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Revision 1.22 by root, Mon Jan 9 01:54:43 2006 UTC vs.
Revision 1.49 by root, Wed Aug 1 18:38:15 2007 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.freenode.net", 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
12	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
13	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
14
15	When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves
16	xft and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11
17	and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so.
18
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?	8	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
78	rxvt-unicode does not directly support tabs. It will work fine with	9	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
79	tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing	10	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
80	programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into	11	should give you tabs:
81	other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming	12
		13	urxvt -pe tabbed
		14
		15	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
		16
		17	It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
		18	managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
		19	it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
82	"Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt)	20	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
83	terminal as an example embedding application.	21	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
84		22
85	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	23	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
86	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape	24	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.	25	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	26	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
89	daemon.
90		27
91	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	28	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
92	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large	29	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
93	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode.	30	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	31	that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
95	download and install the genuine version	32	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	33	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
97	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	34	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		35
101	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	36	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
102	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	37	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	38	bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
104	other users that might encounter the same issue.	39	kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if
		40	full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets
		41	worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
105		42
106	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any	43	How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
107	recommendation?	44	Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
108	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now	45	listening socket and then fork.
109	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
110	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling
111	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl
112	interpreter should be enabled, as important functionality (menus,
113	selection, likely more in the future) depends on it.
114		46
115	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext"	47	How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
116	resources system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will	48	If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
117	result in useful behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory,	49	the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
118	add an empty "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file.	50
119	This will keep the perl interpreter disabled until the user enables	51	#!/bin/sh
		52	urxvtc "$@"
		53	if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
		54	urxvtd -q -o -f
		55	urxvtc "$@"
120	it.	56	fi
121		57
122	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal	58	This tries to create a new terminal, and if fails with exit status 2,
123	one with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with	59	meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and
124	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot	60	re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the
125	of encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely	61	existing daemon.
126	used).
127		62
128	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this	63	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
129	safe?	64	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
130	Likely not. While I honestly try to make it secure, and am probably	65	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
131	not bad at it, I think it is simply unreasonable to expect all of	66	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
132	freetype + fontconfig + xft + xlib + ... + rxvt-unicode itself to	67	variable to decide whether or not to use color.
133	all be secure. Also, rxvt-unicode disables some options when it
134	detects that it runs setuid or setgid, which is not nice.
135		68
136	Elevated privileges are only required for utmp and pty operations on	69	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
137	some systems (for example, GNU/Linux doesn't need any extra	70	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
138	privileges for ptys, but some need it for utmp support). If	71	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
139	rxvt-unicode doesn't support the library/setuid helper that your OS	72	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
140	needs I'll be happy to assist you in implementing support for it.	73	wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
		74	then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
		75	a regular xterm.
141		76
142	So, while setuid/setgid operation is supported and not a problem on	77	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
143	your typical single-user-no-other-logins unix desktop, always	78	snippets:
144	remember that its an awful lot of code, most of which isn't checked
145	for security issues regularly.
146		79
		80	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
		81	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
		82	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
		83	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
		84	echo -n '^[Z'
		85	read term_id
		86	stty icanon echo
		87	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
		88	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
		89	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
		90	fi
		91	fi
		92
		93	How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
		94	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
		95	one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
		96	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
		97
		98	Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
		99	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
		100	bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
		101	that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
		102	being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
		103	startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
		104	unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
		105	iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
		106
		107	text data bss drs rss filename
		108	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
		109	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
		110
		111	When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
		112	and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
		113	libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
		114
		115	text data bss drs rss filename
		116	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
		117	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
		118
		119	The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
		120	encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
		121	and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
		122	encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
		123	compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
		124	memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
		125	a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
		126	when not used.
		127
		128	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
		129	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
		130	more memory.
		131
		132	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
		133	still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
		134	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
		135	(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
		136	a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
		137	out), it fares extremely well *g*.
		138
		139	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
		140	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
		141	had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
		142	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
		143	even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
		144
		145	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
		146	the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
		147	are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
		148	unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
		149
		150	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
		151	in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to write programs in
		152	C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this is
		153	not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on my
		154	system with a minimal config:
		155
		156	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		157	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
		158	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
		159	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		160
		161	And here is rxvt-unicode:
		162
		163	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		164	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
		165	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
		166	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
		167	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		168
		169	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
		170	except maybe libX11 :)
		171
		172	Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
		173	I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
		174	First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
		175	so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
		176	may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
		177	rite of passage: ... and you failed.
