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Revision 1.10 by root, Sun Feb 13 11:07:57 2005 UTC vs.
Revision 1.49 by root, Wed Aug 1 18:38:15 2007 UTC

1	FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS	1	RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
		2	Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
		3	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
		4	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
		5	"#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
		6	interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
		7
		8	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
		9	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
		10	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
		11	should give you tabs:
		12
		13	urxvt -pe tabbed
		14
		15	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
		16
		17	It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
		18	managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
		19	it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
		20	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
		21	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
		22
2	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	23	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
3	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
4	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
		26	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
5		27
6	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	28	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
7	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode contains large patches	29	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
8	that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode. Before	30	you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
9	reporting a bug to the original rxvt-unicode author please download	31	that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
10	and install the genuine version	32	design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
11	(<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the	33	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
12	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	34	characters.
13	to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the
14	Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
15		35
16	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	36	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
17	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	37	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
18	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
19	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.
20		42
		43	How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
		44	Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
		45	listening socket and then fork.
		46
		47	How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
		48	If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
		49	the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
		50
		51	#!/bin/sh
		52	urxvtc "$@"
		53	if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
		54	urxvtd -q -o -f
		55	urxvtc "$@"
		56	fi
		57
		58	This tries to create a new terminal, and if fails with exit status 2,
		59	meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and
		60	re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the
		61	existing daemon.
		62
		63	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
		64	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
		65	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
		66	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
		67	variable to decide whether or not to use color.
		68
		69	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
		70	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
		71	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
		72	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
		73	wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
		74	then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
		75	a regular xterm.
		76
		77	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
		78	snippets:
		79
		80	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
		81	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
		82	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
		83	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
		84	echo -n '^[Z'
		85	read term_id
		86	stty icanon echo
		87	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
		88	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
		89	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
		90	fi
		91	fi
		92
		93	How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
		94	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
		95	one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
		96	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
		97
		98	Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
		99	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
		100	bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
		101	that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
		102	being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
		103	startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
		104	unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
		105	iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
		106
		107	text data bss drs rss filename
		108	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
		109	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
		110
		111	When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
		112	and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
		113	libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
		114
		115	text data bss drs rss filename
		116	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
		117	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
		118
		119	The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
		120	encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
		121	and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
		122	encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
		123	compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
		124	memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
		125	a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
		126	when not used.
		127
		128	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
		129	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
		130	more memory.
		131
		132	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
		133	still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
		134	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
		135	(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
		136	a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
		137	out), it fares extremely well *g*.
		138
		139	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
		140	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
		141	had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
		142	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
		143	even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
		144
		145	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
		146	the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
		147	are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
		148	unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
		149
		150	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
		151	in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to write programs in
		152	C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this is
		153	not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on my
		154	system with a minimal config:
		155
		156	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		157	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
		158	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
		159	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		160
		161	And here is rxvt-unicode:
		162
		163	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		164	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
		165	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
		166	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
		167	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		168
		169	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
		170	except maybe libX11 :)
		171
		172	Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
		173	I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
		174	First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
		175	so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
		176	may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
		177	rite of passage: ... and you failed.
		178
		179	Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
		180	descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
		181
		182	1. Use inheritPixmap:
		183
		184	Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
		185	urxvt -ip -tint red -sh 40
		186
		187	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
		188	support, or you are unable to read.
		189
		190	2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
		191	to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
		192	your picture with gimp or any other tool:
		193
		194	convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.xpm
		195	urxvt -pixmap background.xpm -pe automove-background
		196
		197	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack XPM and Perl support, or
		198	you are unable to read.
		199
		200	3. Use an ARGB visual:
		201
		202	urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
		203
		204	This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
		205	doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
		206	there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
		207	necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
		208	that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
		209
		210	4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
		211
		212	xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
		213	-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
		214
		215	Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
		216	by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
		217	your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
		218
		219	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
		220	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
		221	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
		222	use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
		223	will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
		224	wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
		225	characters.
		226
		227	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
		228	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
		229	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
		230	way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
		231	wrong in these cases).
