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Revision 1.24 by root, Wed Jan 11 19:55:33 2006 UTC vs.
Revision 1.50 by root, Sat Oct 27 12:09:02 2007 UTC

1	FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS	1	RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
2	Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?	2	Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
3	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause	3	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
4	extra bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you	4	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
5	can see that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables	5	"#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
6	always being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS)	6	interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
7	after startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is
8	a bit unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding
9	conversion, iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
10		7
11	text data bss drs rss filename
12	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
13	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
14
15	When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves
16	xft and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11
17	and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so.
18
19	text data bss drs rss filename
20	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
21	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
22
23	The very large size of the text section is explained by the
24	east-asian encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but
25	nothing else and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core
26	fonts that use those encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k
27	emergency buffer that my c++ compiler allocates (but of course
28	doesn't use unless you are out of memory). Also, using an xft font
29	instead of a core font immediately adds a few megabytes of RSS. Xft
30	indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even when not used.
31
32	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
33	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
34	more memory.
35
36	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k),
37	this still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
38	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or
39	konsole (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after
40	exit, plus half a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of
41	warnings it spits out), it fares extremely well *g*.
42
43	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
44	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is:
45	I had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
46	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me).
47	Put even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
48
49	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but
50	in the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability
51	limits are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale
52	support and unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than
53	C++ itself.
54
55	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write
56	programs in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to
57	write programs in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large
58	libraries, but this is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is
59	what rxvt links against on my system with a minimal config:
60
61	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
62	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
63	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
64	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
65
66	And here is rxvt-unicode:
67
68	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
69	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
70	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
71	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
72	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
73
74	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in
75	statically), except maybe libX11 :)
76
77	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?	8	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
78	rxvt-unicode does not directly support tabs. It will work fine with	9	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
79	tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing	10	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
80	programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into	11	should give you tabs:
81	other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming	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
82	"Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt)	20	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
83	terminal as an example embedding application.	21	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
84		22
85	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	23	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
86	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
87	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
88	When using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the	26	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
89	daemon.
90		27
91	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	28	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
92	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large	29	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
93	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode.	30	you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
94	Before reporting a bug to the original rxvt-unicode author please	31	that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
95	download and install the genuine version	32	design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
96	(<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the	33	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
97	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	34	characters.
98	to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the
99	Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
100		35
101	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	36	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
102	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	37	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
103	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
104	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.
105		42
106	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any	43	How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
107	recommendation?	44	Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
108	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now	45	listening socket and then fork.
109	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
110	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling
111	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl
112	interpreter should be enabled, as important functionality (menus,
113	selection, likely more in the future) depends on it.
114		46
115	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext"	47	How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
116	resources system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will	48	If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
117	result in useful behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory,	49	the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
118	add an empty "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file.	50
119	This will keep the perl interpreter disabled until the user enables	51	#!/bin/sh
		52	urxvtc "$@"
		53	if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
		54	urxvtd -q -o -f
		55	urxvtc "$@"
120	it.	56	fi
121		57
122	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal	58	This tries to create a new terminal, and if fails with exit status 2,
123	one with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with	59	meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and
124	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot	60	re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the
125	of encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely	61	existing daemon.
126	used).
127		62
128	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this	63	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
129	safe?	64	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
130	Likely not. While I honestly try to make it secure, and am probably	65	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
131	not bad at it, I think it is simply unreasonable to expect all of	66	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
132	freetype + fontconfig + xft + xlib + perl + ... + rxvt-unicode	67	variable to decide whether or not to use color.
133	itself to all be secure. Also, rxvt-unicode disables some options
134	when it detects that it runs setuid or setgid, which is not nice.
135	Besides, with the embedded perl interpreter the possibility for
136	security problems easily multiplies.
137		68
138	Elevated privileges are only required for utmp and pty operations on	69	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
139	some systems (for example, GNU/Linux doesn't need any extra	70	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
140	privileges for ptys, but some need it for utmp support). It is	71	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
141	planned to mvoe this into a forked handler process, but this is not	72	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
142	yet done.	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.
143		76
144	So, while setuid/setgid operation is supported and not a problem on	77	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
145	your typical single-user-no-other-logins unix desktop, always	78	snippets:
146	remember that its an awful lot of code, most of which isn't checked
147	for security issues regularly.
