530	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
531	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
532	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
533	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
534		1097
535	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?
536	Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the
537	listening socket and then fork.
538
539	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
540	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
541	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
542	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
543	Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
544
545	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
546	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
547	only correct choice :).
548
549	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
550	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
551	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
552	shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
553	CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
554	your stty setting).
555
556	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
557
558	# use Backspace = ^H
559	$ stty erase ^H
560	$ rxvt
561
562	# use Backspace = ^?
563	$ stty erase ^?
564	$ rxvt
565
566	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
567
568	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
569
570	# use Backspace = ^H
571	$ stty erase ^H
572	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
573
574	# use Backspace = ^?
575	$ stty erase ^?
576	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
577
578	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
579	but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
580	value properly reflects that.
581
582	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
583	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
584	the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
585	vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
586	termcap/terminfo.
587
588	Some other Backspace problems:
589
590	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
591	expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
592	help.
593
594	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
595
596	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
597	There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
598	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
599	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
600	associated with keysyms.
601
602	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
603	URxvt"
604
605	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
606	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
607	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
608	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
609	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
610	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
611	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
612	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
613	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
614	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
615	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
616	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
617	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
618	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
619	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
620	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
621	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
622	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
623	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
624	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
625
626	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
627
628	I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
629	do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
630	following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
631	KP_Insert == Insert
632	F22 == Print
633	F27 == Home
634	F29 == Prior
635	F33 == End
636	F35 == Next
637
638	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
639	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
640	the keys as required for your particular machine.
641
642	How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
643	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
644	rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
645	can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
646	slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
647	whether or not to use color.
648
649	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
650	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
651	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
652	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
653	rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
654	these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
655	distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
656
657	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
658	script snippets:
659
660	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
661	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
662	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
663	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
664	echo -n '^[Z'
665	read term_id
666	stty icanon echo
667	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
668	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
669	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
670	fi
671	fi
672
673	How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
674	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
675	/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
676	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
677
678	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
679	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
680	channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
681	be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
682	FAQs :).
683

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