		232
		233	It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
		234	or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
		235	using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
		236	work, you might be forced to use a different font.
		237
		238	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
		239	bounding box data is correct.
		240
		241	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
		242	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
		243	("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
		244	make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
		245	rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
		246
		247	URxvt.colorBD: white
		248	URxvt.colorIT: green
		249
		250	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
		251	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
		252	colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
		253	standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
		254	course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
		255	good reasons.
		256
		257	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
		258	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
		259	fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
		260
		261	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
		262	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
		263	same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
		264
		265	printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
		266
		267	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
		268	japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
		269	japanese fonts would only be in your way.
		270
		271	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
		272
		273	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
		274	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
		275	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
		276	Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
		277	enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
		278
		279	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		280	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		281
		282	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
		283	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
		284	is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
		285	antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
		286	memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
		287
		288	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
		289	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
		290	fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
		291	because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
		292	antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
		293	look best that way.
		294
		295	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
		296
		297	What's with this bold/blink stuff?
		298	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
		299	standard foreground colour.
		300
		301	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
		302	blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard colours.
		303	Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be ignored.
		304
		305	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
		306	foreground/background colors.
		307
		308	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
		309
		310	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
		311
		312	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
		313	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
		314	resources (or as long-options).
		315
		316	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
		317	the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
		318
		319	URxvt.color0: #000000
		320	URxvt.color1: #A80000
		321	URxvt.color2: #00A800
		322	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
		323	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
		324	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
		325	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
		326	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
		327
		328	URxvt.color8: #000054
		329	URxvt.color9: #FF0054
		330	URxvt.color10: #00FF54
		331	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
		332	URxvt.color12: #0000FF
		333	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
		334	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
		335	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
		336
		337	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors.
		338
		339	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
		340	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
		341	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
		342	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
		343	URxvt.color0: #000000
		344	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
		345	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
		346	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
		347	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
		348	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
		349	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
		350	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
		351	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
		352	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
		353	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
		354	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
		355	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
		356	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
		357
		358	They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
		359
		360	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
		361	See next entry.
		362
		363	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
		364	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
		365	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
		366	system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
		367	display.
		368
		369	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
		370	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
		371	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
		372	resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
		373	intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
		374	the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
		375
		376	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
		377	e.g.:
		378
		379	urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
		380
		381	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
		382	If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
		383	font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
		384	search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
		385
		386	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
		387	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
		388	which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
		389
		390	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
		391	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
		392	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
		393	it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
		394	japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
		395	Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
		396	characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
		397	non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
		398	font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
		399	for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
		400
		401	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
		402	list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
		403	preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
		404	first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
		405
		406	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
		407	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
		408	fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
		409	has been designed yet).
		410
		411	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
		412	I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
		413
		414	Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
		415	The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
		416	If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
		417	setting:
		418
		419	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
		420
		421	If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
		422	more.
		423
		424	To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
		425	pattern:
		426
		427	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
		428
		429	Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClik* combination also
		430	selects words like the old code.
		431
		432	I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
		433	You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
		434	perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
		435	rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
		436
		437	If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
		438	identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
		439	PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
		440	disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
		441	perl-ext-common resource:
		442
		443	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
		444
		445	This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
		446	extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
		447	scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
		448	combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
		449
		450	URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
		451
		452	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		453	See next entry.
		454
		455	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		456	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		457	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		458	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		459	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		460	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		461
		462	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		463	extension:
		464
		465	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		466
		467	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		468	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		469	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		470	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		471	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		472	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		473	report if that helped.
		474
		475	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		476	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		477	correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your
		478	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		479	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		480	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		481	will continue without an input method.
		482
		483	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than
		484	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		485
		486	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		487	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		488	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		489	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		490	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		491	escape character and so on.
		492
		493	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		494	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		495	editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. I've heard
		496	that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise specified. A quick
		497	check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are
		498	depressed.
		499
		500	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		501	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		502	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		503	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		504
		505	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		506	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		507	correct choice :).
		508
		509	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
		510	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
		511	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell),
		512	then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in
		513	<termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as your stty
		514	setting).