		178
		179	Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
		180	descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
		181
		182	1. Use inheritPixmap:
		183
		184	Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
		185	urxvt -ip -tint red -sh 40
		186
		187	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
		188	support, or you are unable to read.
		189
		190	2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
		191	to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
		192	your picture with gimp or any other tool:
		193
		194	convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.xpm
		195	urxvt -pixmap background.xpm -pe automove-background
		196
		197	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack XPM and Perl support, or
		198	you are unable to read.
		199
		200	3. Use an ARGB visual:
		201
		202	urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
		203
		204	This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
		205	doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
		206	there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
		207	necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
		208	that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
		209
		210	4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
		211
		212	xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
		213	-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
		214
		215	Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
		216	by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
		217	your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
		218
		219	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
		220	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
		221	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
		222	use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
		223	will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
		224	wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
		225	characters.
		226
		227	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
		228	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
		229	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
		230	way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
		231	wrong in these cases).
		232
		233	It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
		234	or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
		235	using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
		236	work, you might be forced to use a different font.
		237
		238	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
		239	bounding box data is correct.
		240
		241	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
		242	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
		243	("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
		244	make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
		245	rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
		246
		247	URxvt.colorBD: white
		248	URxvt.colorIT: green
		249
		250	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
		251	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
		252	colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
		253	standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
		254	course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
		255	good reasons.
		256
		257	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
		258	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
		259	fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
		260
		261	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
		262	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
		263	same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
		264
		265	printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
		266
		267	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
		268	japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
		269	japanese fonts would only be in your way.
		270
		271	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
		272
		273	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
		274	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
		275	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
		276	Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
		277	enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
		278
		279	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		280	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		281
		282	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
		283	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
		284	is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
		285	antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
		286	memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
		287
		288	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
		289	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
		290	fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
		291	because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
		292	antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
		293	look best that way.
		294
		295	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
		296
		297	What's with this bold/blink stuff?
		298	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
		299	standard foreground colour.
		300
		301	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
		302	blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard colours.
		303	Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be ignored.
		304
		305	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
		306	foreground/background colors.
		307
		308	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
		309
		310	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
		311
		312	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
		313	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
		314	resources (or as long-options).
		315
		316	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
		317	the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
		318
		319	URxvt.color0: #000000
		320	URxvt.color1: #A80000
		321	URxvt.color2: #00A800
		322	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
		323	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
		324	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
		325	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
		326	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
		327
		328	URxvt.color8: #000054
		329	URxvt.color9: #FF0054
		330	URxvt.color10: #00FF54
		331	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
		332	URxvt.color12: #0000FF
		333	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
		334	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
		335	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
		336
		337	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors.
		338
		339	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
		340	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
		341	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
		342	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
		343	URxvt.color0: #000000
		344	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
		345	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
		346	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
		347	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
		348	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
		349	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
		350	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
		351	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
		352	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
		353	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
		354	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
		355	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
		356	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
		357
		358	They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
		359
		360	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
		361	See next entry.
		362
		363	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
		364	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
		365	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
		366	system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
		367	display.
		368
		369	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
		370	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
		371	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
		372	resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
		373	intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
		374	the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
		375
		376	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
		377	e.g.:
		378
		379	urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
		380
		381	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
		382	If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
		383	font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
		384	search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
		385
		386	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
		387	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
		388	which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
		389
		390	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
		391	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
		392	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
		393	it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
		394	japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
		395	Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
		396	characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
		397	non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
		398	font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
		399	for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
		400
		401	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
		402	list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
		403	preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
		404	first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
		405
		406	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
		407	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
		408	fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
		409	has been designed yet).
		410
		411	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
		412	I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
		413
		414	Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
		415	The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
		416	If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
		417	setting:
		418
		419	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
		420
		421	If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
		422	more.
		423
		424	To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
		425	pattern:
		426
		427	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
		428
		429	Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClik* combination also
		430	selects words like the old code.