148		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, please address all transparency related issues to Sasha
		175	Vasko at sasha@aftercode.net and do not bug the author about it. Also,
		176	if you can't get it working consider it a rite of passage: ... and you
		177	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.jpg
		195	urxvt -pixmap background.jpg -pe automove-background
		196
		197	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack AfterImage and Perl
		198	support, or 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	How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
		415	We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
		416	like:
		417
		418	urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
		419
		420	Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
		421	The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
		422	If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
		423	setting:
		424
		425	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
		426
		427	If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
		428	more.
		429
		430	To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
		431	pattern:
		432
		433	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
		434
		435	Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClik* combination also
		436	selects words like the old code.
		437
		438	I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
		439	You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
		440	perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
		441	rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
		442
		443	If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
		444	identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
		445	PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
		446	disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
		447	perl-ext-common resource:
		448
		449	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
		450
		451	This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
		452	extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
		453	scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
		454	combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
		455
		456	URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
		457
		458	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		459	See next entry.
		460
		461	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		462	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		463	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		464	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		465	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		466	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		467
		468	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		469	extension:
		470
		471	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		472
		473	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		474	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		475	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		476	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		477	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		478	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		479	report if that helped.
		480
		481	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		482	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		483	correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your
		484	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		485	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		486	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		487	will continue without an input method.
		488
		489	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than
		490	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		491
		492	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		493	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		494	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		495	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		496	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		497	escape character and so on.
		498
		499	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		500	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		501	editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. I've heard
		502	that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise specified. A quick
		503	check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are
		504	depressed.
		505
		506	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		507	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		508	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		509	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		510
		511	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		512	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		513	correct choice :).
		514
		515	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
		516	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
		517	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell),
		518	then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in
		519	<termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as your stty
		520	setting).
		521
		522	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
		523
		524	# use Backspace = ^H
		525	$ stty erase ^H
		526	$ urxvt
		527
		528	# use Backspace = ^?
		529	$ stty erase ^?
		530	$ urxvt
		531
		532	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l".
		533
		534	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
		535
		536	# use Backspace = ^H
		537	$ stty erase ^H
		538	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
		539
		540	# use Backspace = ^?
		541	$ stty erase ^?
		542	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
		543
		544	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		545	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		546	properly reflects that.
		547
		548	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		549	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		550	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		551	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		552
		553	Some other Backspace problems:
		554
		555	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		556	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		557
		558	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		559
		560	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		561	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		562	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		563	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		564	keysyms.
		565
		566	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		567
		568	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
		569	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
		570	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
		571	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
		572	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
		573	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
		574	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
		575	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
		576	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
		577	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
		578	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
		579	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
		580	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
		581	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
		582	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
		583	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
		584	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
		585	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
		586	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
		587	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
		588
		589	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		590
		591	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
		592	KP_Insert == Insert
		593	F22 == Print
		594	F27 == Home
		595	F29 == Prior
		596	F33 == End
		597	F35 == Next
		598
		599	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		600	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		601	keys as required for your particular machine.
		602
		603	Terminal Configuration
		604	Can I see a typical configuration?
		605	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		606	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		607
		608	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		609	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		610	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		611	certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
		612
		613	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
		614	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
		615
		616	These are just for testing stuff.
		617
		618	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		619	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		620
		621	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		622	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		623	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		624	with correct-looking fonts.
		625
		626	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		627	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		628	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		629	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		630	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		631	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		632
		633	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		634	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		635	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		636	write.
		637
		638	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		639	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		640	relevant file and go tot he error line number.
		641
		642	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		643	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		644
		645	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		646	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		647	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		648	scrollback buffer.
		649
		650	URxvt.background: #000000
		651	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		652	URxvt.color7: gray90
		653	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		654	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		655	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		656	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		657
		658	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		659	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		660	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		661	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		662
		663	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		664
		665	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		666	but is mostly a nice effect.
		667
		668	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		669	URxvt.loginShell: false
		670	URxvt.meta: ignore
		671	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		672
		673	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		674	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		675
		676	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		677
		678	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		679
		680	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		681
		682	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		683	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		684
		685	URxvt.visualBell: true
		686
		687	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		688
		689	URxvt.insecure: true
		690
		691	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		692
		693	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		694
		695	I once thought this is a great idea.
		696
		697	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		698	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		699	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		700	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		701	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		702	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		703	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		704	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		705	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		706
		707	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		708	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		709	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		710	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		711	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		712	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		713	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		714	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		715	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		716
		717	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		718	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		719	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		720	bold and normal fonts.