		515
		516	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
		517
		518	# use Backspace = ^H
		519	$ stty erase ^H
		520	$ urxvt
		521
		522	# use Backspace = ^?
		523	$ stty erase ^?
		524	$ urxvt
		525
		526	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l".
		527
		528	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
		529
		530	# use Backspace = ^H
		531	$ stty erase ^H
		532	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
		533
		534	# use Backspace = ^?
		535	$ stty erase ^?
		536	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
		537
		538	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		539	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		540	properly reflects that.
		541
		542	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		543	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		544	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		545	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		546
		547	Some other Backspace problems:
		548
		549	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		550	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		551
		552	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		553
		554	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		555	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		556	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		557	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		558	keysyms.
		559
		560	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		561
		562	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
		563	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
		564	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
		565	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
		566	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
		567	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
		568	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
		569	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
		570	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
		571	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
		572	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
		573	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
		574	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
		575	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
		576	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
		577	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
		578	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
		579	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
		580	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
		581	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
		582
		583	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		584
		585	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
		586	KP_Insert == Insert
		587	F22 == Print
		588	F27 == Home
		589	F29 == Prior
		590	F33 == End
		591	F35 == Next
		592
		593	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		594	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		595	keys as required for your particular machine.
		596
		597	Terminal Configuration
		598	Can I see a typical configuration?
		599	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		600	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		601
		602	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		603	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		604	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		605	certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
		606
		607	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
		608	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
		609
		610	These are just for testing stuff.
		611
		612	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		613	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		614
		615	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		616	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		617	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		618	with correct-looking fonts.
		619
		620	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		621	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		622	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		623	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		624	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		625	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		626
		627	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		628	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		629	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		630	write.
		631
		632	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		633	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		634	relevant file and go tot he error line number.
		635
		636	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		637	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		638
		639	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		640	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		641	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		642	scrollback buffer.
		643
		644	URxvt.background: #000000
		645	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		646	URxvt.color7: gray90
		647	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		648	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		649	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		650	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		651
		652	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		653	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		654	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		655	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		656
		657	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		658
		659	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		660	but is mostly a nice effect.
		661
		662	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		663	URxvt.loginShell: false
		664	URxvt.meta: ignore
		665	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		666
		667	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		668	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		669
		670	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		671
		672	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		673
		674	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		675
		676	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		677	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		678
		679	URxvt.visualBell: true
		680
		681	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		682
		683	URxvt.insecure: true
		684
		685	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		686
		687	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		688
		689	I once thought this is a great idea.
		690
		691	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		692	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		693	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		694	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		695	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		696	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		697	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		698	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		699	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		700
		701	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		702	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		703	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		704	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		705	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		706	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		707	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		708	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		709	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		710
		711	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		712	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		713	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		714	bold and normal fonts.
		715
		716	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		717	class name. Thats because I use different configs for different
		718	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		719	uses these defaults:
		720
		721	IRC*title: IRC
		722	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		723	IRC*saveLines: 0
		724	IRC*mapAlert: true
		725	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		726	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		727	IRC*colorBD: white
		728	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		729	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		730
		731	"Alt-Shift-1" and "Alt-Shift-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		732	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		733	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		734	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		735
		736	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		737	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		738	file for different hosts, for example, on ym main desktop, I use:
		739
		740	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		741	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		742	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		743	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		744	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		745
		746	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		747	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		748	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		749	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		750	combinations :->
		751
		752	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		753	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		754	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		755	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		756	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		757	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		758
		759	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		760	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		761	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		762
		763	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		764
		765	URxvt.resource: value
		766
		767	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		768	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		769	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		770
21	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	771	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
22	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely	772	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
23	available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same	773	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
24	problem often arises).	774	arises).
25		775
26	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	776	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
27	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	777	can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp and works as user and
		778	admin):
28		779
29	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	780	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
30	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	781	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
31		782
32	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	783	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,
33		784
		785	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		786	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
		787
34	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	788	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
35	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of	789	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
36	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	790	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
37	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	791	colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
38	applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,	792	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
39	though.