		431
		432	I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
		433	You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
		434	perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
		435	rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
		436
		437	If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
		438	identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
		439	PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
		440	disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
		441	perl-ext-common resource:
		442
		443	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
		444
		445	This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
		446	extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
		447	scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
		448	combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
		449
		450	URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
		451
		452	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		453	See next entry.
		454
		455	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		456	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		457	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		458	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		459	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		460	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		461
		462	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		463	extension:
		464
		465	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		466
		467	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		468	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		469	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		470	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		471	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		472	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		473	report if that helped.
		474
		475	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		476	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		477	correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your
		478	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		479	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		480	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		481	will continue without an input method.
		482
		483	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than
		484	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		485
		486	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		487	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		488	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		489	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		490	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		491	escape character and so on.
		492
		493	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		494	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		495	editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. I've heard
		496	that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise specified. A quick
		497	check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are
		498	depressed.
		499
		500	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		501	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		502	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		503	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		504
		505	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		506	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		507	correct choice :).
		508
		509	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
		510	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
		511	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell),
		512	then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in
		513	<termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as your stty
		514	setting).
		515
		516	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
		517
		518	# use Backspace = ^H
		519	$ stty erase ^H
		520	$ urxvt
		521
		522	# use Backspace = ^?
		523	$ stty erase ^?
		524	$ urxvt
		525
		526	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l".
		527
		528	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
		529
		530	# use Backspace = ^H
		531	$ stty erase ^H
		532	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
		533
		534	# use Backspace = ^?
		535	$ stty erase ^?
		536	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
		537
		538	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		539	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		540	properly reflects that.
		541
		542	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		543	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		544	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		545	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		546
		547	Some other Backspace problems:
		548
		549	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		550	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		551
		552	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		553
		554	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		555	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		556	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		557	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		558	keysyms.
		559
		560	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		561
		562	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
		563	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
		564	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
		565	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
		566	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
		567	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
		568	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
		569	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
		570	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
		571	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
		572	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
		573	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
		574	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
		575	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
		576	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
		577	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
		578	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
		579	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
		580	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
		581	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
		582
		583	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		584
		585	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
		586	KP_Insert == Insert
		587	F22 == Print
		588	F27 == Home
		589	F29 == Prior
		590	F33 == End
		591	F35 == Next
		592
		593	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		594	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		595	keys as required for your particular machine.
		596
		597	Terminal Configuration
		598	Can I see a typical configuration?
		599	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		600	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		601
		602	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		603	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		604	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		605	certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
		606
		607	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
		608	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
		609
		610	These are just for testing stuff.
		611
		612	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		613	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		614
		615	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		616	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		617	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		618	with correct-looking fonts.
		619
		620	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		621	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		622	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		623	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		624	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		625	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		626
		627	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		628	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		629	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		630	write.
		631
		632	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		633	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		634	relevant file and go tot he error line number.
		635
		636	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		637	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		638
		639	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		640	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		641	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		642	scrollback buffer.
		643
		644	URxvt.background: #000000
		645	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		646	URxvt.color7: gray90
		647	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		648	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		649	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		650	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		651
		652	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		653	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		654	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		655	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		656
		657	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		658
		659	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		660	but is mostly a nice effect.
		661
		662	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		663	URxvt.loginShell: false
		664	URxvt.meta: ignore
		665	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		666
		667	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		668	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		669
		670	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		671
		672	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		673
		674	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		675
		676	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		677	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		678
		679	URxvt.visualBell: true
		680
		681	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		682
		683	URxvt.insecure: true
		684
		685	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		686
		687	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		688
		689	I once thought this is a great idea.
		690
		691	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		692	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		693	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		694	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		695	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		696	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		697	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		698	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		699	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		700
		701	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		702	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		703	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		704	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		705	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		706	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		707	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		708	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		709	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		710
		711	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		712	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		713	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		714	bold and normal fonts.
