[ViewVC] Diff of: cvs/rxvt-unicode/README.FAQ

Comparing rxvt-unicode/README.FAQ (file contents):
Revision 1.25 by root, Thu Jan 12 05:37:34 2006 UTC vs.
Revision 1.75 by root, Sun Nov 14 17:59:19 2021 UTC

1	FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS	1	RXVT-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.libera.chat", 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 two big problems with Gentoo Linux: first, most if not all
10	section PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the rxvtperl(3) manpage. For	10	Gentoo systems are completely broken (missing or mismatched header
11	example, to disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify	11	files, broken compiler etc. are just the tip of the iceberg); secondly,
12	this perl-ext-common resource:	12	it should be called Gentoo GNU/Linux.
13		13
14	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup	14	For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo.
		15	Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
		16	unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
15		17
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?	18	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
100	rxvt-unicode does not directly support tabs. It will work fine with	19	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
101	tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing	20	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
102	programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into	21	should give you tabs:
103	other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming	22
		23	urxvt -pe tabbed
		24
		25	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
		26
		27	It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
		28	managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
		29	it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
104	"Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt)	30	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
105	terminal as an example embedding application.	31	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
106		32
107	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	33	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
108	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape	34	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
109	sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number.	35	sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When
110	When using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the	36	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
111	daemon.
112		37
113	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	38	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
114	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large	39	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
115	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode.	40	you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
116	Before reporting a bug to the original rxvt-unicode author please	41	that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
117	download and install the genuine version	42	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	43	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
119	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	44	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		45
123	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	46	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
124	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	47	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	48	bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
126	other users that might encounter the same issue.	49	kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if
		50	full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets
		51	worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
127		52
128	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any	53	How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
129	recommendation?	54	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	55	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		56
137	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext"	57	How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
138	resources system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will	58	If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
139	result in useful behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory,	59	the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
140	add an empty "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file.	60
141	This will keep the perl interpreter disabled until the user enables	61	#!/bin/sh
		62	urxvtc "$@"
		63	if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
		64	urxvtd -q -o -f
		65	urxvtc "$@"
142	it.	66	fi
143		67
144	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal	68	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	69	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	70	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	71	existing daemon.
148	used).
149		72
150	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this	73	Another option is to use systemd socket-based activation (see
151	safe?	74	systemd.socket(5)). Here is an example of a service unit file and of a
152	Likely not. While I honestly try to make it secure, and am probably	75	socket unit file for the default socket path:
153	not bad at it, I think it is simply unreasonable to expect all of
154	freetype + fontconfig + xft + xlib + perl + ... + rxvt-unicode
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		76
160	Elevated privileges are only required for utmp and pty operations on	77	urxvtd.service
161	some systems (for example, GNU/Linux doesn't need any extra	78	[Unit]
162	privileges for ptys, but some need it for utmp support). It is	79	Description=urxvt terminal daemon
163	planned to mvoe this into a forked handler process, but this is not	80	Requires=urxvtd.socket
164	yet done.
165		81
166	So, while setuid/setgid operation is supported and not a problem on	82	[Service]
167	your typical single-user-no-other-logins unix desktop, always	83	ExecStart=/usr/bin/urxvtd -o
168	remember that its an awful lot of code, most of which isn't checked
169	for security issues regularly.
170		84
		85	urxvtd.socket
		86	[Unit]
		87	Description=urxvt terminal daemon socket
		88
		89	[Socket]
		90	ListenStream=%h/.urxvt/urxvtd-%H
		91
		92	[Install]
		93	WantedBy=sockets.target
		94
		95	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular
		96	xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.
		97	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
		98	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
		99	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
		100	variable to decide whether or not to use colour.
		101
		102	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
		103	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
		104	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
		105	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
		106	wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
		107	then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
		108	a regular xterm.
		109
		110	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
		111	snippets:
		112
		113	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
		114	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
		115	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
		116	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
		117	printf "\eZ"
		118	read term_id
		119	stty icanon echo
		120	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
		121	printf '\e[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
		122	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
		123	fi
		124	fi
		125
		126	How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
		127	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
		128	one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
		129	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
		130
		131	Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
		132	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
		133	bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
		134	that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
		135	being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
		136	startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
		137	unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
		138	iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
		139
		140	text data bss drs rss filename
		141	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
		142	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
		143
		144	When you "--enable-everything" (which is unfair, as this involves xft
		145	and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
		146	libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
		147
		148	text data bss drs rss filename
		149	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
		150	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
		151
		152	The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
		153	encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
		154	and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
		155	encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
		156	compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
		157	memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
		158	a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
		159	when not used.
