--- rxvt-unicode/README.FAQ 2006/01/31 20:57:29 1.40 +++ rxvt-unicode/README.FAQ 2006/01/31 20:58:12 1.41 @@ -1,917 +0,0 @@ -FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - Meta, Features & Commandline Issues - My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human? - Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel - "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be - interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :). - - Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode? - Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a - simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these - should give you tabs: - - urxvt -pe tabbed - - URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed - - It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window - managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow - it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed - or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt - (murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application. - - How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using? - The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape - sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When - using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon. - - Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that? - Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something - you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings - that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by - design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be - loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your - characters. - - Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger - scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6 - bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a - kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if - full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets - worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell. - - How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way? - Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the - listening socket and then fork. - - How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? I need this to decide about setting colors etc. - rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you can - check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED, slrn, - Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide whether - or not to use color. - - How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable? - If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled - insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script - snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode - wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets) - then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from - a regular xterm. - - Courtesy of Chuck Blake with the following shell script - snippets: - - # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells: - [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know - if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then - stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not - echo -n '^[Z' - read term_id - stty icanon echo - if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then - echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string - read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell - fi - fi - - How do I compile the manual pages on my own? - You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl, - one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html. Then go to the doc - subdirectory and enter "make alldoc". - - Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat? - I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra - bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see - that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always - being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after - startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit - unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion, - iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode. - - text data bss drs rss filename - 98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything - 188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything - - When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves xft - and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my - libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so. - - text data bss drs rss filename - 163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything - 1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything - - The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian - encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else - and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those - encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++ - compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of - memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds - a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even - when not used. - - Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of - one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use - more memory. - - Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this - still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like - gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole - (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half - a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits - out), it fares extremely well *g*. - - Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool? - Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I - had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a - fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put - even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++. - - My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in - the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits - are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and - unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself. - - Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs - in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to write programs in - C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this is - not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on my - system with a minimal config: - - libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) - libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000) - libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000) - /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) - - And here is rxvt-unicode: - - libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) - libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000) - libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000) - libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000) - /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) - - No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically), - except maybe libX11 :) - - Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues - I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong? - First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode, - so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you - may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a - rite of passage: ... and you failed. - - Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option - descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it! - - 1. Use inheritPixmap: - - Esetroot wallpaper.jpg - urxvt -ip -tint red -sh 40 - - That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting - support, or you are unable to read. - - 2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you - to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever - your picture with gimp or any other tool: - - convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.xpm - urxvt -pixmap background.xpm -pe automove-background - - That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack XPM and Perl support, or - you are unable to read. - - 3. Use an ARGB visual: - - urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc - - This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that - doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't - there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the - neccessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, - but that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place. - - 4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job: - - xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \ - -set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000 - - Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000 - by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and - your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces. - - Why do some chinese characters look so different than others? - This is because there is a difference between script and language -- - rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as - it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a - japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display. - Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese - characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first - non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese - font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font - for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font. - - The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font - list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a - preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font - first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first. - - In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at - runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different - fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this - has been designed yet). - - Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can - I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document). - - Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings? - Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that - character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal - use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode - will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too - wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent - characters. - - All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes, - however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed - bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct - way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is - wrong in these cases). - - It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft, freetype, - or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try - using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't - work, you might be forced to use a different font. - - All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their - bounding box data is correct. - - How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much? - First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings - ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then - make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise - rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect: - - URxvt.colorBD: white - URxvt.colorIT: green - - Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that? - For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird - colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the - standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of - course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very - good reasons. - - In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo - definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will - fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features. - - Can I switch the fonts at runtime? - Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the - same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately: - - printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic" - - This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a - japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where - japanese fonts would only be in your way. - - You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching. - - Why do italic characters look as if clipped? - Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For - example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans - Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might be to - enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this: - - URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true - URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true - - Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? - Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it - is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable - antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of - memory and also speeds up rendering considerably. - - Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong? - Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to - fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core - fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has - antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they - look best that way. - - If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually. - - What's with this bold/blink stuff? - If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the - standard foreground colour. - - For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text - blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard colours. - Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be ignored. - - On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity - foreground/background colors. - - color0-7 are the low-intensity colors. - - color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors. - - I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them? - You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults - resources (or as long-options). - - Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including - the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow: - - URxvt.color0: #000000 - URxvt.color1: #A80000 - URxvt.color2: #00A800 - URxvt.color3: #A8A800 - URxvt.color4: #0000A8 - URxvt.color5: #A800A8 - URxvt.color6: #00A8A8 - URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8 - - URxvt.color8: #000054 - URxvt.color9: #FF0054 - URxvt.color10: #00FF54 - URxvt.color11: #FFFF54 - URxvt.color12: #0000FF - URxvt.color13: #FF00FF - URxvt.color14: #00FFFF - URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF - - And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described (not by - me) as "pretty girly". - - URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1 - URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1 - URxvt.background: #0e0e0e - URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1 - URxvt.color0: #000000 - URxvt.color8: #8b8f93 - URxvt.color1: #dc74d1 - URxvt.color9: #dc74d1 - URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7 - URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7 - URxvt.color3: #dfe37e - URxvt.color11: #dfe37e - URxvt.color5: #9e88f0 - URxvt.color13: #9e88f0 - URxvt.color6: #73f7ff - URxvt.color14: #73f7ff - URxvt.color7: #e1dddd - URxvt.color15: #e1dddd - - Why do some characters look so much different than others? - See next entry. - - How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts? - Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine. - Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your - system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to - display. - - rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font. - Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks - bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't - resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial - intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe - the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct. - - In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list, - e.g.: - - urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3... - - When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font. - If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next - font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this - search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server. - - The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the - base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size, - which must be the same due to the way terminals work. - - Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction - The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words? - If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following - setting: - - URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+) - - If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and - more. - - To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this - pattern: - - URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+) - - Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClik* combination also - selects words like the old code. - - I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it? - You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the - perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps - rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory. - - If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to - identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section - PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to - disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this - perl-ext-common resource: - - URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup - - This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup - extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example, - scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other - combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource: - - URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s - - The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off? - See next entry. - - During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this? - These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal - circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the - line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment, - but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in - some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly. - - You can permamently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline" - extension: - - URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline - - My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output? - Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no - specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is - caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether and - how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a - compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please - report if that helped. - - My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working. - The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set - correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your - input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input - method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not - support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode - will continue without an input method. - - In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than - one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None. - - I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755 - Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on - international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your - advantage, typing to get a ASCII NUL. This works for - other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet - escape character and so on. - - Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works. - Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some - editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. I've heard - that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise specified. A quick - check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are - depressed. - - What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour? - Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the BackSpace - keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are - two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?". - - Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the - debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only only - correct choice :). - - Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the - value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode - wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell), - then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in - , will be used (which may not be the same as your stty - setting). - - For starting a new rxvt-unicode: - - # use Backspace = ^H - $ stty erase ^H - $ urxvt - - # use Backspace = ^? - $ stty erase ^? - $ urxvt - - Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l". - - For an existing rxvt-unicode: - - # use Backspace = ^H - $ stty erase ^H - $ echo -n "^[[36h" - - # use Backspace = ^? - $ stty erase ^? - $ echo -n "^[[36l" - - This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but - if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value - properly reflects that. - - The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace - problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the - Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for - Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo. - - Some other Backspace problems: - - some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect - Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help. - - Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner. - - I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them? - There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless - you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can - use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with - keysyms. - - Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt" - - URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~ - URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~ - URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033 - URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033 - URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033 - URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033 - URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033 - URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033 - URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033 - URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033 - URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033 - URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033 - URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033 - URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033 - URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033 - URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033 - URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033 - URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033 - URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033 - URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007 - - See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource. - - 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 - KP_Insert == Insert - F22 == Print - F27 == Home - F29 == Prior - F33 == End - F35 == Next - - Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various - possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the - keys as required for your particular machine. - - Terminal Configuration - Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources? - Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X - applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads - resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will - ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read - $HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display. - - If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources - are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after - every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources). - - Also consider the form resources have to use: - - URxvt.resource: value - - If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of - specifying resources), make sure you understand wether and why it works. - If unsure, use the form above. - - When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? - The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available - as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often - arises). - - The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this - can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp): - - REMOTE=remotesystem.domain - infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti" - - ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system, - - If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set - "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of - problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different - colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice - quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though. - - If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you - can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a - resource to set it: - - URxvt.termName: rxvt - - If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace - the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one. - - "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry. - Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by - "enacs=\E[0@" and try again. - - "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt. - See next entry. - - I need a termcap file entry. - One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating - systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap - library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry - for "rxvt-unicode". - - You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many cases. - You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp program - like this: - - infocmp -C rxvt-unicode - - Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above: - - rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\ - :am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\ - :co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\ - :AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\ - :K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\ - :RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\ - :as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\ - :cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\ - :dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\ - :i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\ - :is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\ - :k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\ - :k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\ - :kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\ - :kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\ - :mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\ - :sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\ - :te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\ - :us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\ - :vs=\E[?25h: - - Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output? - The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to - decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration - file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file (among - with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add: - - TERM rxvt-unicode - - to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add: - - alias ls='ls --color=auto' - - to your ".profile" or ".bashrc". - - Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode? - See next entry. - - Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic? - See next entry. - - Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly? - Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged - distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by - setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features. - Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux) - furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so - you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in - to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do - this). - - Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues - Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding? - See next entry. - - Unicode does not seem to work? - If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but - getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output - is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings. - - Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the - programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the - login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the locale - to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this is not - going to work. - - The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely - run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your - .profile. - - printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" - - If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not - supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which - displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as - it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays - something like: - - locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ... - - Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system. - - If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then - you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't - support locales :( - - How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use? - See next entry. - - Is there an option to switch encodings? - Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no - specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know - about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O. - - The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for - selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating - this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties - such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*. - Applications not using that info will have problems (for example, - "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own, - locale-independent table under all locales). - - Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All - programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the - interpretation of characters. - - Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor - is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like. - - On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable - contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed - locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", - "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. - "de" or "german") are also common. - - Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the - encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e. - "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode. - - If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start - rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category. - - Can I switch locales at runtime? - Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets - rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE". - - printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS - - See also the previous answer. - - Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one - locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g. - UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first - switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later: - - printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS - xjdic -js - printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8 - - You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine, - except for some locales where character width differs between program- - and rxvt-unicode-locales. - - My input method wants but I want UTF-8, what can I do? - You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of - the terminal, using the resource "imlocale": - - URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP - - Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still - use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not be able - to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then, as your input - method limits you. - - Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits. - Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by - design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory - leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at - exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while - SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes - cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate. - - So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers. - - Operating Systems / Package Maintaining - I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem... - The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large - patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but - unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to - the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine - version () and try to reproduce - the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific - to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian - Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug). - - For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and - probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a - bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users - that might encounter the same issue. - - I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation? - You should build one binary with the default options. configure now - enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them - runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling - them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter - should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely - more in the future) depends on it. - - You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" resources - system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful - behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty - "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the - perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it. - - If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one - with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with - "--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of - encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used). - - I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe? - It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly - install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now. - - When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork - into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some - systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges - immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep - privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains - things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers). - - This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very - early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before - main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should - result in very little risk. - - On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide. - Seems to be a known bug, read - . Some people use the - following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working: - - #define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x) - - I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all. - Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in - your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it, - wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that - wchar_t is represented as unicode. - - As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl nor - does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal representation of - wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards. - - However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and - "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t. - - "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps - in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized) - representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t - (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without - implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There - simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current - locale encoding. - - Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by - carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with - them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple - conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements - encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator). - - The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the - system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry - complete replacements for them :) - - I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc. - Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst - problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem. - - How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin? - rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the - X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer - supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single - font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or - "-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the - old libW11 emulation. - - At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any - multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are - likely limited to 8-bit encodings. -