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Revision 1.58 by root, Tue Mar 16 00:54:46 2010 UTC

1FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 1RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
2 I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I 2 Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
3 change/disable it? 3 My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
4 You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the 4 Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
5 perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps 5 "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
6 rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory. 6 interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
7 7
8 If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to 8 I use Gentoo, and I have a problem...
9 identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the 9 There are three big problems with Gentoo Linux: first of all, most if
10 section PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the rxvtperl(3) manpage. For 10 not all Gentoo systems are completely broken (missing or mismatched
11 example, to disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify 11 header files, broken compiler etc. are just the tip of the iceberg);
12 this perl-ext-common resource: 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.
13 14
14 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup 15 For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo.
16 Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
17 unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
15 18
16 This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
17 extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
18 scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any
19 other combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback
20 resource:
21
22 URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
23
24 Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
25 I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause
26 extra bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you
27 can see that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables
28 always being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS)
29 after startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is
30 a bit unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding
31 conversion, iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
32
33 text data bss drs rss filename
34 98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
35 188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
36
37 When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves
38 xft and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11
39 and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so.
40
41 text data bss drs rss filename
42 163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
43 1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
44
45 The very large size of the text section is explained by the
46 east-asian encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but
47 nothing else and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core
48 fonts that use those encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k
49 emergency buffer that my c++ compiler allocates (but of course
50 doesn't use unless you are out of memory). Also, using an xft font
51 instead of a core font immediately adds a few megabytes of RSS. Xft
52 indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even when not used.
53
54 Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
55 one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
56 more memory.
57
58 Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k),
59 this still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
60 gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or
61 konsole (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after
62 exit, plus half a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of
63 warnings it spits out), it fares extremely well *g*.
64
65 Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
66 Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is:
67 I had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
68 fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me).
69 Put even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
70
71 My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but
72 in the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability
73 limits are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale
74 support and unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than
75 C++ itself.
76
77 Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write
78 programs in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to
79 write programs in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large
80 libraries, but this is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is
81 what rxvt links against on my system with a minimal config:
82
83 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
84 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
85 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
86 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
87
88 And here is rxvt-unicode:
89
90 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
91 libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
92 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
93 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
94 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
95
96 No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in
97 statically), except maybe libX11 :)
98
99 Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode? 19 Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
100 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
101 tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing 21 simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
102 programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into 22 should give you tabs:
103 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
104 "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt) 31 or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
105 terminal as an example embedding application. 32 (murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
106 33
107 How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using? 34 How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
108 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
109 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
110 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.
111 daemon.
112 38
113 I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem... 39 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
114 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
115 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
116 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
117 download and install the genuine version 43 design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
118 (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the 44 loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
119 problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific 45 characters.
120 to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the
121 Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
122 46
123 For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and 47 Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
124 probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's 48 scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
125 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
126 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.
127 53
128 I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any 54 How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
129 recommendation? 55 Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
130 You should build one binary with the default options. configure now 56 listening socket and then fork.
131 enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
132 runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling
133 them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl
134 interpreter should be enabled, as important functionality (menus,
135 selection, likely more in the future) depends on it.
136 57
137 You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" 58 How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
138 resources system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will 59 If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
139 result in useful behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, 60 the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
140 add an empty "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. 61
141 This will keep the perl interpreter disabled until the user enables 62 #!/bin/sh
63 urxvtc "$@"
64 if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
65 urxvtd -q -o -f
66 urxvtc "$@"
142 it. 67 fi
143 68
144 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,
145 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
146 "--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
147 of encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely 72 existing daemon.
148 used).
149 73
150 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 xterm? I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
151 safe? 75 The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
152 Likely not. While I honestly try to make it secure, and am probably 76 "COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
153 not bad at it, I think it is simply unreasonable to expect all of 77 programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
154 freetype + fontconfig + xft + xlib + perl + ... + rxvt-unicode 78 variable to decide whether or not to use color.
155 itself to all be secure. Also, rxvt-unicode disables some options
156 when it detects that it runs setuid or setgid, which is not nice.
157 Besides, with the embedded perl interpreter the possibility for
158 security problems easily multiplies.