		160
		161	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
		162	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
		163	more memory.
		164
		165	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
		166	still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
		167	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
		168	(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
		169	a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
		170	out), it fares extremely well g.
		171
		172	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
		173	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
		174	had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
		175	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
		176	even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
		177
		178	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
		179	the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
		180	are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
		181	unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
		182
		183	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
		184	in C that use gobs of memory, and certainly possible to write programs
		185	in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this
		186	is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on
		187	my system with a minimal config:
		188
		189	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		190	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
		191	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
		192	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		193
		194	And here is rxvt-unicode:
		195
		196	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		197	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
		198	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
		199	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
		200	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		201
		202	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
		203	except maybe libX11 :)
		204
		205	Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
		206	I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
		207	First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
		208	so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
		209	may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
		210	rite of passage: ... and you failed.
		211
		212	Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
		213	descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
		214
		215	1. Use pseudo-transparency:
		216
		217	Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
		218	urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
		219
		220	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
		221	support, or you are unable to read. This method requires that the
		222	background-setting program sets the _XROOTPMAP_ID or ESETROOT_PMAP_ID
		223	property. Compatible programs are Esetroot, hsetroot and feh.
		224
		225	2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
		226	to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
		227	your picture with gimp or any other tool:
		228
		229	convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
		230	urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
		231
		232	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack GDK-PixBuf support, or you
		233	are unable to read.
		234
		235	3. Use an ARGB visual:
		236
		237	urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
		238
		239	This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
		240	doesn't work for you, find a working composite manager or window
		241	manager, both are required to support ARGB visuals for client windows.
		242
		243	4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
		244
		245	xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
		246	-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
		247
		248	Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
		249	by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
		250	your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
		251
		252	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
		253	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
		254	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
		255	use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
		256	will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
		257	wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
		258	characters.
		259
		260	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
		261	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
		262	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
		263	way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
		264	wrong in these cases).
		265
		266	It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
		267	or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
		268	using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
		269	work, you might be forced to use a different font.
		270
		271	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
		272	bounding box data is correct.
		273
		274	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
		275	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
		276	("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
		277	make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
		278	rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
		279
		280	URxvt.colorBD: white
		281	URxvt.colorIT: green
		282
		283	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
		284	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
		285	colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
		286	standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
		287	course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
		288	good reasons.
		289
		290	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
		291	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
		292	fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
		293
		294	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
		295	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
		296	same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
		297
		298	printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
		299
		300	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
		301	japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
		302	japanese fonts would only be in your way.
		303
		304	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
		305
		306	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
		307	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
		308	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
		309	Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
		310	enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
		311
		312	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		313	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		314
		315	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
		316	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
		317	is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
		318	antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
		319	memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
		320
		321	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
		322	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
		323	fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
		324	because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
		325	antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
		326	look best that way.
		327
		328	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
		329
		330	What's with this bold/blink stuff?
		331	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
		332	standard foreground colour.
		333
		334	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
		335	blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
		336	"--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
		337
		338	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
		339	foreground/background colours.
		340
		341	color0-7 are the low-intensity colours.
		342
		343	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colours.
		344
		345	I don't like the screen colours. How do I change them?
		346	You can change the screen colours at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
		347	resources (or as long-options).
		348
		349	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
		350	the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
		351
		352	URxvt.color0: #000000
		353	URxvt.color1: #A80000
		354	URxvt.color2: #00A800
		355	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
		356	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
		357	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
		358	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
		359	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
		360
		361	URxvt.color8: #000054
		362	URxvt.color9: #FF0054
		363	URxvt.color10: #00FF54
		364	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
		365	URxvt.color12: #0000FF
		366	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
		367	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
		368	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
		369
		370	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colours.
		371
		372	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
		373	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
		374	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
		375	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
		376	URxvt.color0: #000000
		377	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
		378	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
		379	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
		380	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
		381	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
		382	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
		383	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
		384	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
		385	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
		386	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
		387	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
		388	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
		389	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
		390
		391	They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
		392
		393	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
		394	See next entry.
		395
		396	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
		397	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
		398	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
		399	system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
		400	display.
		401
		402	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
		403	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
		404	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
		405	resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
		406	intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
		407	the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
		408
		409	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
		410	e.g.:
		411
		412	urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
		413
		414	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
		415	If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
		416	font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
		417	search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
		418
		419	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
		420	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
		421	which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
		422
		423	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
		424	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
		425	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
		426	it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
		427	japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
		428	Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
		429	characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
		430	non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
		431	font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
		432	for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
		433
		434	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
		435	list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
		436	preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
		437	first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
		438
		439	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
		440	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
		441	fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
		442	has been designed yet).
