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1FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 1RXVT-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, 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 transparent mode:
183
184 Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
185 urxvt -tr -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;:root"
196
197 That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack AfterImage support, or you
198 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-text-blink". Without
303 "--enable-text-blink", 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-LeftClick* 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
21 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?
22 The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely 778 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 779 as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
24 problem often arises). 780 arises).
25 781
26 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, 782 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
27 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):
28 785
29 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain 786 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
30 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"
31 788
32 ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system, 789 ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,
33 790
791 One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
792 $HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
793
34 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
35 "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
36 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and 796 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
37 different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen 797 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, 798 quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
39 though.
40 799
41 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
42 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
43 use a resource to set it: 802 resource to set it:
44 803
45 URxvt.termName: rxvt 804 URxvt.termName: rxvt
46 805
47 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
48 replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one. 807 the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
49 808
809 "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
810 Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
811 "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
812
50 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt. 813 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
814 See next entry.
815
51 I need a termcap file entry. 816 I need a termcap file entry.
52 One reason you might want this is that some distributions or 817 One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
53 operating systems still compile some programs using the 818 systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
54 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
55 and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode". 820 for "rxvt-unicode".
56 821
57 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
58 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
59 infocmp program like this: 824 program like this:
60 825
61 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode 826 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
62 827
63 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:
64 829
65 rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\ 830 rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
66 :am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\ 831 :am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
67 :co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\ 832 :co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
68 :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@:\
69 :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:\
70 :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:\
71 :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:\
72 :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:\
73 :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:\
74 :i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\ 839 :i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
75 :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:\
76 :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~:\
77 :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~:\
78 :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>:\
79 :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:\
80 :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:\
81 :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:\
82 :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:\
83 :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:\
84 :vs=\E[?25h: 849 :vs=\E[?25h:
85 850
86 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output? 851 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
87 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
88 decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration 853 decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
89 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
90 (among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add: 855 with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
91 856
92 TERM rxvt-unicode 857 TERM rxvt-unicode
93 858
94 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add: 859 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
95 860
96 alias ls='ls --color=auto' 861 alias ls='ls --color=auto'
97 862
98 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc". 863 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
99 864
100 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
101 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
102 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly? 871 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
103 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged 872 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
104 distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by 873 distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
105 setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features. 874 setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
106 Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux) 875 Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
107 furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, 876 furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
108 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
109 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
110 how to do this). 879 this).
111 880
112 My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output? 881 Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
113 Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
114 specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
115 caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
116 and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
117 compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
118 please report if that helped.
119
120 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
121 Unicode does not seem to work? 885 Unicode does not seem to work?
122 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character 886 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
123 but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program 887 getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
124 output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale 888 is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
125 settings.
126 889
127 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
128 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,
129 login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the 892 while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
130 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
131 is not going to work. 894 is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
132 895
133 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
134 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
135 your .profile. 898 .profile.
136 899
137 printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" 900 printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
138 901
139 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
140 not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command 903 supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
141 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
142 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
143 If it displays something like: 906 something like:
144 907
145 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ... 908 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
146 909
147 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system. 910 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
148 911
149 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
150 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
151 just don't support locales :( 914 support locales :(
152 915
153 Why do some characters look so much different than others?
154 How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
155 Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
156 Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
157 your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
158 want to display.
159
160 rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
161 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
162 bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
163 don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
164 artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
165 has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
166 indeed look correct.
167
168 In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
169 list, e.g.:
170
171 rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
172
173 When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
174 font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
175 the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
176 up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
177 X-server.
178
179 The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
180 base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
181 size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
182
183 Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
184 This is because there is a difference between script and language --
185 rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
186 is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
187 first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
188 font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
189 Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
190 so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
191 look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
192 still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
193 the japanese font.
194
195 The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
196 font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
197 list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
198 japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
199 first.
200
201 In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
202 runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
203 different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
204 interface for this has been designed yet).
205
206 Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
207 "Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
208
209 Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
210 Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
211 character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
212 terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
213 Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
214 just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
215 that redraws adjacent characters.
216
217 All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
218 however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
219 bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
220 correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
221 unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
222
223 It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
224 freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
225 might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
226 that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
227
228 All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
229 bounding box data is correct.