159 79
160 Elevated privileges are only required for utmp and pty operations on 80 How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
161 some systems (for example, GNU/Linux doesn't need any extra 81 If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
162 privileges for ptys, but some need it for utmp support). It is 82 insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
163 planned to mvoe this into a forked handler process, but this is not 83 snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
164 yet done. 84 wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
85 then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
86 a regular xterm.
165 87
166 So, while setuid/setgid operation is supported and not a problem on 88 Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
167 your typical single-user-no-other-logins unix desktop, always 89 snippets:
168 remember that its an awful lot of code, most of which isn't checked
169 for security issues regularly.
170 90
91 # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
92 [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
93 if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
94 stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
95 echo -n '^[Z'
96 read term_id
97 stty icanon echo
98 if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
99 echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
100 read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
101 fi
102 fi
103
104 How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
105 You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
106 one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
107 Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
108
109 Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
110 I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
111 bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
112 that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
113 being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
114 startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
115 unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
116 iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
117
118 text data bss drs rss filename
119 98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
120 188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
121
122 When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
123 and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
124 libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
125
126 text data bss drs rss filename
127 163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
128 1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
129
130 The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
131 encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
132 and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
133 encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
134 compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
135 memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
136 a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
137 when not used.
138
139 Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
140 one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
141 more memory.
142
143 Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
144 still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
145 gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
146 (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
147 a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
148 out), it fares extremely well *g*.
149
150 Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
151 Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
152 had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
153 fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
154 even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
155
156 My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
157 the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
158 are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
159 unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
160
161 Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
162 in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to write programs in
163 C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this is
164 not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on my
165 system with a minimal config:
166
167 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
168 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
169 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
170 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
171
172 And here is rxvt-unicode:
173
174 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
175 libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
176 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
177 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
178 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
179
180 No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
181 except maybe libX11 :)
182
183 Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
184 I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
185 First of all, please address all transparency related issues to Sasha
186 Vasko at sasha@aftercode.net and do not bug the author about it. Also,
187 if you can't get it working consider it a rite of passage: ... and you
188 failed.
189
190 Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
191 descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
192
193 1. Use transparent mode:
194
195 Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
196 urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
197
198 That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
199 support, or you are unable to read.
200
201 2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
202 to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
203 your picture with gimp or any other tool:
204
205 convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
206 urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
207
208 That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack AfterImage support, or you
209 are unable to read.
210
211 3. Use an ARGB visual:
212
213 urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
214
215 This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
216 doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
217 there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
218 necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
219 that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
220
221 4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
222
223 xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
224 -set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
225
226 Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
227 by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
228 your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
229
230 Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
231 Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
232 character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
233 use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
234 will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
235 wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
236 characters.
237
238 All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
239 however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
240 bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
241 way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
242 wrong in these cases).
243
244 It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
245 or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
246 using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
247 work, you might be forced to use a different font.
248
249 All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
250 bounding box data is correct.
251
252 How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
253 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
254 ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
255 make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
256 rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
257
258 URxvt.colorBD: white
259 URxvt.colorIT: green
260
261 Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
262 For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
263 colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
264 standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
265 course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
266 good reasons.
267
268 In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
269 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
270 fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
271
272 Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
273 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
274 same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
275
276 printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
277
278 This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
279 japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
280 japanese fonts would only be in your way.
281
282 You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
283
284 Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
285 Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
286 example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
287 Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
288 enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
289
290 URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
291 URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
292
293 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
294 Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
295 is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
296 antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
297 memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
298
299 Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
300 Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
301 fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
302 because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
303 antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
304 look best that way.
305
306 If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
307
308 What's with this bold/blink stuff?
309 If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
310 standard foreground colour.
311
312 For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
313 blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
314 "--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
315
316 On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
317 foreground/background colors.
318
319 color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
320
321 color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
322
323 I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
324 You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
325 resources (or as long-options).
326
327 Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
328 the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
329
330 URxvt.color0: #000000
331 URxvt.color1: #A80000
332 URxvt.color2: #00A800
333 URxvt.color3: #A8A800
334 URxvt.color4: #0000A8
335 URxvt.color5: #A800A8
336 URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
337 URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
338
339 URxvt.color8: #000054
340 URxvt.color9: #FF0054
341 URxvt.color10: #00FF54
342 URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
343 URxvt.color12: #0000FF
344 URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
345 URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
346 URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
347
348 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors.