		721
		722	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		723	class name. Thats because I use different configs for different
		724	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		725	uses these defaults:
		726
		727	IRC*title: IRC
		728	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		729	IRC*saveLines: 0
		730	IRC*mapAlert: true
		731	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		732	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		733	IRC*colorBD: white
		734	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		735	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		736
		737	"Alt-Shift-1" and "Alt-Shift-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		738	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		739	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		740	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		741
		742	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		743	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		744	file for different hosts, for example, on ym main desktop, I use:
		745
		746	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		747	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		748	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		749	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		750	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		751
		752	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		753	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		754	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		755	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		756	combinations :->
		757
		758	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		759	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		760	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		761	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		762	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		763	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		764
		765	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		766	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		767	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		768
		769	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		770
		771	URxvt.resource: value
		772
		773	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		774	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		775	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		776
149	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	777	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
150	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely	778	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
151	available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same	779	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
152	problem often arises).	780	arises).
153		781
154	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	782	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
155	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	783	can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp and works as user and
		784	admin):
156		785
157	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	786	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
158	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	787	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
159		788
160	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	789	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,
161		790
		791	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		792	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
		793
162	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	794	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
163	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of	795	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
164	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	796	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
165	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	797	colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
166	applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,	798	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
167	though.
168		799
169	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	800	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
170	you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or	801	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
171	use a resource to set it:	802	resource to set it:
172		803
173	URxvt.termName: rxvt	804	URxvt.termName: rxvt
174		805
175	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	806	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
176	replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.	807	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
177		808
178	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.	809	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
179	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it	810	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
180	by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.	811	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
181		812
182	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	813	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		814	See next entry.
		815
183	I need a termcap file entry.	816	I need a termcap file entry.
184	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	817	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
185	operating systems still compile some programs using the	818	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
186	long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)	819	library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
187	and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	820	for "rxvt-unicode".
188		821
189	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	822	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
190	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's	823	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
191	infocmp program like this:	824	program like this:
192		825
193	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	826	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
194		827
195	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	828	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:
196		829
197	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\	830	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
198	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\	831	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
199	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\	832	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
200	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\	833	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
201	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\	834	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
202	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\	835	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
203	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\	836	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
204	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\	837	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
205	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\	838	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
206	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\	839	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
207	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\	840	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
208	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\	841	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
209	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\	842	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
210	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\	843	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
211	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\	844	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
212	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\	845	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
213	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\	846	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
214	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\	847	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
215	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\	848	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
216	:vs=\E[?25h:	849	:vs=\E[?25h:
217		850
218	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?	851	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
219	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	852	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
220	decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration	853	decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
221	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file	854	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
222	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	855	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
223		856
224	TERM rxvt-unicode	857	TERM rxvt-unicode
225		858
226	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	859	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
227		860
228	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	861	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
229		862
230	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	863	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
231		864
232	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	865	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		866	See next entry.
		867
233	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	868	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		869	See next entry.
		870
234	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	871	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
235	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	872	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
236	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	873	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
237	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	874	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
238	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)	875	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
239	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	876	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
240	so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I	877	you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
241	log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on	878	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
242	how to do this).	879	this).
243		880
244	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	881	Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
245	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
246	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
247	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
248	and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
249	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
250	please report if that helped.
251
252	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?	882	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		883	See next entry.
		884
253	Unicode does not seem to work?	885	Unicode does not seem to work?
254	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	886	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
255	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	887	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
256	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	888	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
257	settings.
258		889
259	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	890	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
260	programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the	891	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
261	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	892	while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
262	locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this	893	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
263	is not going to work.	894	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
264		895
265	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	896	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
266	likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in	897	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
267	your .profile.	898	.profile.
268		899
269	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	900	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
270		901
271	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	902	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
272	not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command	903	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
273	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	904	displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
274	settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).	905	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
275	If it displays something like:	906	something like:
276		907
277	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	908	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
278		909
279	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	910	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
280		911
281	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	912	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
282	then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs	913	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
283	just don't support locales :(	914	support locales :(
284		915
285	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
286	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
287	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
288	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
289	your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
290	want to display.
291
292	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
293	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
294	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
295	don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
296	artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
297	has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
298	indeed look correct.
