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Revision 1.33 by root, Sat Jan 28 22:16:58 2006 UTC vs.
Revision 1.39 by root, Tue Jan 31 20:52:19 2006 UTC

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

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