		715
		716	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		717	class name. Thats because I use different configs for different
		718	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		719	uses these defaults:
		720
		721	IRC*title: IRC
		722	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		723	IRC*saveLines: 0
		724	IRC*mapAlert: true
		725	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		726	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		727	IRC*colorBD: white
		728	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		729	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		730
		731	"Alt-Shift-1" and "Alt-Shift-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		732	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		733	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		734	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		735
		736	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		737	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		738	file for different hosts, for example, on ym main desktop, I use:
		739
		740	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		741	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		742	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		743	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		744	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		745
		746	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		747	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		748	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		749	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		750	combinations :->
		751
		752	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		753	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		754	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		755	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		756	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		757	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		758
		759	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		760	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		761	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		762
		763	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		764
		765	URxvt.resource: value
		766
		767	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		768	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		769	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		770
147	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	771	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
148	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely	772	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
149	available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same	773	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
150	problem often arises).	774	arises).
151		775
152	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	776	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
153	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	777	can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp and works as user and
		778	admin):
154		779
155	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	780	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
156	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	781	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
157		782
158	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	783	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,
159		784
		785	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		786	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
		787
160	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	788	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
161	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of	789	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
162	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	790	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
163	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	791	colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
164	applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,	792	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
165	though.
166		793
167	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	794	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
168	you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or	795	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
169	use a resource to set it:	796	resource to set it:
170		797
171	URxvt.termName: rxvt	798	URxvt.termName: rxvt
172		799
173	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	800	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
174	replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.	801	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
175		802
176	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.	803	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
177	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it	804	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
178	by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.	805	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
179		806
180	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	807	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		808	See next entry.
		809
181	I need a termcap file entry.	810	I need a termcap file entry.
182	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	811	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
183	operating systems still compile some programs using the	812	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
184	long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)	813	library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
185	and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	814	for "rxvt-unicode".
186		815
187	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	816	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
188	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's	817	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
189	infocmp program like this:	818	program like this:
190		819
191	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	820	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
192		821
193	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	822	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:
194		823
195	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\	824	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
196	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\	825	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
197	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\	826	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
198	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\	827	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
199	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\	828	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
200	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\	829	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
201	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\	830	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
202	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\	831	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
203	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\	832	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
204	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\	833	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
205	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\	834	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
206	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\	835	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
207	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\	836	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
208	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\	837	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
209	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\	838	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
210	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\	839	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
211	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\	840	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
212	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\	841	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
213	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\	842	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
214	:vs=\E[?25h:	843	:vs=\E[?25h:
215		844
216	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?	845	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
217	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	846	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
218	decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration	847	decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
219	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file	848	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
220	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	849	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
221		850
222	TERM rxvt-unicode	851	TERM rxvt-unicode
223		852
224	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	853	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
225		854
226	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	855	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
227		856
228	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	857	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
229		858
230	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	859	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		860	See next entry.
		861
231	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	862	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		863	See next entry.
		864
232	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	865	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
233	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	866	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
234	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	867	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
235	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	868	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
236	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)	869	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
237	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	870	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
238	so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I	871	you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
239	log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on	872	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
240	how to do this).	873	this).
241		874
242	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	875	Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
243	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
244	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
245	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
246	and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
247	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
248	please report if that helped.
249
250	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?	876	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		877	See next entry.
		878
251	Unicode does not seem to work?	879	Unicode does not seem to work?
252	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	880	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
253	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	881	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
254	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	882	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
255	settings.
256		883
257	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	884	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
258	programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the	885	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
259	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	886	while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
260	locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this	887	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
261	is not going to work.	888	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
262		889
263	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	890	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
264	likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in	891	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
265	your .profile.	892	.profile.
266		893
267	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	894	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
268		895
269	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	896	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
270	not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command	897	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
271	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	898	displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
272	settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).	899	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
273	If it displays something like:	900	something like:
274		901
275	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	902	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
276		903
277	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	904	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
278		905
279	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	906	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
280	then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs	907	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
281	just don't support locales :(	908	support locales :(
282		909
283	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
284	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
285	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
286	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
287	your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
288	want to display.
289
290	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
291	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
292	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
293	don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
294	artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
295	has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
296	indeed look correct.
297
298	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
299	list, e.g.:
300
301	rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
302
303	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
304	font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
305	the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
306	up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
307	X-server.
308
309	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
310	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
311	size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
312
313	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
314	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
315	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
316	is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
317	first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
318	font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
319	Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
320	so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
321	look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
322	still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
323	the japanese font.
324
325	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
326	font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
327	list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
328	japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
329	first.
330
331	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
332	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
333	different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
334	interface for this has been designed yet).