299
300	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
301	list, e.g.:
302
303	rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
304
305	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
306	font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
307	the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
308	up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
309	X-server.
310
311	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
312	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
313	size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
314
315	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
316	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
317	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
318	is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
319	first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
320	font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
321	Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
322	so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
323	look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
324	still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
325	the japanese font.
326
327	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
328	font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
329	list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
330	japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
331	first.
332
333	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
334	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
335	different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
336	interface for this has been designed yet).
337
338	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
339	"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
340
341	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
342	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
343	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
344	terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
345	Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
346	just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
347	that redraws adjacent characters.
348
349	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
350	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
351	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
352	correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
353	unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
354
355	It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
356	freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
357	might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
358	that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
359
360	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
361	bounding box data is correct.
362
363	On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
364	Seems to be a known bug, read
365	<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
366	following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
367
368	#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
369
370	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
371	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
372	set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
373	by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
374	your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
375	keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
376	then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
377
378	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
379	than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
380
381	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
382	14755
383	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
384	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
385	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
386	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
387	telnet escape character and so on.
388
389	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
390	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
391	settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
392	effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
393	bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
394	the effect:
395
396	URxvt.colorBD: white
397	URxvt.colorIT: green
398
399	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
400	can I fix that?
401	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
402	weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
403	the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
404	of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
405	without very good reasons.
406
407	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
408	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
409	will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
410	features.
411
412	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
413	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
414	in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
415	it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
416	requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
417
418	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
419	nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
420	representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
421	respect to standards.
422
423	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
424	and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
425
426	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
427	apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
428	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
429	wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
430	encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
431	every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
432	anything except the current locale encoding.
433
434	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
435	by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
436	handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
437	doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
438	OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
439	emulator).
440
441	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
442	the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
443	to carry complete replacements for them :)
444
445	I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
446	Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
447	problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
448
449	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
450	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using
451	the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no
452	longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a
453	single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
454	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as
455	the old libW11 emulation.
456
457	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
458	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
459	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
460
461	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?	916	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		917	See next entry.
		918
462	Is there an option to switch encodings?	919	Is there an option to switch encodings?
463	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	920	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
464	and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't	921	specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
465	even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to	922	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
466	terminal I/O.
467		923
468	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	924	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
469	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	925	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
470	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	926	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
471	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.	927	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
472	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	928	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
473	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	929	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
474	locale-independent table under all locales).	930	locale-independent table under all locales).
475		931
476	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	932	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
477	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	933	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
478	in the interpretation of characters.	934	interpretation of characters.
479		935
480	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	936	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
481	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	937	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
482		938
483	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	939	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
484	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	940	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
485	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	941	locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
486	"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.	942	"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
487	"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")	943	"de" or "german") are also common.
488	are also common.
489		944
490	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	945	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
491	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	946	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
492	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	947	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
493	rxvt-unicode.
494		948
495	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	949	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
496	start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.	950	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
497		951
498	Can I switch locales at runtime?	952	Can I switch locales at runtime?
499	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	953	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
500	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	954	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
501		955
502	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	956	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
503		957
504	See also the previous answer.	958	See also the previous answer.
505		959
506	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	960	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
507	one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it	961	locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
508	(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which	962	UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
509	first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:	963	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
510		964
511	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	965	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
512	xjdic -js	966	xjdic -js
513	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	967	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
514		968
515	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	969	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
516	except for some locales where character width differs between	970	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
517	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	971	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
518		972
519	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	973	I have problems getting my input method working.
520	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	974	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
521	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	975	method server.
522	immediately:
523		976
524	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	977	Here is a checklist:
525		978
526	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	979	- Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
527	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	980	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
528	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
529		981
530	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	982	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		983	XIM.
		984	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		985	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
531		986
532	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	987	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
533	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	988	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
534	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	989	*starting* rxvt-unicode.
535	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	990	When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
536	be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:	991	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		992	running with this command:
537		993
538	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	994	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
539	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
540		995
		996	*
		997
541	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	998	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
542	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest	999	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
543	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	1000	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
544		1001
545	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	1002	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
546		1003
547	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	1004	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
548	still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not	1005	use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
549	be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,	1006	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
550	as your input method limits you.	1007	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
551		1008
552	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.	1009	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
553	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by	1010	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
554	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory	1011	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
555	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering	1012	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
556	at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally	1013	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
557	succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,	1014	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
558	however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides	1015	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
559	cooperate.
