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Revision 1.24 by root, Wed Jan 11 19:55:33 2006 UTC vs.
Revision 1.61 by root, Fri Oct 15 21:38:31 2010 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	8	I use Gentoo, and I have a problem...
12	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything	9	There are three big problems with Gentoo Linux: first of all, most if
13	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything	10	not all Gentoo systems are completely broken (missing or mismatched
		11	header files, broken compiler etc. are just the tip of the iceberg);
		12	secondly, the Gentoo maintainer thinks it is a good idea to add broken
		13	patches to the code; and lastly, it should be called Gentoo GNU/Linux.
14		14
15	When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves	15	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	16	Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
17	and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so.	17	unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
18		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 a minute 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?	19	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
78	rxvt-unicode does not directly support tabs. It will work fine with	20	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
79	tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing	21	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
80	programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into	22	should give you tabs:
81	other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming	23
		24	urxvt -pe tabbed
		25
		26	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
		27
		28	It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
		29	managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
		30	it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
82	"Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt)	31	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
83	terminal as an example embedding application.	32	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
84		33
85	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	34	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
86	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape	35	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
87	sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number.	36	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	37	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
89	daemon.
90		38
91	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	39	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
92	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large	40	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
93	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode.	41	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	42	that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
95	download and install the genuine version	43	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	44	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
97	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	45	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		46
101	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	47	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
102	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	48	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	49	bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
104	other users that might encounter the same issue.	50	kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if
		51	full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets
		52	worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
105		53
106	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any	54	How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
107	recommendation?	55	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	56	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		57
115	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext"	58	How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
116	resources system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will	59	If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
117	result in useful behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory,	60	the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
118	add an empty "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file.	61
119	This will keep the perl interpreter disabled until the user enables	62	#!/bin/sh
		63	urxvtc "$@"
		64	if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
		65	urxvtd -q -o -f
		66	urxvtc "$@"
120	it.	67	fi
121		68
122	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal	69	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	70	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	71	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	72	existing daemon.
126	used).
127		73
128	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this	74	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular
129	safe?	75	xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.
130	Likely not. While I honestly try to make it secure, and am probably	76	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
131	not bad at it, I think it is simply unreasonable to expect all of	77	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
132	freetype + fontconfig + xft + xlib + perl + ... + rxvt-unicode	78	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
133	itself to all be secure. Also, rxvt-unicode disables some options	79	variable to decide whether or not to use colour.
134	when it detects that it runs setuid or setgid, which is not nice.
135	Besides, with the embedded perl interpreter the possibility for
136	security problems easily multiplies.
137		80
138	Elevated privileges are only required for utmp and pty operations on	81	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
139	some systems (for example, GNU/Linux doesn't need any extra	82	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
140	privileges for ptys, but some need it for utmp support). It is	83	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
141	planned to mvoe this into a forked handler process, but this is not	84	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
142	yet done.	85	wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
		86	then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
		87	a regular xterm.
143		88
144	So, while setuid/setgid operation is supported and not a problem on	89	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
145	your typical single-user-no-other-logins unix desktop, always	90	snippets:
146	remember that its an awful lot of code, most of which isn't checked
147	for security issues regularly.
148		91
		92	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
		93	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
		94	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
		95	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
		96	echo -n '^[Z'
		97	read term_id
		98	stty icanon echo
		99	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
		100	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
		101	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
		102	fi
		103	fi
		104
		105	How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
		106	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
		107	one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
		108	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
		109
		110	Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
		111	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
		112	bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
		113	that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
		114	being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
		115	startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
		116	unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
		117	iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
		118
		119	text data bss drs rss filename
		120	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
		121	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
		122
		123	When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
		124	and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
		125	libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
		126
		127	text data bss drs rss filename
		128	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
		129	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
		130
		131	The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
		132	encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
		133	and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
		134	encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
		135	compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
		136	memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
		137	a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
		138	when not used.
		139
		140	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
		141	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
		142	more memory.
		143
		144	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
		145	still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
		146	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
		147	(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
		148	a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
		149	out), it fares extremely well *g*.