335
336	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
337	"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
338
339	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
340	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
341	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
342	terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
343	Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
344	just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
345	that redraws adjacent characters.
346
347	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
348	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
349	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
350	correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
351	unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
352
353	It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
354	freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
355	might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
356	that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
357
358	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
359	bounding box data is correct.
360
361	On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
362	Seems to be a known bug, read
363	<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
364	following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
365
366	#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
367
368	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
369	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
370	set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
371	by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
372	your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
373	keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
374	then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
375
376	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
377	than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
378
379	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
380	14755
381	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
382	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
383	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
384	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
385	telnet escape character and so on.
386
387	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
388	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
389	settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
390	effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
391	bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
392	the effect:
393
394	URxvt.colorBD: white
395	URxvt.colorIT: green
396
397	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
398	can I fix that?
399	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
400	weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
401	the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
402	of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
403	without very good reasons.
404
405	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
406	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
407	will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
408	features.
409
410	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
411	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
412	in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
413	it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
414	requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
415
416	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
417	nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
418	representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
419	respect to standards.
420
421	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
422	and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
423
424	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
425	apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
426	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
427	wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
428	encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
429	every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
430	anything except the current locale encoding.
431
432	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
433	by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
434	handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
435	doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
436	OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
437	emulator).
438
439	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
440	the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
441	to carry complete replacements for them :)
442
443	I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
444	Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
445	problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
446
447	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
448	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using
449	the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no
450	longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a
451	single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
452	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as
453	the old libW11 emulation.
454
455	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
456	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
457	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
458
459	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?	910	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		911	See next entry.
		912
460	Is there an option to switch encodings?	913	Is there an option to switch encodings?
461	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	914	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
462	and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't	915	specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
463	even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to	916	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
464	terminal I/O.
465		917
466	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	918	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
467	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	919	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
468	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	920	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
469	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.	921	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
470	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	922	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
471	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	923	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
472	locale-independent table under all locales).	924	locale-independent table under all locales).
473		925
474	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	926	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
475	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	927	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
476	in the interpretation of characters.	928	interpretation of characters.
477		929
478	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	930	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
479	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	931	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
480		932
481	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	933	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
482	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	934	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
483	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	935	locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
484	"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.	936	"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
485	"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")	937	"de" or "german") are also common.
486	are also common.
487		938
488	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	939	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
489	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	940	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
490	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	941	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
491	rxvt-unicode.
492		942
493	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	943	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
494	start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.	944	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
495		945
496	Can I switch locales at runtime?	946	Can I switch locales at runtime?
497	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	947	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
498	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	948	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
499		949
500	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	950	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
501		951
502	See also the previous answer.	952	See also the previous answer.
503		953
504	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	954	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
505	one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it	955	locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
506	(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which	956	UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
507	first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:	957	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
508		958
509	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	959	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
510	xjdic -js	960	xjdic -js
511	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	961	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
512		962
513	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	963	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
514	except for some locales where character width differs between	964	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
515	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	965	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
516		966
517	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	967	I have problems getting my input method working.
518	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	968	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
519	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	969	method server.
520	immediately:
521		970
522	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	971	Here is a checklist:
523		972
524	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	973	- Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
525	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	974	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
526	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
527		975
528	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	976	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		977	XIM.
		978	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		979	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
529		980
530	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	981	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
531	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	982	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
532	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	983	*starting* rxvt-unicode.
533	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	984	When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
534	be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:	985	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		986	running with this command:
535		987
536	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	988	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
537	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
538		989
		990	*
		991
539	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	992	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
540	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest	993	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
541	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	994	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
542		995
543	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	996	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
544		997
545	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	998	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
546	still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not	999	use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
547	be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,	1000	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
548	as your input method limits you.	1001	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
549		1002
550	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.	1003	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
551	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by	1004	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
552	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory	1005	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
553	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering	1006	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
554	at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally	1007	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
555	succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,	1008	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
556	however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides	1009	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
557	cooperate.
558		1010
559	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.	1011	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
560		1012
561	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	1013	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
562	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	1014	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
563	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	1015	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large
564	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	1016	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but
565	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	1017	unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to
566	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	1018	the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine
567	a font for your characters.	1019	version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce
		1020	the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific
		1021	to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian
		1022	Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
568		1023
569	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	1024	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
570	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will	1025	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a
571	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to	1026	bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users
572	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will	1027	that might encounter the same issue.