349
350 URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
351 URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
352 URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
353 URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
354 URxvt.color0: #000000
355 URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
356 URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
357 URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
358 URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
359 URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
360 URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
361 URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
362 URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
363 URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
364 URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
365 URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
366 URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
367 URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
368
369 They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
370
371 Why do some characters look so much different than others?
372 See next entry.
373
374 How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
375 Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
376 Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
377 system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
378 display.
379
380 rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
381 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
382 bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
383 resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
384 intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
385 the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
386
387 In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
388 e.g.:
389
390 urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
391
392 When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
393 If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
394 font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
395 search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
396
397 The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
398 base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
399 which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
400
401 Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
402 This is because there is a difference between script and language --
403 rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
404 it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
405 japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
406 Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
407 characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
408 non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
409 font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
410 for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
411
412 The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
413 list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
414 preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
415 first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
416
417 In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
418 runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
419 fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
420 has been designed yet).
421
422 Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
423 I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
424
425 How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
426 We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
427 like:
428
429 urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
430
431 Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
432 The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
433 If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
434 setting:
435
436 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
437
438 If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
439 more.
440
441 To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
442 pattern:
443
444 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
445
446 Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClick* combination also
447 selects words like the old code.
448
449 I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
450 You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
451 perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
452 rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
453
454 If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
455 identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
456 PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
457 disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
458 perl-ext-common resource:
459
460 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
461
462 This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
463 extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
464 scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
465 combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
466
467 URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
468
469 The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
470 See next entry.
471
472 During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
473 These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
474 circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
475 line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
476 but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
477 some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
478
479 You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
480 extension:
481
482 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
483
484 My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
485 Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
486 specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
487 caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
488 how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
489 compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
490 report if that helped.
491
492 My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
493 The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
494 correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your
495 input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
496 method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
497 support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
498 will continue without an input method.
499
500 In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than
501 one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
502
503 If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
504 compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
505 don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
506
507 I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
508 Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
509 international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
510 advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
511 other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
512 escape character and so on.
513
514 Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
515 Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
516 editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. I've heard
517 that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise specified. A quick
518 check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are
519 depressed.
520
521 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
522 Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
523 keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
524 two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
525
526 Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
527 debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
528 correct choice :).
529
530 Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
531 value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
532 wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell),
533 then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in
534 <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as your stty
535 setting).
536
537 For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
538
539 # use Backspace = ^H
540 $ stty erase ^H
541 $ urxvt
542
543 # use Backspace = ^?
544 $ stty erase ^?
545 $ urxvt
546
547 Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l".
548
549 For an existing rxvt-unicode:
550
551 # use Backspace = ^H
552 $ stty erase ^H
553 $ echo -n "^[[36h"
554
555 # use Backspace = ^?
556 $ stty erase ^?
557 $ echo -n "^[[36l"
558
559 This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
560 if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
561 properly reflects that.
562
563 The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
564 problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
565 Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
566 Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
567
568 Some other Backspace problems:
569
570 some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
571 Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
572
573 Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
574
575 I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
576 There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
577 you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
578 use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
579 keysyms.
580
581 Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
582
583 URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
584 URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
585 URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
586 URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
587 URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
588 URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
589 URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
590 URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
591 URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
592 URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
593 URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
594 URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
595 URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
596 URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
597 URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
598 URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
599 URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
600 URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
601 URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
602 URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
603
604 See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
605
606 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
607 KP_Insert == Insert
608 F22 == Print
609 F27 == Home
610 F29 == Prior
611 F33 == End
612 F35 == Next
613
614 Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
615 possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
616 keys as required for your particular machine.
617
618 Terminal Configuration
619 Can I see a typical configuration?
620 The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
621 that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
622
623 As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
624 time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
625 author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
626 certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
627
628 URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
629 URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
630
631 These are just for testing stuff.
632
633 URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
634 URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
635
636 This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
637 the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
638 type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
639 with correct-looking fonts.
640
641 URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
642 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
643 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
644 URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
645 URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
646 URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
647
648 This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
649 directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
650 develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
651 write.
652
653 The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
654 and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
655 relevant file and go to the error line number.