		150
		151	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
		152	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
		153	had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
		154	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
		155	even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
		156
		157	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
		158	the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
		159	are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
		160	unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
		161
		162	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
		163	in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to write programs in
		164	C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this is
		165	not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on my
		166	system with a minimal config:
		167
		168	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		169	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
		170	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
		171	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		172
		173	And here is rxvt-unicode:
		174
		175	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		176	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
		177	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
		178	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
		179	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		180
		181	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
		182	except maybe libX11 :)
		183
		184	Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
		185	I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
		186	First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
		187	so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
		188	may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
		189	rite of passage: ... and you failed.
		190
		191	Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
		192	descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
		193
		194	1. Use transparent mode:
		195
		196	Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
		197	urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
		198
		199	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
		200	support, or you are unable to read.
		201
		202	2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
		203	to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
		204	your picture with gimp or any other tool:
		205
		206	convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
		207	urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
		208
		209	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack libAfterImage or
		210	GDK-PixBuf support, or you are unable to read.
		211
		212	3. Use an ARGB visual:
		213
		214	urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
		215
		216	This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
		217	doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
		218	there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
		219	necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
		220	that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
		221
		222	4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
		223
		224	xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
		225	-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
		226
		227	Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
		228	by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
		229	your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
		230
		231	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
		232	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
		233	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
		234	use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
		235	will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
		236	wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
		237	characters.
		238
		239	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
		240	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
		241	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
		242	way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
		243	wrong in these cases).
		244
		245	It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
		246	or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
		247	using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
		248	work, you might be forced to use a different font.
		249
		250	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
		251	bounding box data is correct.
		252
		253	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
		254	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
		255	("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
		256	make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
		257	rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
		258
		259	URxvt.colorBD: white
		260	URxvt.colorIT: green
		261
		262	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
		263	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
		264	colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
		265	standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
		266	course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
		267	good reasons.
		268
		269	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
		270	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
		271	fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
		272
		273	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
		274	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
		275	same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
		276
		277	printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
		278
		279	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
		280	japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
		281	japanese fonts would only be in your way.
		282
		283	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
		284
		285	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
		286	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
		287	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
		288	Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
		289	enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
		290
		291	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		292	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		293
		294	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
		295	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
		296	is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
		297	antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
		298	memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
		299
		300	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
		301	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
		302	fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
		303	because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
		304	antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
		305	look best that way.
		306
		307	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
		308
		309	What's with this bold/blink stuff?
		310	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
		311	standard foreground colour.
		312
		313	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
		314	blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
		315	"--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
		316
		317	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
		318	foreground/background colours.
		319
		320	color0-7 are the low-intensity colours.
		321
		322	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colours.
		323
		324	I don't like the screen colours. How do I change them?
		325	You can change the screen colours at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
		326	resources (or as long-options).
		327
		328	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
		329	the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
		330
		331	URxvt.color0: #000000
		332	URxvt.color1: #A80000
		333	URxvt.color2: #00A800
		334	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
		335	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
		336	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
		337	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
		338	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
		339
		340	URxvt.color8: #000054
		341	URxvt.color9: #FF0054
		342	URxvt.color10: #00FF54
		343	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
		344	URxvt.color12: #0000FF
		345	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
		346	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
		347	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
		348
		349	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colours.
		350
		351	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
		352	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
		353	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
		354	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
		355	URxvt.color0: #000000
		356	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
		357	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
		358	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
		359	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
		360	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
		361	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
		362	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
		363	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
		364	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
		365	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
		366	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
		367	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
		368	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
		369
		370	They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
		371
		372	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
		373	See next entry.
		374
		375	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
		376	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
		377	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
		378	system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
		379	display.
		380
		381	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
		382	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
		383	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
		384	resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
		385	intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
		386	the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
		387
		388	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
		389	e.g.:
		390
		391	urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
		392
		393	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
		394	If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
		395	font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
		396	search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
		397
		398	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
		399	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
		400	which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
		401
		402	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
		403	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
		404	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
		405	it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
		406	japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
		407	Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
		408	characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
		409	non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
		410	font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
		411	for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
		412
		413	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
		414	list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
		415	preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
		416	first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
		417
		418	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
		419	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
		420	fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
		421	has been designed yet).
