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Revision 1.21 by root, Mon Jan 2 15:11:05 2006 UTC vs.
Revision 1.74 by root, Sat Jul 3 04:04:12 2021 UTC

1	FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS	1	RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
2	Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?	2	Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
3	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause	3	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
4	extra bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you	4	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.libera.chat", channel
5	can see that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables	5	"#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
6	always being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS)	6	interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
7	after startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is
8	a bit unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding
9	conversion, iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
10		7
11	text data bss drs rss filename	8	I use Gentoo, and I have a problem...
12	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything	9	There are two big problems with Gentoo Linux: first, most if not all
13	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything	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.
14		13
15	When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves	14	For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo.
16	xft and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11	15	Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
17	and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so.	16	unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
18		17
19	text data bss drs rss filename
20	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
21	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
22
23	The very large size of the text section is explained by the
24	east-asian encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but
25	nothing else and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core
26	fonts that use those encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k
27	emergency buffer that my c++ compiler allocates (but of course
28	doesn't use unless you are out of memory). Also, using an xft font
29	instead of a core font immediately adds a few megabytes of RSS. Xft
30	indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even when not used.
31
32	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
33	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
34	more memory.
35
36	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k),
37	this still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
38	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or
39	konsole (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after
40	exit, plus half aminute of startup time, including the hundreds of
41	warnings it spits out), it fares extremely well *g*.
42
43	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
44	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is:
45	I had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
46	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me).
47	Put even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
48
49	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but
50	in the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability
51	limits are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale
52	support and unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than
53	C++ itself.
54
55	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write
56	programs in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to
57	write programs in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large
58	libraries, but this is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is
59	what rxvt links against on my system with a minimal config:
60
61	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
62	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
63	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
64	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
65
66	And here is rxvt-unicode:
67
68	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
69	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
70	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
71	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
72	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
73
74	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in
75	statically), except maybe libX11 :)
76
77	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?	18	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
78	rxvt-unicode does not directly support tabs. It will work fine with	19	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
79	tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing	20	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
80	programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into	21	should give you tabs:
81	other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming	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
82	"Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt)	30	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
83	terminal as an example embedding application.	31	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
84		32
85	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	33	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
86	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
87	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
88	When using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the	36	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
89	daemon.
90		37
91	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	38	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
92	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
93	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
94	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
95	download and install the genuine version	42	design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
96	(<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the	43	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
97	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	44	characters.
98	to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the
99	Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
100		45
101	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	46	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
102	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	47	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
103	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
104	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.
105		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	Another option is to use systemd socket-based activation (see
		74	systemd.socket(5)). Here is an example of a service unit file and of a
		75	socket unit file for the default socket path:
		76
		77	urxvtd.service
		78	[Unit]
		79	Description=urxvt terminal daemon
		80	Requires=urxvtd.socket
		81
		82	[Service]
		83	ExecStart=/usr/bin/urxvtd -o
		84
		85	urxvtd.socket
		86	[Unit]
		87	Description=urxvt terminal daemon socket
		88
		89	[Socket]
		90	ListenStream=%h/.urxvt/urxvtd-%H
		91
		92	[Install]
		93	WantedBy=sockets.target
		94
		95	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular
		96	xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.
		97	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
		98	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
		99	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
		100	variable to decide whether or not to use colour.
		101
		102	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
		103	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
		104	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
		105	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
		106	wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
		107	then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
		108	a regular xterm.
		109
		110	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
		111	snippets:
		112
		113	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
		114	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
		115	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
		116	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
		117	printf "\eZ"
		118	read term_id
		119	stty icanon echo
		120	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
		121	printf '\e[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
		122	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
		123	fi
		124	fi
		125
		126	How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
		127	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
		128	one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
		129	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
		130
		131	Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
		132	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
		133	bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
		134	that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
		135	being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
		136	startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
		137	unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
		138	iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
		139
		140	text data bss drs rss filename
		141	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
		142	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
		143
		144	When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
		145	and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
		146	libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
		147
		148	text data bss drs rss filename
		149	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
		150	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
		151
		152	The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
		153	encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
		154	and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
		155	encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
		156	compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
		157	memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
		158	a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
		159	when not used.
		160
		161	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
		162	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
		163	more memory.
		164
		165	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
		166	still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
		167	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
		168	(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
		169	a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
		170	out), it fares extremely well *g*.