656
657 URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
658 URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
659
660 As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
661 author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
662 apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
663 scrollback buffer.
664
665 URxvt.background: #000000
666 URxvt.foreground: gray90
667 URxvt.color7: gray90
668 URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
669 URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
670 URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
671 URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
672
673 Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
674 but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
675 foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
676 colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
677
678 URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
679
680 Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
681 but is mostly a nice effect.
682
683 URxvt.geometry: 154x36
684 URxvt.loginShell: false
685 URxvt.meta: ignore
686 URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
687
688 Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
689 manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
690
691 URxvt.saveLines: 8192
692
693 A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
694
695 URxvt.mapAlert: true
696
697 The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
698 iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
699
700 URxvt.visualBell: true
701
702 The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
703
704 URxvt.insecure: true
705
706 Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
707
708 URxvt.pastableTabs: false
709
710 I once thought this is a great idea.
711
712 urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
713 -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
714 -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
715 [codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
716 xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
717 xft:Code2000:antialias=false
718 urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
719 urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
720 urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
721
722 I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
723 overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
724 the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
725 different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
726 characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
727 XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
728 I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
729 italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
730 Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
731
732 Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
733 my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
734 (Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
735 bold and normal fonts.
736
737 Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
738 class name. That is because I use different configs for different
739 purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
740 uses these defaults:
741
742 IRC*title: IRC
743 IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
744 IRC*saveLines: 0
745 IRC*mapAlert: true
746 IRC*font: suxuseuro
747 IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
748 IRC*colorBD: white
749 IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
750 IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
751
752 "Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
753 "suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
754 keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
755 (e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
756
757 The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
758 "xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
759 file for different hosts, for example, on ym main desktop, I use:
760
761 URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
762 URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
763 URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
764 URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
765 URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
766
767 The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
768 in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
769 immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
770 same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
771 combinations :->
772
773 Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
774 Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
775 applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
776 resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
777 ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
778 $HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
779
780 If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
781 are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
782 every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
783
784 Also consider the form resources have to use:
785
786 URxvt.resource: value
787
788 If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
789 specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
790 works. If unsure, use the form above.
791
171 When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? 792 When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
172 The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely 793 The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
173 available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same 794 as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
174 problem often arises). 795 arises).
175 796
176 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, 797 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
177 this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp): 798 can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
799 well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
800 the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
801 user and root):
178 802
179 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain 803 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
180 infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti" 804 infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
181 805
182 ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system, 806 One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
807 $HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
183 808
184 If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set 809 If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
185 "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of 810 "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
186 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and 811 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
187 different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen 812 colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
188 applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, 813 quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
189 though.
190 814
191 If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) 815 If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
192 you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or 816 can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
193 use a resource to set it: 817 resource to set it:
194 818
195 URxvt.termName: rxvt 819 URxvt.termName: rxvt
196 820
197 If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also 821 If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
198 replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one. 822 the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
199 823
824 nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
825 This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
826 nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
827 your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
828
200 "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry. 829 "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
201 Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it 830 Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
202 by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again. 831 "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
203 832
204 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt. 833 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
834 See next entry.
835
205 I need a termcap file entry. 836 I need a termcap file entry.
206 One reason you might want this is that some distributions or 837 One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
207 operating systems still compile some programs using the 838 systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
208 long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) 839 library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
209 and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode". 840 for "rxvt-unicode".
210 841
211 You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many 842 You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
212 cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's 843 cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
213 infocmp program like this: 844 program like this:
214 845
215 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode 846 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
216 847
217 Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above: 848 Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
849 generated by the command above.
218 850
219 rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
220 :am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
221 :co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
222 :AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
223 :K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
224 :RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
225 :as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
226 :cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
227 :dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
228 :i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
229 :is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
230 :k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
231 :k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
232 :kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
233 :kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
234 :mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
235 :sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
236 :te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
237 :us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
238 :vs=\E[?25h:
239
240 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output? 851 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
241 The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to 852 The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
242 decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration 853 decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
243 file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file 854 file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
244 (among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add: 855 with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
245 856
246 TERM rxvt-unicode 857 TERM rxvt-unicode
247 858
248 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add: 859 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
249 860
250 alias ls='ls --color=auto' 861 alias ls='ls --color=auto'
251 862
252 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc". 863 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
253 864
254 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode? 865 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
866 See next entry.
867
255 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic? 868 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
869 See next entry.
870
256 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly? 871 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
257 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged 872 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
258 distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by 873 distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
259 setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features. 874 setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
260 Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux) 875 Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
261 furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, 876 furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
262 so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I 877 you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
263 log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on 878 to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
264 how to do this). 879 this).