		422
		423	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
		424	I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
		425
		426	How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
		427	We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
		428	like:
		429
		430	urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
		431
		432	Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
		433	The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
		434	If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
		435	setting:
		436
		437	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
		438
		439	If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
		440	more.
		441
		442	To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
		443	pattern:
		444
		445	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
		446
		447	Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClick* combination also
		448	selects words like the old code.
		449
		450	I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
		451	You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
		452	perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
		453	rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
		454
		455	If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
		456	identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
		457	PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
		458	disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
		459	perl-ext-common resource:
		460
		461	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
		462
		463	This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
		464	extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
		465	scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
		466	combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
		467
		468	URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
		469
		470	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		471	See next entry.
		472
		473	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		474	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		475	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		476	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		477	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		478	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		479
		480	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		481	extension:
		482
		483	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		484
		485	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		486	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		487	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		488	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		489	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		490	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		491	report if that helped.
		492
		493	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		494	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		495	correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your
		496	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		497	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		498	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		499	will continue without an input method.
		500
		501	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than
		502	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		503
		504	If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
		505	compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
		506	don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
		507
		508	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		509	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		510	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		511	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		512	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		513	escape character and so on.
		514
		515	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		516	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		517	editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. I've heard
		518	that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise specified. A quick
		519	check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are
		520	depressed.
		521
		522	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		523	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		524	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		525	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		526
		527	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		528	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		529	correct choice :).
		530
		531	It is possible to toggle between "^H" and "^?" with the DECBKM private
		532	mode:
		533
		534	# use Backspace = ^H
		535	$ stty erase ^H
		536	$ echo -n "^[[?67h"
		537
		538	# use Backspace = ^?
		539	$ stty erase ^?
		540	$ echo -n "^[[?67l"
		541
		542	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		543	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		544	properly reflects that.
		545
		546	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		547	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		548	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		549	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		550
		551	Some other Backspace problems:
		552
		553	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		554	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		555
		556	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		557
		558	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		559	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		560	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		561	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		562	keysyms.
		563
		564	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		565
		566	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
		567	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
		568	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
		569	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
		570	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
		571	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
		572	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
		573	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
		574	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
		575	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
		576	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
		577	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
		578	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
		579	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
		580	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
		581	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
		582	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
		583	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
		584	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
		585	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
		586
		587	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		588
		589	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
		590	KP_Insert == Insert
		591	F22 == Print
		592	F27 == Home
		593	F29 == Prior
		594	F33 == End
		595	F35 == Next
		596
		597	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		598	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		599	keys as required for your particular machine.
		600
		601	Terminal Configuration
		602	Can I see a typical configuration?
		603	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		604	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		605
		606	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		607	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		608	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		609	certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
		610
		611	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
		612	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
		613
		614	These are just for testing stuff.
		615
		616	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		617	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		618
		619	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		620	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		621	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		622	with correct-looking fonts.
		623
		624	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		625	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		626	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		627	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		628	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		629	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		630
		631	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		632	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		633	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		634	write.
		635
		636	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		637	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		638	relevant file and go to the error line number.
		639
		640	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		641	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		642
		643	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		644	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		645	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		646	scrollback buffer.
		647
		648	URxvt.background: #000000
		649	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		650	URxvt.color7: gray90
		651	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		652	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		653	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		654	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		655
		656	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		657	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		658	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		659	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		660
		661	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		662
		663	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		664	but is mostly a nice effect.
		665
		666	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		667	URxvt.loginShell: false
		668	URxvt.meta: ignore
		669	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		670
		671	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		672	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		673
		674	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		675
		676	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		677
		678	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		679
		680	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		681	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		682
		683	URxvt.visualBell: true
		684
		685	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		686
		687	URxvt.insecure: true
		688
		689	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		690
		691	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		692
		693	I once thought this is a great idea.
		694
		695	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		696	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		697	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		698	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		699	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		700	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		701	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		702	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		703	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		704
		705	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		706	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		707	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		708	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		709	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		710	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		711	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		712	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		713	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		714
		715	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		716	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		717	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		718	bold and normal fonts.