40		793
41	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	794	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
42	you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or	795	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
43	use a resource to set it:	796	resource to set it:
44		797
45	URxvt.termName: rxvt	798	URxvt.termName: rxvt
46		799
47	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	800	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
48	replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.	801	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
49		802
		803	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
		804	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
		805	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
		806
50	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	807	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		808	See next entry.
		809
51	I need a termcap file entry.	810	I need a termcap file entry.
52	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	811	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
53	operating systems still compile some programs using the	812	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
54	long-obsoleted termcap (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely	813	library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
55	on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	814	for "rxvt-unicode".
56		815
57	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	816	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
58	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's	817	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
59	infocmp program like this:	818	program like this:
60		819
61	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	820	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
62		821
63	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	822	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:
64		823
65	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\	824	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
66	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\	825	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
67	:co#80:it#8:li#24:\	826	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
68	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\	827	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
69	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\	828	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
70	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=^O:al=\E[L:\	829	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
71	:as=^N:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:\	830	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
72	:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:dl=\E[M:do=^J:\	831	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
73	:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:\	832	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
		833	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
74	:im=\E[4h:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\	834	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
75	:k0=\E[21~:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:\	835	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
76	:k5=\E[15~:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:\	836	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
77	:kD=\E[3~:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:\	837	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
78	:ke=\E[?1l\E>:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:\	838	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
79	:ku=\EOA:le=^H:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:\	839	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
80	:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:\	840	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
81	:st=\EH:ta=^I:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:\	841	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
82	:up=\E[A:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\	842	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
83	:vs=\E[?25h:	843	:vs=\E[?25h:
84		844
85	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?	845	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
86	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	846	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
87	decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration	847	decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
88	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file	848	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
89	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	849	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
90		850
91	TERM rxvt-unicode	851	TERM rxvt-unicode
92		852
93	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	853	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
94		854
95	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	855	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
96		856
97	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	857	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
98		858
99	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	859	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		860	See next entry.
		861
100	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	862	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		863	See next entry.
		864
101	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	865	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
102	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	866	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
103	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	867	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
104	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	868	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
105	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)	869	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
106	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	870	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
107	so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I	871	you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
108	log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on	872	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
109	how to do this).	873	this).
110		874
111	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	875	Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
112	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
113	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
114	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
115	and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
116	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
117	please report if that helped.
118
119	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?	876	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		877	See next entry.
		878
120	Unicode does not seem to work?	879	Unicode does not seem to work?
121	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	880	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
122	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	881	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
123	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	882	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
124	settings.
125		883
126	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	884	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
127	programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the	885	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
128	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	886	while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
129	locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this	887	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
130	is not going to work.	888	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
131		889
132	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	890	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
133	likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in	891	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
134	your .profile.	892	.profile.
135		893
136	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	894	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
137		895
138	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	896	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
139	not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command	897	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
140	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	898	displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
141	settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).	899	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
142	If it displays something like:	900	something like:
143		901
144	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	902	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
145		903
146	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	904	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
147		905
148	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	906	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
149	then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs	907	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
150	just don't support locales :(	908	support locales :(
151		909
152	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
153	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
154	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
155	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
156	your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
157	want to display.
158
159	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
160	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
161	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
162	don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
163	artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
164	has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
165	indeed look correct.
166
167	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
168	list, e.g.:
169
170	rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
171
172	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
173	font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
174	the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
175	up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
176	X-server.
177
178	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
179	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
180	size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
181
182	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
183	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
184	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
185	is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
186	first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
187	font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
188	Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
189	so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
190	look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
191	still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
192	the japanese font.
193
194	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
195	font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
196	list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
197	japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
198	first.
199
200	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
201	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
202	different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
203	interface for this has been designed yet).
204
205	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
206	"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
207
208	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
209	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
210	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
211	terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
212	Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
213	just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
214	that redraws adjacent characters.
215
216	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
217	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
218	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
219	correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
220	unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
221
222	It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
223	freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
224	might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
225	that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
226
227	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
228	bounding box data is correct.