265 880
266 My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output? 881 Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
267 Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
268 specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
269 caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
270 and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
271 compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
272 please report if that helped.
273
274 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding? 882 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
883 See next entry.
884
275 Unicode does not seem to work? 885 Unicode does not seem to work?
276 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character 886 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
277 but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program 887 getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
278 output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale 888 is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
279 settings.
280 889
281 Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the 890 Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
282 programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the 891 programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
283 login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the 892 while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
284 locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this 893 the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
285 is not going to work. 894 is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
286 895
287 The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will 896 The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
288 likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in 897 run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
289 your .profile. 898 .profile.
290 899
291 printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" 900 printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
292 901
293 If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification 902 If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
294 not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command 903 supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
295 which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale 904 displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
296 settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). 905 it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
297 If it displays something like: 906 something like:
298 907
299 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ... 908 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
300 909
301 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system. 910 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
302 911
303 If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly 912 If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
304 then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs 913 you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
305 just don't support locales :( 914 support locales :(
306 915
307 Why do some characters look so much different than others?
308 How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
309 Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
310 Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
311 your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
312 want to display.
313
314 rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
315 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
316 bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
317 don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
318 artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
319 has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
320 indeed look correct.
321
322 In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
323 list, e.g.:
324
325 rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
326
327 When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
328 font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
329 the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
330 up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
331 X-server.
332
333 The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
334 base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
335 size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
336
337 Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
338 This is because there is a difference between script and language --
339 rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
340 is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
341 first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
342 font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
343 Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
344 so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
345 look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
346 still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
347 the japanese font.
348
349 The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
350 font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
351 list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
352 japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
353 first.
354
355 In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
356 runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
357 different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
358 interface for this has been designed yet).
359
360 Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
361 "Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
362
363 Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
364 Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
365 character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
366 terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
367 Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
368 just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
369 that redraws adjacent characters.
370
371 All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
372 however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
373 bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
374 correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
375 unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
376
377 It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
378 freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
379 might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
380 that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
381
382 All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
383 bounding box data is correct.
384
385 On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
386 Seems to be a known bug, read
387 <http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
388 following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
389
390 #define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
391
392 My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
393 The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
394 set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
395 by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
396 your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
397 keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
398 then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
399
400 In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
401 than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
402
403 I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
404 14755
405 Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
406 international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
407 advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
408 other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
409 telnet escape character and so on.
410
411 How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
412 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
413 settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
414 effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
415 bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
416 the effect:
417
418 URxvt.colorBD: white
419 URxvt.colorIT: green
420
421 Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
422 can I fix that?
423 For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
424 weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
425 the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
426 of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
427 without very good reasons.
428
429 In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
430 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
431 will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
432 features.
433
434 I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
435 Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
436 in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
437 it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
438 requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
439
440 As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
441 nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
442 representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
443 respect to standards.
444
445 However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
446 and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
447
448 "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
449 apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
450 representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
451 wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
452 encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
453 every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
454 anything except the current locale encoding.
455
456 Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
457 by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
458 handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
459 doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
460 OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
461 emulator).
462
463 The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
464 the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
465 to carry complete replacements for them :)
466
467 I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
468 Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
469 problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
470
471 How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
472 rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using
473 the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no
474 longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a
475 single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
476 "-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as
477 the old libW11 emulation.
478
479 At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
480 multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
481 likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
482
483 How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use? 916 How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
917 See next entry.
918
484 Is there an option to switch encodings? 919 Is there an option to switch encodings?
485 Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, 920 Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
486 and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't 921 specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
487 even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to 922 about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
488 terminal I/O.
489 923
490 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for 924 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
491 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating 925 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
492 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties 926 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
493 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*. 927 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
494 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example, 928 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
495 "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own, 929 "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
496 locale-independent table under all locales). 930 locale-independent table under all locales).