		719
		720	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		721	class name. That is because I use different configs for different
		722	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		723	uses these defaults:
		724
		725	IRC*title: IRC
		726	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		727	IRC*saveLines: 0
		728	IRC*mapAlert: true
		729	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		730	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		731	IRC*colorBD: white
		732	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		733	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		734
		735	"Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		736	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		737	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		738	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		739
		740	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		741	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		742	file for different hosts, for example, on my main desktop, I use:
		743
		744	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		745	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		746	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		747	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		748	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		749
		750	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		751	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		752	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		753	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		754	combinations :->
		755
		756	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		757	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		758	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		759	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		760	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		761	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		762
		763	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		764	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		765	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		766
		767	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		768
		769	URxvt.resource: value
		770
		771	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		772	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		773	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		774
149	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	775	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
150	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely	776	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
151	available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same	777	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
152	problem often arises).	778	arises).
153		779
154	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	780	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
155	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	781	can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
		782	well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
		783	the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
		784	user and root):
156		785
157	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	786	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
158	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	787	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
159		788
160	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	789	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		790	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
161		791
162	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	792	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
163	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of	793	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
164	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	794	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
165	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	795	colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
166	applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,	796	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
167	though.
168		797
169	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	798	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
170	you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or	799	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
171	use a resource to set it:	800	resource to set it:
172		801
173	URxvt.termName: rxvt	802	URxvt.termName: rxvt
174		803
175	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	804	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
176	replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.	805	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
177		806
		807	nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
		808	This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
		809	nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
		810	your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
		811
178	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.	812	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
179	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it	813	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
180	by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.	814	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
181		815
182	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	816	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		817	See next entry.
		818
183	I need a termcap file entry.	819	I need a termcap file entry.
184	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	820	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
185	operating systems still compile some programs using the	821	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
186	long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)	822	library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
187	and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	823	for "rxvt-unicode".
188		824
189	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	825	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
190	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's	826	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
191	infocmp program like this:	827	program like this:
192		828
193	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	829	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
194		830
195	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	831	Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
		832	generated by the command above.
196		833
197	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
198	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
199	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
200	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
201	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
202	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
203	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
204	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
205	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
206	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
207	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
208	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
209	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
210	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
211	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
212	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
213	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
214	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
215	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
216	:vs=\E[?25h:
217
218	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?	834	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
219	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	835	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
220	decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration	836	decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
221	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file	837	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
222	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	838	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
223		839
224	TERM rxvt-unicode	840	TERM rxvt-unicode
225		841
226	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	842	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
227		843
228	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	844	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
229		845
230	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	846	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
231		847
232	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	848	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		849	See next entry.
		850
233	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	851	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		852	See next entry.
		853
234	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	854	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
235	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	855	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
236	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	856	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
237	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	857	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
238	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)	858	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
239	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	859	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
240	so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I	860	you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
241	log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on	861	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
242	how to do this).	862	this).
243		863
244	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	864	Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
245	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
246	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
247	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
248	and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
249	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
250	please report if that helped.
251
252	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?	865	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		866	See next entry.
		867
253	Unicode does not seem to work?	868	Unicode does not seem to work?
254	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	869	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
255	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	870	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
256	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	871	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
257	settings.
258		872
259	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	873	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
260	programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the	874	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
261	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	875	while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
262	locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this	876	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
263	is not going to work.	877	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
264		878
265	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	879	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
266	likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in	880	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
267	your .profile.	881	.profile.
268		882
269	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	883	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
270		884
271	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	885	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
272	not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command	886	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
273	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	887	displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
274	settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).	888	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
275	If it displays something like:	889	something like:
276		890
277	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	891	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
278		892
279	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	893	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
280		894
281	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	895	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
282	then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs	896	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
283	just don't support locales :(	897	support locales :(
284		898
285	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
286	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
287	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
288	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
289	your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
290	want to display.
291
292	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
293	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
294	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
295	don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
296	artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
297	has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
298	indeed look correct.
299
300	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
301	list, e.g.:
302
303	rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
304
305	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
306	font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
307	the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
308	up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
309	X-server.
310
311	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
312	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
313	size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
314
315	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
316	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
317	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
318	is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
319	first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
320	font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
321	Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
322	so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
323	look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
324	still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
325	the japanese font.
326
327	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
328	font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
329	list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
330	japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
331	first.
332
333	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
334	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
335	different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
336	interface for this has been designed yet).