		171
		172	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
		173	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
		174	had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
		175	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
		176	even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
		177
		178	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
		179	the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
		180	are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
		181	unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
		182
		183	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
		184	in C that use gobs of memory, and certainly possible to write programs
		185	in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this
		186	is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on
		187	my system with a minimal config:
		188
		189	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		190	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
		191	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
		192	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		193
		194	And here is rxvt-unicode:
		195
		196	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		197	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
		198	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
		199	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
		200	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		201
		202	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
		203	except maybe libX11 :)
		204
		205	Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
		206	I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
		207	First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
		208	so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
		209	may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
		210	rite of passage: ... and you failed.
		211
		212	Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
		213	descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
		214
		215	1. Use transparent mode:
		216
		217	Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
		218	urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
		219
		220	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
		221	support, or you are unable to read. This method requires that the
		222	background-setting program sets the _XROOTPMAP_ID or ESETROOT_PMAP_ID
		223	property. Compatible programs are Esetroot, hsetroot and feh.
		224
		225	2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
		226	to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
		227	your picture with gimp or any other tool:
		228
		229	convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
		230	urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
		231
		232	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack GDK-PixBuf support, or you
		233	are unable to read.
		234
		235	3. Use an ARGB visual:
		236
		237	urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
		238
		239	This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
		240	doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
		241	there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
		242	necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
		243	that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
		244
		245	4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
		246
		247	xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
		248	-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
		249
		250	Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
		251	by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
		252	your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
		253
		254	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
		255	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
		256	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
		257	use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
		258	will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
		259	wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
		260	characters.
		261
		262	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
		263	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
		264	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
		265	way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
		266	wrong in these cases).
		267
		268	It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
		269	or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
		270	using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
		271	work, you might be forced to use a different font.
		272
		273	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
		274	bounding box data is correct.
		275
		276	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
		277	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
		278	("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
		279	make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
		280	rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
		281
		282	URxvt.colorBD: white
		283	URxvt.colorIT: green
		284
		285	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
		286	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
		287	colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
		288	standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
		289	course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
		290	good reasons.
		291
		292	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
		293	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
		294	fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
		295
		296	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
		297	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
		298	same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
		299
		300	printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
		301
		302	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
		303	japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
		304	japanese fonts would only be in your way.
		305
		306	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
		307
		308	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
		309	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
		310	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
		311	Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
		312	enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
		313
		314	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		315	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		316
		317	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
		318	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
		319	is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
		320	antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
		321	memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
		322
		323	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
		324	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
		325	fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
		326	because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
		327	antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
		328	look best that way.
		329
		330	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
		331
		332	What's with this bold/blink stuff?
		333	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
		334	standard foreground colour.
		335
		336	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
		337	blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
		338	"--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
		339
		340	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
		341	foreground/background colours.
		342
		343	color0-7 are the low-intensity colours.
		344
		345	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colours.
		346
		347	I don't like the screen colours. How do I change them?
		348	You can change the screen colours at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
		349	resources (or as long-options).
		350
		351	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
		352	the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
		353
		354	URxvt.color0: #000000
		355	URxvt.color1: #A80000
		356	URxvt.color2: #00A800
		357	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
		358	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
		359	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
		360	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
		361	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
		362
		363	URxvt.color8: #000054
		364	URxvt.color9: #FF0054
		365	URxvt.color10: #00FF54
		366	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
		367	URxvt.color12: #0000FF
		368	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
		369	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
		370	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
		371
		372	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colours.
		373
		374	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
		375	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
		376	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
		377	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
		378	URxvt.color0: #000000
		379	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
		380	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
		381	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
		382	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
		383	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
		384	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
		385	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
		386	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
		387	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
		388	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
		389	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
		390	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
		391	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
		392
		393	They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
		394
		395	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
		396	See next entry.
		397
		398	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
		399	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
		400	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
		401	system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
		402	display.
		403
		404	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
		405	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
		406	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
		407	resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
		408	intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
		409	the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
		410
		411	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
		412	e.g.:
		413
		414	urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
		415
		416	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
		417	If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
		418	font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
		419	search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
		420
		421	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
		422	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
		423	which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
		424
		425	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
		426	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
		427	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
		428	it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
		429	japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
		430	Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
		431	characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
		432	non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
		433	font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
		434	for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
		435
		436	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
		437	list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
		438	preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
		439	first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
		440
		441	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
		442	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
		443	fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
		444	has been designed yet).
		445
		446	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
		447	I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
		448
		449	How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
		450	We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
		451	like:
		452
		453	urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
		454
		455	Why is the cursor now blinking in emacs/vi/...?
		456	This is likely caused by your editor/program's use of the "cvvis"
		457	terminfo capability. Emacs uses it by default, as well as some versions
		458	of vi and possibly other programs.