497 931
498 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. 932 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
499 All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree 933 programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
500 in the interpretation of characters. 934 interpretation of characters.
501 935
502 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, 936 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
503 nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like. 937 is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
504 938
505 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable 939 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
506 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an 940 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
507 already-installed locale. Common names for locales are 941 locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
508 "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. 942 "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
509 "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german") 943 "de" or "german") are also common.
510 are also common.
511 944
512 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the 945 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
513 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e. 946 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
514 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to 947 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
515 rxvt-unicode.
516 948
517 If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you 949 If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
518 start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category. 950 rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
519 951
520 Can I switch locales at runtime? 952 Can I switch locales at runtime?
521 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets 953 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
522 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE". 954 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
523 955
524 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS 956 printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
525 957
526 See also the previous answer. 958 See also the previous answer.
527 959
528 Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in 960 Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
529 one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it 961 locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
530 (e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which 962 UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
531 first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later: 963 switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
532 964
533 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS 965 printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
534 xjdic -js 966 xjdic -js
535 printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8 967 printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
536 968
537 You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine, 969 You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
538 except for some locales where character width differs between 970 except for some locales where character width differs between program-
539 program- and rxvt-unicode-locales. 971 and rxvt-unicode-locales.
540 972
541 Can I switch the fonts at runtime? 973 I have problems getting my input method working.
542 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has 974 Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
543 the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect 975 method server.
544 immediately:
545 976
546 printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic" 977 Here is a checklist:
547 978
548 This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer 979 - Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
549 a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, 980 Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
550 where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
551 981
552 You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching. 982 - Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
983 XIM.
984 For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
985 "ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
553 986
554 Why do italic characters look as if clipped? 987 - Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
555 Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For 988 - Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
556 example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera 989 *starting* rxvt-unicode.
557 Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might 990 When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
558 be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this: 991 For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
992 running with this command:
559 993
560 URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true 994 xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
561 URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
562 995
996
997
563 My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do? 998 My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
564 You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest 999 You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
565 of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale": 1000 the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
566 1001
567 URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP 1002 URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
568 1003
569 Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and 1004 Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
570 still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not 1005 use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
571 be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then, 1006 Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
572 as your input method limits you. 1007 in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
573 1008
574 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits. 1009 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
575 Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by 1010 Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
576 design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory 1011 design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
577 leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering 1012 leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
578 at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally 1013 exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
579 succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, 1014 SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
580 however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides 1015 cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
581 cooperate.
582 1016
583 So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers. 1017 So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
584 1018
585 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that? 1019 Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
586 Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for 1020 I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
587 something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure 1021 The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large
588 out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a 1022 patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but
589 resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no 1023 unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to
590 Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find 1024 the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine
591 a font for your characters. 1025 version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce
1026 the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific
1027 to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian
1028 Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
592 1029
593 Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger 1030 For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
594 scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will 1031 probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a
595 use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to 1032 bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users
596 almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will 1033 that might encounter the same issue.
597 then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
598 it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
599 1034
600 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? 1035 I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
601 Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, 1036 You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
602 as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to 1037 enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
603 disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves 1038 runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
604 lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably. 1039 them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
1040 should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
1041 more in the future) depends on it.
605 1042
606 Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong? 1043 You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
607 Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to 1044 system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
608 fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core 1045 behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
609 fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It 1046 "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
610 has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author 1047 perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
611 thinks they look best that way.
612 1048
613 If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually. 1049 If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
1050 with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
1051 "--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
1052 encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
614 1053
615 Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works. 1054 I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
616 Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing 1055 It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
617 some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. 1056 install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
618 I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
619 specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
620 or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
621 1057
622 What's with this bold/blink stuff? 1058 When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
623 If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using 1059 into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
624 the standard foreground colour. 1060 systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
1061 immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
1062 privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
1063 things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
625 1064
626 For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the 1065 This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
627 text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard 1066 early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
628 colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be 1067 main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
629 ignored. 1068 result in very little risk.
630 1069
631 On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set 1070 I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
632 high-intensity foreground/background colors. 1071 Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
1072 your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
1073 whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
1074 wchar_t is represented as unicode.