229
230	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
231	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
232	set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
233	by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
234	your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
235	keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
236	then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
237
238	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
239	than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
240
241	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
242	14755
243	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
244	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
245	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
246	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
247	telnet escape character and so on.
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
251	settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
252	effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
253	bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
254	the effect:
255
256	URxvt.colorBD: white
257	URxvt.colorIT: green
258
259	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
260	can I fix that?
261	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
262	weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
263	the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
264	of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
265	without very good reasons.
266
267	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
268	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
269	will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
270	features.
271
272	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
273	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
274	in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
275	it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
276	requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
277
278	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
279	nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
280	representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
281	respect to standards.
282
283	However, "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support
284	multi-language apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and
285	non-standardized) representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to
286	convert between wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and
287	any other encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for
288	each and every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t
289	into anything except the current locale encoding.
290
291	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
292	by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
293	handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
294	doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
295	OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
296	emulator).
297
298	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
299	the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
300	to carry complete replacements for them :)
301
302	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?	910	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		911	See next entry.
		912
303	Is there an option to switch encodings?	913	Is there an option to switch encodings?
304	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	914	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
305	and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't	915	specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
306	even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to	916	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
307	terminal I/O.
308		917
309	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	918	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
310	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	919	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
311	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	920	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
312	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.	921	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
313	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	922	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
314	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	923	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
315	locale-independent table under all locales).	924	locale-independent table under all locales).
316		925
317	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	926	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
318	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	927	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
319	in the interpretation of characters.	928	interpretation of characters.
320		929
321	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	930	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
322	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	931	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
323		932
324	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	933	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
325	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	934	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
326	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	935	locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
327	"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.	936	"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
328	"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")	937	"de" or "german") are also common.
329	are also common.
330		938
331	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	939	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
332	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	940	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
333	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	941	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
334	rxvt-unicode.
335		942
336	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	943	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
337	start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.	944	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
338		945
339	Can I switch locales at runtime?	946	Can I switch locales at runtime?
340	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	947	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
341	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	948	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
342		949
343	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	950	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
344		951
345	See also the previous answer.	952	See also the previous answer.
346		953
347	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	954	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
348	one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it	955	locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
349	(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which	956	UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
350	first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:	957	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
351		958
352	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	959	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
353	xjdic -js	960	xjdic -js
354	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	961	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
355		962
356	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	963	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
357	except for some locales where character width differs between	964	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
358	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	965	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
359		966
360	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	967	I have problems getting my input method working.
361	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	968	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
362	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	969	method server.
363	immediately:
364		970
365	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	971	Here is a checklist:
366		972
367	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	973	- Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
368	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	974	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
369	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
370		975
371	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	976	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		977	XIM.
		978	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		979	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
372		980
373	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	981	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
374	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	982	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
375	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	983	*starting* rxvt-unicode.
376	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	984	When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
377	be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:	985	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		986	running with this command:
378		987
379	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	988	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
380	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
381		989
		990	*
		991
382	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	992	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
383	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest	993	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
384	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	994	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
385		995
386	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	996	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
387		997
388	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	998	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
389	still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not	999	use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
390	be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,	1000	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
391	as your input method limits you.	1001	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
392		1002
393	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.	1003	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
394	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by	1004	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
395	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory	1005	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
396	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering	1006	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
397	at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally	1007	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
398	succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,	1008	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
399	however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides	1009	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
400	cooperate.
401		1010
402	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.	1011	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
403		1012
404	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	1013	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
405	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	1014	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
406	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	1015	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large
407	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	1016	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but
408	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	1017	unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to
409	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	1018	the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine
410	a font for your characters.	1019	version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce
		1020	the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific
		1021	to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian
		1022	Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
411		1023
412	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	1024	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
413	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will	1025	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a
414	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to	1026	bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users
415	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will	1027	that might encounter the same issue.
416	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
417	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
418		1028
419	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1029	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
420	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1030	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
421	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1031	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
422	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialiasing=false"), which	1032	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
423	saves lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.	1033	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
		1034	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		1035	more in the future) depends on it.