		459
		460	In emacs, you can switch that off by adding this to your ".emacs" file:
		461
		462	(setq visible-cursor nil)
		463
		464	For other programs, if they do not have an option, your have to remove
		465	the "cvvis" capability from the terminfo description.
		466
		467	When urxvt first added the blinking cursor option, it didn't add a
		468	"cvvis" capability, which served no purpose before. Version 9.21
		469	introduced "cvvis" (and the ability to control blinking independent of
		470	cursor shape) for compatibility with other terminals, which
		471	traditionally use a blinking cursor for "cvvis". This also reflects the
		472	intent of programs such as emacs, who expect "cvvis" to enable a
		473	blinking cursor.
		474
		475	Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
		476	The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
		477	If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
		478	setting:
		479
		480	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
		481
		482	If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
		483	more.
		484
		485	To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
		486	pattern:
		487
		488	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
		489
		490	Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClick* combination also
		491	selects words like the old code.
		492
		493	I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
		494	You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
		495	perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
		496	rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
		497
		498	If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
		499	identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
		500	PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
		501	disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
		502	perl-ext-common resource:
		503
		504	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
		505
		506	This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
		507	extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
		508	scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
		509	combination by adding a keysym resource that binds the desired
		510	combination to the "start" action of "searchable-scrollback" and another
		511	one that binds M-s to the "builtin:" action:
		512
		513	URxvt.keysym.CM-s: searchable-scrollback:start
		514	URxvt.keysym.M-s: builtin:
		515
		516	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		517	See next entry.
		518
		519	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		520	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		521	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		522	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		523	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		524	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		525
		526	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		527	extension:
		528
		529	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		530
		531	My numeric keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		532	Some Debian GNU/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		533	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		534	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		535	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		536	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		537	report if that helped.
		538
		539	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		540	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		541	correctly, or you specified a preeditType that is not supported by your
		542	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		543	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		544	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		545	will continue without an input method.
		546
		547	In this case either do not specify a preeditType or specify more than
		548	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		549
		550	If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
		551	compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
		552	don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
		553
		554	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		555	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		556	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		557	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		558	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		559	escape character and so on.
		560
		561	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		562	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		563	editors prematurely may leave it active. I've heard that tcsh may use
		564	mouse reporting unless it is otherwise specified. A quick check is to
		565	see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are pressed.
		566
		567	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		568	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		569	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		570	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		571
		572	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		573	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		574	correct choice :).
		575
		576	It is possible to toggle between "^H" and "^?" with the DECBKM private
		577	mode:
		578
		579	# use Backspace = ^H
		580	$ stty erase ^H
		581	$ printf "\e[?67h"
		582
		583	# use Backspace = ^?
		584	$ stty erase ^?
		585	$ printf "\e[?67l"
		586
		587	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		588	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		589	properly reflects that.
		590
		591	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		592	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		593	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		594	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		595
		596	Some other Backspace problems:
		597
		598	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		599	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		600
		601	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		602
		603	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		604	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		605	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		606	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		607	keysyms.
		608
		609	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		610
		611	URxvt.keysym.Prior: \033[5~
		612	URxvt.keysym.Next: \033[6~
		613	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[7~
		614	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[8~
		615	URxvt.keysym.Up: \033[A
		616	URxvt.keysym.Down: \033[B
		617	URxvt.keysym.Right: \033[C
		618	URxvt.keysym.Left: \033[D
		619
		620	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		621
		622	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
		623	KP_Insert == Insert
		624	F22 == Print
		625	F27 == Home
		626	F29 == Prior
		627	F33 == End
		628	F35 == Next
		629
		630	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		631	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		632	keys as required for your particular machine.
		633
		634	Terminal Configuration
		635	Can I see a typical configuration?
		636	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		637	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		638
		639	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		640	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		641	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		642	certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
		643
		644	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
		645	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/some/path
		646
		647	These are just for testing stuff.
		648
		649	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		650	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		651
		652	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		653	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		654	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		655	with correct-looking fonts.
		656
		657	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		658	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		659	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		660	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		661	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		662	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		663
		664	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		665	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		666	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		667	write.
		668
		669	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		670	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		671	relevant file and go to the error line number.
		672
		673	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		674	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		675
		676	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		677	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		678	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		679	scrollback buffer.