633 1075
634 color0-7 are the low-intensity colors. 1076 As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
1077 does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
1078 wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
635 1079
636 color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors. 1080 However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
1081 "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
637 1082
638 I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them? 1083 "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
639 You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults 1084 in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
640 resources (or as long-options). 1085 representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
1086 (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
1087 implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
1088 simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
1089 locale encoding.
641 1090
642 Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, 1091 Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
643 including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow: 1092 carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
1093 them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
1094 conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
1095 encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
644 1096
645 URxvt.color0: #000000 1097 The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
646 URxvt.color1: #A80000 1098 system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
647 URxvt.color2: #00A800 1099 complete replacements for them :)
648 URxvt.color3: #A8A800
649 URxvt.color4: #0000A8
650 URxvt.color5: #A800A8
651 URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
652 URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
653 1100
654 URxvt.color8: #000054 1101 How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
655 URxvt.color9: #FF0054 1102 rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
656 URxvt.color10: #00FF54 1103 X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
657 URxvt.color11: #FFFF54 1104 supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
658 URxvt.color12: #0000FF 1105 font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
659 URxvt.color13: #FF00FF 1106 "-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
660 URxvt.color14: #00FFFF 1107 old libW11 emulation.
661 URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
662 1108
663 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described 1109 At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
664 (not by me) as "pretty girly". 1110 multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
1111 likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
665 1112
666 URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1 1113 Character widths are not correct.
667 URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1 1114 urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
668 URxvt.background: #0e0e0e 1115 width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
669 URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1 1116 likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
670 URxvt.color0: #000000 1117 single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
671 URxvt.color8: #8b8f93 1118 Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
672 URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
673 URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
674 URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
675 URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
676 URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
677 URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
678 URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
679 URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
680 URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
681 URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
682 URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
683 URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
684 1119
685 How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way? 1120 The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
686 Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the 1121 possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
687 listening socket and then fork.
688 1122
689 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour? 1123 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
690 Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
691 BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
692 question) there are two standard values that can be used for
693 Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
694 1124
695 Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the 1125 I want 256 colors
696 debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only 1126 Are you sure you need 256 colors? 88 colors should be enough for most
697 only correct choice :). 1127 purposes. If you really need more, there is an unsupported patch for it
1128 in the doc directory, but please do not ask for it to be applied.
698 1129
699 Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
700 value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
701 wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
702 shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
703 CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
704 your stty setting).
705
706 For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
707
708 # use Backspace = ^H
709 $ stty erase ^H
710 $ rxvt
711
712 # use Backspace = ^?
713 $ stty erase ^?
714 $ rxvt
715
716 Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
717
718 For an existing rxvt-unicode:
719
720 # use Backspace = ^H
721 $ stty erase ^H
722 $ echo -n "^[[36h"
723
724 # use Backspace = ^?
725 $ stty erase ^?
726 $ echo -n "^[[36l"
727
728 This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
729 but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
730 value properly reflects that.
731
732 The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
733 problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
734 the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
735 vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
736 termcap/terminfo.
737
738 Some other Backspace problems:
739
740 some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
741 expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
742 help.
743
744 Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
745
746 I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
747 There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
748 Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
749 option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
750 associated with keysyms.
751
752 Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
753 URxvt"
754
755 URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
756 URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
757 URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
758 URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
759 URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
760 URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
761 URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
762 URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
763 URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
764 URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
765 URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
766 URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
767 URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
768 URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
769 URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
770 URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
771 URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
772 URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
773 URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
774 URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
775
776 See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
777
778 I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
779 do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
780 following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
781 KP_Insert == Insert
782 F22 == Print
783 F27 == Home
784 F29 == Prior
785 F33 == End
786 F35 == Next
787
788 Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
789 possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
790 the keys as required for your particular machine.
791
792 How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
793 I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
794 rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
795 can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
796 slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
797 whether or not to use color.
798
799 How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
800 If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
801 insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
802 snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
803 rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
804 these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
805 distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
806
807 Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
808 script snippets:
809
810 # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
811 [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
812 if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
813 stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
814 echo -n '^[Z'
815 read term_id
816 stty icanon echo
817 if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
818 echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
819 read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
820 fi
821 fi
822
823 How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
824 You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
825 /usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
826 Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
827
828 My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
829 Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
830 channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
831 be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
832 FAQs :).
833

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