		443
		444	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
		445	I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
		446
		447	How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
		448	We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
		449	like:
		450
		451	urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
		452
		453	Why is the cursor now blinking in emacs/vi/...?
		454	This is likely caused by your editor/program's use of the "cvvis"
		455	terminfo capability. Emacs uses it by default, as well as some versions
		456	of vi and possibly other programs.
		457
		458	In emacs, you can switch that off by adding this to your ".emacs" file:
		459
		460	(setq visible-cursor nil)
		461
		462	For other programs, if they do not have an option, your have to remove
		463	the "cvvis" capability from the terminfo description.
		464
		465	When urxvt first added the blinking cursor option, it didn't add a
		466	"cvvis" capability, which served no purpose before. Version 9.21
		467	introduced "cvvis" (and the ability to control blinking independent of
		468	cursor shape) for compatibility with other terminals, which
		469	traditionally use a blinking cursor for "cvvis". This also reflects the
		470	intent of programs such as emacs, who expect "cvvis" to enable a
		471	blinking cursor.
		472
		473	Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
		474	The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
		475	If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
		476	setting:
		477
		478	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
		479
		480	If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
		481	more.
		482
		483	To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
		484	pattern:
		485
		486	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{\|})]+)
		487
		488	Please also note that the LeftClick Shift-LeftClick combination also
		489	selects words like the old code.
		490
		491	I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
		492	You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
		493	perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
		494	rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
		495
		496	If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
		497	identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
		498	PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
		499	disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
		500	perl-ext-common resource:
		501
		502	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
		503
		504	This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
		505	extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
		506	scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
		507	combination by adding a keysym resource that binds the desired
		508	combination to the "start" action of "searchable-scrollback" and another
		509	one that binds M-s to the "builtin:" action:
		510
		511	URxvt.keysym.CM-s: searchable-scrollback:start
		512	URxvt.keysym.M-s: builtin:
		513
		514	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		515	See next entry.
		516
		517	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		518	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		519	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		520	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		521	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		522	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		523
		524	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		525	extension:
		526
		527	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		528
		529	My numeric keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		530	Some Debian GNU/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		531	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		532	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		533	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		534	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		535	report if that helped.
		536
		537	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		538	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		539	correctly, or you specified a preeditType that is not supported by your
		540	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		541	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		542	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		543	will continue without an input method.
		544
		545	In this case either do not specify a preeditType or specify more than
		546	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		547
		548	If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
		549	compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
		550	don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
		551
		552	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		553	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		554	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		555	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		556	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		557	escape character and so on.
		558
		559	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		560	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		561	editors prematurely may leave it active. I've heard that tcsh may use
		562	mouse reporting unless it is otherwise specified. A quick check is to
		563	see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are pressed.
		564
		565	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		566	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		567	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		568	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		569
		570	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		571	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		572	correct choice :).
		573
		574	It is possible to toggle between "^H" and "^?" with the DECBKM private
		575	mode:
		576
		577	# use Backspace = ^H
		578	$ stty erase ^H
		579	$ printf "\e[?67h"
		580
		581	# use Backspace = ^?
		582	$ stty erase ^?
		583	$ printf "\e[?67l"
		584
		585	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		586	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		587	properly reflects that.
		588
		589	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		590	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		591	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		592	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		593
		594	Some other Backspace problems:
		595
		596	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		597	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		598
		599	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		600
		601	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		602	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		603	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		604	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		605	keysyms.
		606
		607	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		608
		609	URxvt.keysym.Prior: \033[5~
		610	URxvt.keysym.Next: \033[6~
		611	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[7~
		612	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[8~
		613	URxvt.keysym.Up: \033[A
		614	URxvt.keysym.Down: \033[B
		615	URxvt.keysym.Right: \033[C
		616	URxvt.keysym.Left: \033[D
		617
		618	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		619
		620	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
		621	KP_Insert == Insert
		622	F22 == Print
		623	F27 == Home
		624	F29 == Prior
		625	F33 == End
		626	F35 == Next
		627
		628	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		629	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		630	keys as required for your particular machine.
		631
		632	Terminal Configuration
		633	Can I see a typical configuration?
		634	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		635	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		636
		637	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		638	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		639	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		640	certainly not typical, but what's typical...
		641
		642	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}\|'
		643	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/some/path
		644
		645	These are just for testing stuff.
		646
		647	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		648	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		649
		650	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		651	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		652	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		653	with correct-looking fonts.