573	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
574	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
575		1028
576	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1029	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
577	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1030	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
578	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1031	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
579	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves	1032	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
580	lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.	1033	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
		1034	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		1035	more in the future) depends on it.
581		1036
582	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1037	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" resources
583	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1038	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
584	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1039	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
585	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It	1040	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
586	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author	1041	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
587	thinks they look best that way.
588		1042
589	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1043	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
		1044	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
		1045	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
		1046	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
590		1047
591	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1048	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
592	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1049	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
593	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1050	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
594	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
595	specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
596	or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
597		1051
598	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1052	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
599	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1053	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
600	the standard foreground colour.	1054	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1055	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1056	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1057	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
601		1058
602	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1059	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
603	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1060	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
604	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1061	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
605	ignored.	1062	result in very little risk.
606		1063
607	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1064	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
608	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1065	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
		1066	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1067	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1068	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
609		1069
610	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1070	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
		1071	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
		1072	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
611		1073
612	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1074	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
		1075	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
613		1076
614	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1077	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
615	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1078	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
616	resources (or as long-options).	1079	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1080	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1081	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1082	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1083	locale encoding.
617		1084
618	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1085	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
619	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1086	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1087	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1088	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1089	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
620		1090
621	URxvt.color0: #000000	1091	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
622	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1092	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
623	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1093	complete replacements for them :)
624	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
625	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
626	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
627	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
628	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
629		1094
630	URxvt.color8: #000054	1095	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
631	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1096	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
632	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1097	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
633	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1098	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
634	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1099	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
635	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1100	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
636	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF	1101	old libW11 emulation.
637	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
638		1102
639	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1103	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
640	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1104	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
		1105	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
641		1106
642	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1107	Character widths are not correct.
643	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1	1108	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
644	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e	1109	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
645	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1	1110	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
646	URxvt.color0: #000000	1111	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
647	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93	1112	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
648	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
649	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
650	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
651	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
652	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
653	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
654	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
655	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
656	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
657	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
658	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
659	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
660		1113
661	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?	1114	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
662	Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the	1115	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
663	listening socket and then fork.
664		1116
665	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?	1117	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
666	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
667	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
668	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
669	Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
670		1118
671	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
672	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
673	only correct choice :).
674
675	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
676	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
677	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
678	shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
679	CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
680	your stty setting).
681
682	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
683
684	# use Backspace = ^H
685	$ stty erase ^H
686	$ rxvt
687
688	# use Backspace = ^?
689	$ stty erase ^?
690	$ rxvt
691
692	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
693
694	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
695
696	# use Backspace = ^H
697	$ stty erase ^H
698	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
699
700	# use Backspace = ^?
701	$ stty erase ^?
702	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
703
704	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
705	but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
706	value properly reflects that.
707
708	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
709	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
710	the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
711	vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
712	termcap/terminfo.
713
714	Some other Backspace problems:
715
716	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
717	expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
718	help.
719
720	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
721
722	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
723	There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
724	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
725	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
726	associated with keysyms.
727
728	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
729	URxvt"
730
731	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
732	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
733	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
734	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
735	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
736	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
737	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
738	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
739	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
740	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
741	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
742	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
743	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
744	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
745	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
746	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
747	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
748	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
749	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
750	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
751
752	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
753
754	I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
755	do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
756	following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
757	KP_Insert == Insert
758	F22 == Print
759	F27 == Home
760	F29 == Prior
761	F33 == End
762	F35 == Next
763
764	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
765	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
766	the keys as required for your particular machine.
767
768	How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
769	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
770	rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
771	can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
772	slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
773	whether or not to use color.
774
775	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
776	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
777	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
778	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
779	rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
780	these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
781	distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
782
783	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
784	script snippets:
785
786	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
787	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
788	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
789	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
790	echo -n '^[Z'
791	read term_id
792	stty icanon echo
793	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
794	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
795	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
796	fi
797	fi
798
799	How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
800	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
801	/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
802	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
803
804	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
805	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
806	channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
807	be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
808	FAQs :).
809

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