560		1016
561	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.	1017	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
562		1018
563	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	1019	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
564	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	1020	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
565	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	1021	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large
566	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	1022	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but
567	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	1023	unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to
568	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	1024	the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine
569	a font for your characters.	1025	version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce
		1026	the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific
		1027	to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian
		1028	Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
570		1029
571	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	1030	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
572	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will	1031	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a
573	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to	1032	bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users
574	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will	1033	that might encounter the same issue.
575	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
576	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
577		1034
578	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1035	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
579	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1036	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
580	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1037	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
581	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves	1038	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
582	lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.	1039	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
		1040	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		1041	more in the future) depends on it.
583		1042
584	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1043	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" resources
585	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1044	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
586	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1045	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
587	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It	1046	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
588	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author	1047	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
589	thinks they look best that way.
590		1048
591	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1049	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
		1050	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
		1051	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
		1052	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
592		1053
593	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1054	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
594	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1055	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
595	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1056	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
596	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
597	specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
598	or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
599		1057
600	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1058	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
601	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1059	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
602	the standard foreground colour.	1060	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1061	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1062	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1063	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
603		1064
604	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1065	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
605	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1066	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
606	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1067	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
607	ignored.	1068	result in very little risk.
608		1069
609	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1070	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
610	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1071	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
		1072	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1073	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1074	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
611		1075
612	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1076	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
		1077	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
		1078	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
613		1079
614	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1080	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
		1081	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
615		1082
616	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1083	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
617	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1084	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
618	resources (or as long-options).	1085	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1086	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1087	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1088	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1089	locale encoding.
619		1090
620	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1091	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
621	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1092	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1093	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1094	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1095	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
622		1096
623	URxvt.color0: #000000	1097	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
624	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1098	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
625	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1099	complete replacements for them :)
626	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
627	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
628	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
629	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
630	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
631		1100
632	URxvt.color8: #000054	1101	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
633	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1102	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
634	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1103	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
635	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1104	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
636	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1105	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
637	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1106	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
638	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF	1107	old libW11 emulation.
639	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
640		1108
641	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1109	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
642	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1110	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
		1111	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
643		1112
644	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1113	Character widths are not correct.
645	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1	1114	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
646	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e	1115	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
647	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1	1116	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
648	URxvt.color0: #000000	1117	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
649	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93	1118	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
650	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
651	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
652	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
653	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
654	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
655	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
656	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
657	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
658	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
659	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
660	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
661	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
662		1119
663	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?	1120	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
664	Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the	1121	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
665	listening socket and then fork.
666		1122
667	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?	1123	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
668	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
669	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
670	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
671	Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
672		1124
673	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
674	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
675	only correct choice :).
676
677	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
678	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
679	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
680	shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
681	CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
682	your stty setting).
683
684	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
685
686	# use Backspace = ^H
687	$ stty erase ^H
688	$ rxvt
689
690	# use Backspace = ^?
691	$ stty erase ^?
692	$ rxvt
693
694	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
695
696	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
697
698	# use Backspace = ^H
699	$ stty erase ^H
700	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
701
702	# use Backspace = ^?
703	$ stty erase ^?
704	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
705
706	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
707	but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
708	value properly reflects that.
709
710	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
711	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
712	the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
713	vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
714	termcap/terminfo.
715
716	Some other Backspace problems:
717
718	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
719	expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
720	help.
721
722	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
723
724	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
725	There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
726	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
727	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
728	associated with keysyms.
729
730	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
731	URxvt"
732
733	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
734	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
735	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
736	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
737	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
738	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
739	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
740	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
741	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
742	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
743	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
744	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
745	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
746	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
747	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
748	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
749	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
750	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
751	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
752	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
753
754	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
755
756	I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
757	do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
758	following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
759	KP_Insert == Insert
760	F22 == Print
761	F27 == Home
762	F29 == Prior
763	F33 == End
764	F35 == Next
765
766	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
767	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
768	the keys as required for your particular machine.
769
770	How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
771	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
772	rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
773	can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
774	slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
775	whether or not to use color.
776
777	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
778	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
779	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
780	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
781	rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
782	these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
783	distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
784
785	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
786	script snippets:
787
788	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
789	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
790	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
791	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
792	echo -n '^[Z'
793	read term_id
794	stty icanon echo
795	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
796	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
797	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
798	fi
799	fi
800
801	How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
802	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
803	/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
804	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
805
806	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
807	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
808	channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
809	be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
810	FAQs :).
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