		654
		655	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		656	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		657	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		658	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		659	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		660	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		661
		662	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		663	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		664	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		665	write.
		666
		667	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		668	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		669	relevant file and go to the error line number.
		670
		671	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		672	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		673
		674	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		675	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		676	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		677	scrollback buffer.
		678
		679	URxvt.background: #000000
		680	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		681	URxvt.color7: gray90
		682	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		683	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		684	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		685	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		686
		687	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		688	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		689	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		690	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		691
		692	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		693
		694	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		695	but is mostly a nice effect.
		696
		697	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		698	URxvt.loginShell: false
		699	URxvt.meta: ignore
		700	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		701
		702	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		703	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		704
		705	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		706
		707	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		708
		709	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		710
		711	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		712	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		713
		714	URxvt.visualBell: true
		715
		716	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		717
		718	URxvt.insecure: true
		719
		720	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		721
		722	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		723
		724	I once thought this is a great idea.
		725
		726	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		727	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		728	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		729	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		730	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		731	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		732	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		733	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		734	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		735
		736	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		737	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		738	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		739	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		740	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		741	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		742	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		743	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		744	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		745
		746	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		747	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		748	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		749	bold and normal fonts.
		750
		751	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		752	class name. That is because I use different configs for different
		753	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		754	uses these defaults:
		755
		756	IRC*title: IRC
		757	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		758	IRC*saveLines: 0
		759	IRC*mapAlert: true
		760	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		761	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		762	IRC*colorBD: white
		763	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		764	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		765
		766	"Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		767	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		768	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		769	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		770
		771	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		772	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		773	file for different hosts, for example, on my main desktop, I use:
		774
		775	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		776	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		777	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		778	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		779	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		780
		781	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		782	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		783	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		784	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		785	combinations :->
		786
		787	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		788	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		789	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		790	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		791	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		792	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		793
		794	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		795	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		796	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		797
		798	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		799
		800	URxvt.resource: value
		801
		802	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		803	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		804	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		805
171	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	806	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	807	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	808	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
174	problem often arises).	809	arises).
175		810
176	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	811	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
177	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	812	can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
		813	well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
		814	the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
		815	user and root):
178		816
179	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	817	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
180	infocmp rxvt-unicode \| ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	818	infocmp rxvt-unicode \| ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
181		819
182	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	820	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		821	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
183		822
184	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	823	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	824	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
186	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	825	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
187	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	826	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,	827	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
189	though.
190		828
191	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	829	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	830	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
193	use a resource to set it:	831	resource to set it:
194		832
195	URxvt.termName: rxvt	833	URxvt.termName: rxvt
196		834
197	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	835	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.	836	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
199		837
		838	nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
		839	This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
		840	nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
		841	your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
		842
200	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.	843	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
201	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it	844	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
202	by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.	845	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
203		846
204	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	847	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		848	See next entry.
		849
205	I need a termcap file entry.	850	I need a termcap file entry.
206	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	851	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
207	operating systems still compile some programs using the	852	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
208	long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)	853	library (Fedora's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry for
209	and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	854	"rxvt-unicode".
210		855
211	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	856	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	857	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
213	infocmp program like this:	858	program like this:
214		859
215	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	860	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
216		861
217	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	862	Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
		863	generated by the command above.
218		864
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?	865	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
241	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	866	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	867	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	868	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
244	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	869	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
245		870
246	TERM rxvt-unicode	871	TERM rxvt-unicode
247		872
248	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	873	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
249		874
250	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	875	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
251		876
252	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	877	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
253		878
254	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	879	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		880	See next entry.
		881
255	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	882	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		883	See next entry.
		884
256	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	885	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
257	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	886	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
258	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	887	distributions break rxvt-unicode by setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which
259	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	888	doesn't have these extra features. Unfortunately, some of these
260	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
261	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	889	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	890	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	891	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
264	how to do this).	892	this).
265		893
266	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	894	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?	895	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		896	See next entry.
		897
275	Unicode does not seem to work?	898	Unicode does not seem to work?
276	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	899	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
277	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	900	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
278	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	901	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
279	settings.
280		902
281	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	903	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	904	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
283	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	905	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	906	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
285	is not going to work.	907	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
286		908
287	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	909	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	910	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
289	your .profile.	911	.profile.
290		912
291	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	913	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
292		914
293	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	915	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	916	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
295	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	917	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).	918	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
297	If it displays something like:	919	something like:
298		920
299	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	921	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
300		922
301	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	923	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
302		924
303	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	925	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	926	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
305	just don't support locales :(	927	support locales :(
306		928
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?	929	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		930	See next entry.