337
338	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
339	"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
340
341	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
342	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
343	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
344	terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
345	Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
346	just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
347	that redraws adjacent characters.
348
349	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
350	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
351	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
352	correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
353	unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
354
355	It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
356	freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
357	might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
358	that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
359
360	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
361	bounding box data is correct.
362
363	On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
364	Seems to be a known bug, read
365	<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
366	following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
367
368	#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
369
370	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
371	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
372	set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
373	by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
374	your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
375	keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
376	then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
377
378	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
379	than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
380
381	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
382	14755
383	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
384	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
385	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
386	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
387	telnet escape character and so on.
388
389	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
390	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
391	settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
392	effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
393	bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
394	the effect:
395
396	URxvt.colorBD: white
397	URxvt.colorIT: green
398
399	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
400	can I fix that?
401	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
402	weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
403	the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
404	of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
405	without very good reasons.
406
407	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
408	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
409	will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
410	features.
411
412	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
413	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
414	in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
415	it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
416	requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
417
418	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
419	nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
420	representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
421	respect to standards.
422
423	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
424	and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
425
426	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
427	apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
428	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
429	wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
430	encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
431	every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
432	anything except the current locale encoding.
433
434	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
435	by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
436	handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
437	doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
438	OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
439	emulator).
440
441	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
442	the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
443	to carry complete replacements for them :)
444
445	I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
446	Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
447	problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
448
449	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
450	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using
451	the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no
452	longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a
453	single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
454	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as
455	the old libW11 emulation.
456
457	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
458	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
459	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
460
461	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?	899	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		900	See next entry.
		901
462	Is there an option to switch encodings?	902	Is there an option to switch encodings?
463	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	903	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
464	and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't	904	specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
465	even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to	905	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
466	terminal I/O.
467		906
468	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	907	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
469	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	908	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
470	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	909	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
471	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.	910	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
472	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	911	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
473	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	912	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
474	locale-independent table under all locales).	913	locale-independent table under all locales).
475		914
476	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	915	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
477	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	916	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
478	in the interpretation of characters.	917	interpretation of characters.
479		918
480	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	919	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
481	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	920	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
482		921
483	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	922	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
484	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	923	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
485	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	924	locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
486	"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.	925	"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
487	"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")	926	"de" or "german") are also common.
488	are also common.
489		927
490	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	928	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
491	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	929	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
492	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	930	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
493	rxvt-unicode.
494		931
495	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	932	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
496	start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.	933	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
497		934
498	Can I switch locales at runtime?	935	Can I switch locales at runtime?
499	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	936	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
500	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	937	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
501		938
502	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	939	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
503		940
504	See also the previous answer.	941	See also the previous answer.
505		942
506	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	943	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
507	one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it	944	locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
508	(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which	945	UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
509	first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:	946	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
510		947
511	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	948	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
512	xjdic -js	949	xjdic -js
513	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	950	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
514		951
515	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	952	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
516	except for some locales where character width differs between	953	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
517	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	954	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
518		955
519	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	956	I have problems getting my input method working.
520	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	957	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
521	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	958	method server.
522	immediately:
523		959
524	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	960	Here is a checklist:
525		961
526	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	962	- Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
527	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	963	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
528	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
529		964
530	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	965	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		966	XIM.
		967	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		968	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
531		969
532	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	970	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
533	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	971	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
534	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	972	*starting* rxvt-unicode.
535	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	973	When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
536	be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:	974	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		975	running with this command:
537		976
538	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	977	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
539	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
540		978
		979
		980
541	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	981	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
542	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest	982	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
543	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	983	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
544		984
545	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	985	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
546		986
547	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	987	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
548	still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not	988	use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
549	be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,	989	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
550	as your input method limits you.	990	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
551		991
552	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.	992	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
553	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by	993	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
554	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory	994	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
555	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering	995	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
556	at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally	996	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
557	succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,	997	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
558	however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides	998	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
559	cooperate.
560		999
561	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.	1000	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
562		1001
563	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	1002	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
564	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	1003	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
565	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	1004	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large
566	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	1005	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but
567	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	1006	unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to
568	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	1007	the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine
569	a font for your characters.	1008	version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce
		1009	the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific
		1010	to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian
		1011	Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
570		1012
571	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	1013	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
572	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will	1014	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a
573	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to	1015	bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users
574	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will	1016	that might encounter the same issue.