		680
		681	URxvt.background: #000000
		682	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		683	URxvt.color7: gray90
		684	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		685	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		686	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		687	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		688
		689	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		690	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		691	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		692	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		693
		694	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		695
		696	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		697	but is mostly a nice effect.
		698
		699	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		700	URxvt.loginShell: false
		701	URxvt.meta: ignore
		702	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		703
		704	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		705	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		706
		707	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		708
		709	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		710
		711	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		712
		713	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		714	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		715
		716	URxvt.visualBell: true
		717
		718	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		719
		720	URxvt.insecure: true
		721
		722	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		723
		724	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		725
		726	I once thought this is a great idea.
		727
		728	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		729	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		730	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		731	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		732	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		733	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		734	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		735	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		736	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		737
		738	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		739	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		740	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		741	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		742	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		743	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		744	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		745	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		746	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		747
		748	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		749	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		750	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		751	bold and normal fonts.
		752
		753	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		754	class name. That is because I use different configs for different
		755	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		756	uses these defaults:
		757
		758	IRC*title: IRC
		759	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		760	IRC*saveLines: 0
		761	IRC*mapAlert: true
		762	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		763	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		764	IRC*colorBD: white
		765	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		766	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		767
		768	"Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		769	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		770	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		771	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		772
		773	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		774	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		775	file for different hosts, for example, on my main desktop, I use:
		776
		777	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		778	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		779	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		780	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		781	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		782
		783	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		784	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		785	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		786	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		787	combinations :->
		788
		789	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		790	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		791	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		792	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		793	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		794	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		795
		796	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		797	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		798	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		799
		800	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		801
		802	URxvt.resource: value
		803
		804	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		805	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		806	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		807
106	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	808	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
107	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely	809	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
108	available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same	810	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
109	problem often arises).	811	arises).
110		812
111	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	813	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
112	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	814	can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
		815	well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
		816	the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
		817	user and root):
113		818
114	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	819	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
115	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	820	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
116		821
117	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	822	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		823	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
118		824
119	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	825	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
120	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of	826	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
121	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	827	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
122	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	828	colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
123	applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,	829	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
124	though.
125		830
126	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	831	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
127	you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or	832	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
128	use a resource to set it:	833	resource to set it:
129		834
130	URxvt.termName: rxvt	835	URxvt.termName: rxvt
131		836
132	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	837	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
133	replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.	838	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
134		839
		840	nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
		841	This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
		842	nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
		843	your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
		844
135	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.	845	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
136	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it	846	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
137	by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.	847	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
138		848
139	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	849	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		850	See next entry.
		851
140	I need a termcap file entry.	852	I need a termcap file entry.
141	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	853	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
142	operating systems still compile some programs using the	854	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
143	long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)	855	library (Fedora's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry for
144	and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	856	"rxvt-unicode".
145		857
146	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	858	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
147	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's	859	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
148	infocmp program like this:	860	program like this:
149		861
150	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	862	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
151		863
152	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	864	Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
		865	generated by the command above.
153		866
154	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
155	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
156	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
157	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
158	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
159	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
160	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
161	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
162	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
163	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
164	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
165	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
166	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
167	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
168	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
169	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
170	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
171	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
172	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
173	:vs=\E[?25h:
174
175	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?	867	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
176	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	868	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
177	decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration	869	decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
178	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file	870	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
179	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	871	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
180		872
181	TERM rxvt-unicode	873	TERM rxvt-unicode
182		874
183	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	875	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
184		876
185	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	877	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
186		878
187	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	879	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
188		880
189	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	881	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		882	See next entry.
		883
190	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	884	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		885	See next entry.
		886
191	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	887	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
192	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	888	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
193	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	889	distributions break rxvt-unicode by setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which
194	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	890	doesn't have these extra features. Unfortunately, some of these
195	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
196	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	891	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
197	so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I	892	you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
198	log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on	893	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
199	how to do this).	894	this).
200		895
201	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	896	Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
202	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
203	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
204	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
205	and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
206	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
207	please report if that helped.
208
209	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?	897	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		898	See next entry.
		899
210	Unicode does not seem to work?	900	Unicode does not seem to work?
211	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	901	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
212	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	902	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
213	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	903	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
214	settings.
215		904
216	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	905	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
217	programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the	906	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
218	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	907	while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
219	locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this	908	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
220	is not going to work.	909	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
221		910
222	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	911	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
223	likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in	912	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
224	your .profile.	913	.profile.