		931
484	Is there an option to switch encodings?	932	Is there an option to switch encodings?
485	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	933	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	934	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	935	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
488	terminal I/O.
489		936
490	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	937	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
491	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	938	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
492	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	939	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
493	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the locale.	940	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the locale.
494	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	941	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
495	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	942	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
496	locale-independent table under all locales).	943	locale-independent table under all locales).
497		944
498	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	945	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
499	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	946	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
500	in the interpretation of characters.	947	interpretation of characters.
501		948
502	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	949	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
503	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	950	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
504		951
505	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	952	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
506	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	953	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
507	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	954	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.	955	"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")	956	"de" or "german") are also common.
510	are also common.
511		957
512	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	958	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
513	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	959	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
514	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	960	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
515	rxvt-unicode.
516		961
517	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	962	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.	963	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
519		964
520	Can I switch locales at runtime?	965	Can I switch locales at runtime?
521	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	966	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
522	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	967	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
523		968
524	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	969	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
525		970
526	See also the previous answer.	971	See also the previous answer.
527		972
528	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	973	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	974	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	975	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:	976	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
532		977
533	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	978	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
534	xjdic -js	979	xjdic -js
535	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	980	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
536		981
537	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	982	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
538	except for some locales where character width differs between	983	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
539	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	984	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
540		985
541	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	986	I have problems getting my input method working.
542	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	987	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
543	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	988	method server.
544	immediately:
545		989
546	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	990	Here is a checklist:
547		991
548	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	992	- Make sure your locale and the imLocale are supported on your OS.
549	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	993	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
550	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
551		994
552	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	995	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		996	XIM.
		997	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		998	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
553		999
554	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	1000	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
555	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	1001	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
556	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	1002	starting rxvt-unicode.
557	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	1003	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:	1004	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		1005	running with this command:
559		1006
560	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	1007	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
561	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
562		1008
563	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	1009	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	1010	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
565	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	1011	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
566		1012
567	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	1013	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
568		1014
569	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	1015	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	1016	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,	1017	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
572	as your input method limits you.	1018	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
573		1019
574	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.	1020	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
575	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by	1021	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
576	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory	1022	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
577	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering	1023	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
578	at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally	1024	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
579	succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,	1025	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
580	however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides	1026	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
581	cooperate.
582		1027
583	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.	1028	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
584		1029
585	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	1030	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
586	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	1031	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
587	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	1032	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
588	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	1033	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
589	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	1034	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
590	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	1035	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
591	a font for your characters.	1036	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		1037	more in the future) depends on it.
592		1038
593	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	1039	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
594	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will	1040	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
595	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to	1041	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
596	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will	1042	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
597	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"	1043	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
598	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
599		1044
600	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1045	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
601	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1046	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
602	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1047	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
603	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves	1048	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
604	lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
605		1049
606	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1050	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
607	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1051	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
608	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1052	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
609	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It
610	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
611	thinks they look best that way.
612		1053
613	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1054	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
		1055	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
		1056	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1057	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1058	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1059	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
614		1060
615	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1061	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
616	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1062	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
617	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1063	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
618	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise	1064	result in very little risk.
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		1065
622	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1066	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
623	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1067	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
624	the standard foreground colour.	1068	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1069	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1070	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
625		1071
626	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1072	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
627	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1073	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
628	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1074	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
629	ignored.
630		1075
631	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1076	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
632	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1077	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
633		1078
634	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1079	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
		1080	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
		1081	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1082	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1083	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1084	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1085	locale encoding.
635		1086
636	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1087	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
		1088	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1089	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1090	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1091	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
637		1092
638	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1093	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
639	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1094	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
640	resources (or as long-options).	1095	complete replacements for them :)
641		1096
642	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1097	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
643	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1098	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
		1099	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
		1100	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
		1101	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
		1102	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
		1103	old libW11 emulation.
644		1104
645	URxvt.color0: #000000	1105	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
646	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1106	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
647	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1107	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
648	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
649	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
650	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
651	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
652	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
653		1108
654	URxvt.color8: #000054	1109	Character widths are not correct.
655	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1110	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
656	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1111	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
657	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1112	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
658	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1113	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
659	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1114	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
660	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
661	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
662		1115
663	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1116	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
664	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1117	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
665		1118
666	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1119	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
667	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
668	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
669	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
670	URxvt.color0: #000000
671	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
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		1120
685	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?
686	Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the
687	listening socket and then fork.
688
689	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
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
695	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
696	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
697	only correct choice :).
698
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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Revision 1.75 by root, Sun Nov 14 17:59:19 2021 UTC