424		1036
425	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1037	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" resources
426	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1038	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
427	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1039	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
428	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It	1040	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
429	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author	1041	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
430	thinks they look best that way.
431		1042
432	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1043	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
		1044	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
		1045	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
		1046	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
433		1047
434	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1048	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
435	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1049	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
436	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1050	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
437	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
438	specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
439	or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
440		1051
441	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1052	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
442	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1053	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
443	the standard foreground colour.	1054	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1055	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1056	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1057	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
444		1058
445	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1059	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
446	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1060	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
447	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1061	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
448	ignored.	1062	result in very little risk.
449		1063
450	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1064	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
451	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1065	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
		1066	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1067	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1068	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
452		1069
453	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1070	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
		1071	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
		1072	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
454		1073
455	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1074	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
		1075	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
456		1076
457	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1077	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
458	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1078	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
459	resources (or as long-options).	1079	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1080	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1081	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1082	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1083	locale encoding.
460		1084
461	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1085	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
462	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1086	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1087	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1088	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1089	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
463		1090
464	URxvt.color0: #000000	1091	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
465	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1092	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
466	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1093	complete replacements for them :)
467	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
468	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
469	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
470	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
471	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
472		1094
473	URxvt.color8: #000054	1095	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
474	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1096	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
475	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1097	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
476	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1098	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
477	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1099	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
478	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1100	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
479	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF	1101	old libW11 emulation.
480	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
481		1102
482	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1103	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
483	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1104	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
		1105	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
484		1106
485	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1107	Character widths are not correct.
486	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1	1108	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
487	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e	1109	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
488	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1	1110	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
489	URxvt.color0: #000000	1111	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
490	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93	1112	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
491	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
492	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
493	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
494	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
495	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
496	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
497	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
498	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
499	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
500	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
501	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
502	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
503		1113
504	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?	1114	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
505	Despite it's name, rxvtd is not a real daemon, but more like a	1115	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
506	server that answers rxvtc's requests, so it doesn't background
507	itself.
508		1116
509	To ensure rxvtd is listening on it's socket, you can use the	1117	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
510	following method to wait for the startup message before continuing:
511		1118
512	{ rxvtd & } | read
513
514	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
515	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
516	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
517	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
518	Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
519
520	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
521	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
522	only correct choice :).
523
524	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
525	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
526	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
527	shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
528	CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
529	your stty setting).
530
531	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
532
533	# use Backspace = ^H
534	$ stty erase ^H
535	$ rxvt
536
537	# use Backspace = ^?
538	$ stty erase ^?
539	$ rxvt
540
541	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
542
543	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
544
545	# use Backspace = ^H
546	$ stty erase ^H
547	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
548
549	# use Backspace = ^?
550	$ stty erase ^?
551	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
552
553	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
554	but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
555	value properly reflects that.
556
557	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
558	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
559	the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
560	vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
561	termcap/terminfo.
562
563	Some other Backspace problems:
564
565	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
566	expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
567	help.
568
569	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
570
571	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
572	There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
573	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
574	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
575	associated with keysyms.
576
577	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
578	URxvt"
579
580	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
581	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
582	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
583	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
584	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
585	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
586	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
587	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
588	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
589	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
590	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
591	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
592	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
593	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
594	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
595	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
596	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
597	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
598	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
599	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
600
601	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
602
603	I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
604	do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
605	following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
606	KP_Insert == Insert
607	F22 == Print
608	F27 == Home
609	F29 == Prior
610	F33 == End
611	F35 == Next
612
613	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
614	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
615	the keys as required for your particular machine.
616
617	How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
618	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
619	rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
620	can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
621	slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
622	whether or not to use color.
623
624	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
625	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
626	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
627	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
628	rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
629	these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
630	distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
631
632	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
633	script snippets:
634
635	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
636	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
637	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
638	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
639	echo -n '^[Z'
640	read term_id
641	stty icanon echo
642	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
643	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
644	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
645	fi
646	fi
647
648	How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
649	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
650	/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
651	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
652
653	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
654	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
655	channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
656	be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
657	FAQs :).
658

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