225		914
226	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	915	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
227		916
228	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	917	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
229	not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command	918	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
230	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	919	displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
231	settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).	920	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
232	If it displays something like:	921	something like:
233		922
234	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	923	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
235		924
236	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	925	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
237		926
238	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	927	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
239	then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs	928	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
240	just don't support locales :(	929	support locales :(
241		930
242	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
243	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
244	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
245	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
246	your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
247	want to display.
248
249	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
250	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
251	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
252	don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
253	artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
254	has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
255	indeed look correct.
256
257	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
258	list, e.g.:
259
260	rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
261
262	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
263	font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
264	the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
265	up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
266	X-server.
267
268	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
269	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
270	size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
271
272	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
273	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
274	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
275	is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
276	first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
277	font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
278	Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
279	so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
280	look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
281	still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
282	the japanese font.
283
284	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
285	font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
286	list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
287	japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
288	first.
289
290	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
291	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
292	different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
293	interface for this has been designed yet).
294
295	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
296	"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
297
298	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
299	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
300	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
301	terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
302	Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
303	just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
304	that redraws adjacent characters.
305
306	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
307	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
308	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
309	correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
310	unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
311
312	It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
313	freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
314	might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
315	that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
316
317	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
318	bounding box data is correct.
319
320	On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
321	Seems to be a known bug, read
322	<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
323	following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
324
325	#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
326
327	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
328	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
329	set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
330	by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
331	your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
332	keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
333	then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
334
335	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
336	than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
337
338	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
339	14755
340	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
341	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
342	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
343	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
344	telnet escape character and so on.
345
346	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
347	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
348	settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
349	effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
350	bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
351	the effect:
352
353	URxvt.colorBD: white
354	URxvt.colorIT: green
355
356	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
357	can I fix that?
358	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
359	weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
360	the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
361	of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
362	without very good reasons.
363
364	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
365	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
366	will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
367	features.
368
369	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
370	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
371	in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
372	it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
373	requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
374
375	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
376	nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
377	representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
378	respect to standards.
379
380	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
381	and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
382
383	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
384	apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
385	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
386	wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
387	encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
388	every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
389	anything except the current locale encoding.
390
391	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
392	by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
393	handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
394	doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
395	OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
396	emulator).
397
398	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
399	the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
400	to carry complete replacements for them :)
401
402	I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
403	Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
404	problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
405
406	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
407	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using
408	the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no
409	longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a
410	single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
411	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as
412	the old libW11 emulation.
413
414	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
415	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
416	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
417
418	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?	931	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		932	See next entry.
		933
419	Is there an option to switch encodings?	934	Is there an option to switch encodings?
420	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	935	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
421	and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't	936	specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
422	even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to	937	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
423	terminal I/O.
424		938
425	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	939	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
426	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	940	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
427	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	941	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
428	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.	942	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
429	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	943	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
430	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	944	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
431	locale-independent table under all locales).	945	locale-independent table under all locales).
432		946
433	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	947	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
434	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	948	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
435	in the interpretation of characters.	949	interpretation of characters.
436		950
437	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	951	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
438	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	952	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
439		953
440	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	954	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
441	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	955	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
442	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	956	locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
443	"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.	957	"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
444	"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")	958	"de" or "german") are also common.
445	are also common.
446		959
447	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	960	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
448	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	961	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
449	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	962	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
450	rxvt-unicode.
451		963
452	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	964	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
453	start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.	965	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
454		966
455	Can I switch locales at runtime?	967	Can I switch locales at runtime?
456	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	968	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
457	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	969	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
458		970
459	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	971	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
460		972
461	See also the previous answer.	973	See also the previous answer.
462		974
463	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	975	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
464	one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it	976	locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
465	(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which	977	UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
466	first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:	978	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
467		979
468	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	980	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
469	xjdic -js	981	xjdic -js
470	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	982	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
471		983
472	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	984	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
473	except for some locales where character width differs between	985	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
474	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	986	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
475		987
476	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	988	I have problems getting my input method working.
477	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	989	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
478	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	990	method server.
479	immediately:
480		991
481	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	992	Here is a checklist:
482		993
483	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	994	- Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
484	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	995	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
485	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
486		996
487	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	997	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		998	XIM.
		999	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		1000	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
488		1001
489	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	1002	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
490	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	1003	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
491	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	1004	*starting* rxvt-unicode.