575	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
576	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
577		1017
578	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1018	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
579	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1019	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
580	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1020	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
581	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves	1021	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
582	lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.	1022	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
		1023	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		1024	more in the future) depends on it.
583		1025
584	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1026	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
585	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1027	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
586	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1028	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
587	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It	1029	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
588	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author	1030	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
589	thinks they look best that way.
590		1031
591	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1032	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
		1033	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
		1034	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
		1035	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
592		1036
593	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1037	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
594	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1038	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
595	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1039	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
596	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
597	specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
598	or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
599		1040
600	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1041	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
601	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1042	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
602	the standard foreground colour.	1043	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1044	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1045	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1046	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
603		1047
604	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1048	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
605	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1049	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
606	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1050	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
607	ignored.	1051	result in very little risk.
608		1052
609	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1053	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
610	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1054	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
		1055	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1056	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1057	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
611		1058
612	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1059	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
		1060	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
		1061	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
613		1062
614	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1063	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
		1064	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
615		1065
616	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1066	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
617	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1067	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
618	resources (or as long-options).	1068	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1069	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1070	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1071	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1072	locale encoding.
619		1073
620	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1074	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
621	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1075	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1076	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1077	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1078	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
622		1079
623	URxvt.color0: #000000	1080	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
624	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1081	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
625	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1082	complete replacements for them :)
626	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
627	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
628	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
629	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
630	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
631		1083
632	URxvt.color8: #000054	1084	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
633	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1085	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
634	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1086	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
635	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1087	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
636	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1088	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
637	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1089	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
638	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF	1090	old libW11 emulation.
639	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
640		1091
641	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1092	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
642	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1093	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
		1094	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
643		1095
644	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1096	Character widths are not correct.
645	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1	1097	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
646	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e	1098	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
647	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1	1099	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
648	URxvt.color0: #000000	1100	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
649	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93	1101	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
650	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
651	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
652	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
653	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
654	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
655	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
656	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
657	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
658	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
659	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
660	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
661	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
662		1102
663	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?	1103	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
664	Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the	1104	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
665	listening socket and then fork.
666		1105
667	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?	1106	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
668	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
669	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
670	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
671	Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
672		1107
673	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
674	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
675	only correct choice :).
676
677	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
678	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
679	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
680	shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
681	CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
682	your stty setting).
683
684	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
685
686	# use Backspace = ^H
687	$ stty erase ^H
688	$ rxvt
689
690	# use Backspace = ^?
691	$ stty erase ^?
692	$ rxvt
693
694	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
695
696	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
697
698	# use Backspace = ^H
699	$ stty erase ^H
700	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
701
702	# use Backspace = ^?
703	$ stty erase ^?
704	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
705
706	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
707	but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
708	value properly reflects that.
709
710	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
711	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
712	the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
713	vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
714	termcap/terminfo.
715
716	Some other Backspace problems:
717
718	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
719	expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
720	help.
721
722	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
723
724	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
725	There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
726	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
727	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
728	associated with keysyms.
729
730	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
731	URxvt"
732
733	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
734	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
735	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
736	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
737	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
738	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
739	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
740	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
741	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
742	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
743	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
744	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
745	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
746	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
747	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
748	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
749	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
750	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
751	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
752	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
753
754	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
755
756	I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
757	do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
758	following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
759	KP_Insert == Insert
760	F22 == Print
761	F27 == Home
762	F29 == Prior
763	F33 == End
764	F35 == Next
765
766	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
767	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
768	the keys as required for your particular machine.
769
770	How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
771	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
772	rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
773	can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
774	slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
775	whether or not to use color.
776
777	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
778	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
779	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
780	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
781	rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
782	these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
783	distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
784
785	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
786	script snippets:
787
788	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
789	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
790	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
791	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
792	echo -n '^[Z'
793	read term_id
794	stty icanon echo
795	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
796	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
797	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
798	fi
799	fi
800
801	How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
802	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
803	/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
804	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
805
806	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
807	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
808	channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
809	be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
810	FAQs :).
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