492	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	1005	When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
493	be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:	1006	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		1007	running with this command:
494		1008
495	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	1009	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
496	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
497		1010
498	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	1011	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
499	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest	1012	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
500	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	1013	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
501		1014
502	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	1015	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
503		1016
504	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	1017	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
505	still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not	1018	use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
506	be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,	1019	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
507	as your input method limits you.	1020	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
508		1021
509	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.	1022	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
510	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by	1023	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
511	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory	1024	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
512	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering	1025	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
513	at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally	1026	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
514	succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,	1027	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
515	however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides	1028	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
516	cooperate.
517		1029
518	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.	1030	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
519		1031
520	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	1032	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
521	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	1033	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
522	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	1034	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
523	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	1035	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
524	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	1036	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
525	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	1037	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
526	a font for your characters.	1038	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		1039	more in the future) depends on it.
527		1040
528	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	1041	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
529	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will	1042	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
530	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to	1043	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
531	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will	1044	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
532	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"	1045	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
533	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
534		1046
535	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1047	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
536	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1048	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
537	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1049	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
538	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves	1050	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
539	lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
540		1051
541	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1052	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
542	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1053	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
543	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1054	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
544	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It
545	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
546	thinks they look best that way.
547		1055
548	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1056	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
		1057	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
		1058	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1059	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1060	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1061	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
549		1062
550	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1063	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
551	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1064	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
552	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1065	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
553	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise	1066	result in very little risk.
554	specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
555	or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
556		1067
557	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1068	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
558	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1069	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
559	the standard foreground colour.	1070	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1071	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1072	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
560		1073
561	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1074	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
562	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1075	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
563	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1076	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
564	ignored.
565		1077
566	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1078	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
567	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1079	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
568		1080
569	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1081	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
		1082	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
		1083	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1084	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1085	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1086	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1087	locale encoding.
570		1088
571	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1089	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
		1090	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1091	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1092	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1093	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
572		1094
573	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1095	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
574	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1096	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
575	resources (or as long-options).	1097	complete replacements for them :)
576		1098
577	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1099	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
578	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1100	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
		1101	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
		1102	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
		1103	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
		1104	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
		1105	old libW11 emulation.
579		1106
580	URxvt.color0: #000000	1107	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
581	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1108	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
582	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1109	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
583	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
584	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
585	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
586	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
587	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
588		1110
589	URxvt.color8: #000054	1111	Character widths are not correct.
590	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1112	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
591	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1113	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
592	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1114	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
593	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1115	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
594	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1116	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
595	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
596	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
597		1117
598	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1118	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
599	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1119	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
600		1120
601	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1121	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
602	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
603	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
604	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
605	URxvt.color0: #000000
606	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
607	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
608	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
609	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
610	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
611	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
612	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
613	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
614	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
615	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
616	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
617	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
618	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
619		1122
620	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?
621	Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the
622	listening socket and then fork.
623
624	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
625	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
626	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
627	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
628	Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
629
630	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
631	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
632	only correct choice :).
633
634	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
635	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
636	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
637	shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
638	CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
639	your stty setting).
640
641	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
642
643	# use Backspace = ^H
644	$ stty erase ^H
645	$ rxvt
646
647	# use Backspace = ^?
648	$ stty erase ^?
649	$ rxvt
650
651	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
652
653	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
654
655	# use Backspace = ^H
656	$ stty erase ^H
657	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
658
659	# use Backspace = ^?
660	$ stty erase ^?
661	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
662
663	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
664	but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
665	value properly reflects that.
666
667	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
668	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
669	the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
670	vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
671	termcap/terminfo.
672
673	Some other Backspace problems:
674
675	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
676	expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
677	help.
678
679	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
680
681	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
682	There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
683	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
684	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
685	associated with keysyms.
686
687	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
688	URxvt"
689
690	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
691	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
692	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
693	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
694	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
695	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
696	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
697	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
698	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
699	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
700	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
701	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
702	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
703	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
704	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
705	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
706	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
707	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
708	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
709	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
710
711	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
712
713	I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
714	do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
715	following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
716	KP_Insert == Insert
717	F22 == Print
718	F27 == Home
719	F29 == Prior
720	F33 == End
721	F35 == Next
722
723	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
724	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
725	the keys as required for your particular machine.
726
727	How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
728	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
729	rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
730	can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
731	slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
732	whether or not to use color.
733
734	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
735	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
736	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
737	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
738	rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
739	these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
740	distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
741
742	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
743	script snippets:
744
745	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
746	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
747	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
748	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
749	echo -n '^[Z'
750	read term_id
751	stty icanon echo
752	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
753	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
754	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
755	fi
756	fi
757
758	How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
759	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
760	/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
761	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
762
763	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
764	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
765	channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
766	be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
767	FAQs :).
768

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