230
231 My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
232 The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
233 set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
234 by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
235 your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
236 keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
237 then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
238
239 In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
240 than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
241
242 I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
243 14755
244 Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
245 international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
246 advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
247 other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
248 telnet escape character and so on.
249
250 How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
251 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
252 settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
253 effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
254 bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
255 the effect:
256
257 URxvt.colorBD: white
258 URxvt.colorIT: green
259
260 Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
261 can I fix that?
262 For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
263 weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
264 the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
265 of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
266 without very good reasons.
267
268 In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
269 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
270 will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
271 features.
272
273 I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
274 Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
275 in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
276 it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
277 requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
278
279 As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
280 nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
281 representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
282 respect to standards.
283
284 However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
285 and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
286
287 "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
288 apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
289 representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
290 wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
291 encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
292 every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
293 anything except the current locale encoding.
294
295 Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
296 by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
297 handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
298 doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
299 OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
300 emulator).
301
302 The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
303 the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
304 to carry complete replacements for them :)
305
306 How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use? 916 How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
917 See next entry.
918
307 Is there an option to switch encodings? 919 Is there an option to switch encodings?
308 Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, 920 Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
309 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
310 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.
311 terminal I/O.
312 923
313 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for 924 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
314 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating 925 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
315 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties 926 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
316 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*. 927 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
317 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example, 928 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
318 "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,
319 locale-independent table under all locales). 930 locale-independent table under all locales).
320 931
321 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. 932 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
322 All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree 933 programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
323 in the interpretation of characters. 934 interpretation of characters.
324 935
325 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, 936 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
326 nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like. 937 is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
327 938
328 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable 939 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
329 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an 940 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
330 already-installed locale. Common names for locales are 941 locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
331 "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.
332 "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german") 943 "de" or "german") are also common.
333 are also common.
334 944
335 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the 945 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
336 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e. 946 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
337 "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.
338 rxvt-unicode.
339 948
340 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
341 start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category. 950 rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
342 951
343 Can I switch locales at runtime? 952 Can I switch locales at runtime?
344 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets 953 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
345 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE". 954 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
346 955
347 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS 956 printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
348 957
349 See also the previous answer. 958 See also the previous answer.
350 959
351 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
352 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.
353 (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
354 first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later: 963 switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
355 964
356 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS 965 printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
357 xjdic -js 966 xjdic -js
358 printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8 967 printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
359 968
360 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,
361 except for some locales where character width differs between 970 except for some locales where character width differs between program-
362 program- and rxvt-unicode-locales. 971 and rxvt-unicode-locales.
363 972
364 Can I switch the fonts at runtime? 973 I have problems getting my input method working.
365 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has 974 Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
366 the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect 975 method server.
367 immediately:
368 976
369 printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic" 977 Here is a checklist:
370 978
371 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.
372 a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, 980 Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
373 where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
374 981
375 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.
376 986
377 Why do italic characters look as if clipped? 987 - Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
378 Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For 988 - Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
379 example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera 989 *starting* rxvt-unicode.
380 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".
381 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:
382 993
383 URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true 994 xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
384 URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
385 995
996
997
386 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?
387 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
388 of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale": 1000 the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
389 1001
390 URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP 1002 URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
391 1003
392 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
393 still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not 1005 use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
394 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"
395 as your input method limits you. 1007 in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
396 1008
397 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits. 1009 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
398 Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by 1010 Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
399 design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory 1011 design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
400 leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering 1012 leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
401 at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally 1013 exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
402 succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, 1014 SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
403 however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides 1015 cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
404 cooperate.
405 1016
406 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.
407 1018
408 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that? 1019 Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
409 Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for 1020 I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
410 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
411 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
412 resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no 1023 unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to
413 Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find 1024 the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine
414 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).
415 1029
416 Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger 1030 For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
417 scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will 1031 probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a
418 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
419 almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will 1033 that might encounter the same issue.
420 then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
421 it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
422 1034
423 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? 1035 I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
424 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
425 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
426 disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialiasing=false"), which 1038 runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
427 saves 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.
428 1042
429 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
430 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
431 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
432 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
433 has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author 1047 perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
434 thinks they look best that way.
435 1048
436 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).
437 1053
438 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?
439 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
440 some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. 1056 install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
441 I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
442 specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
443 or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
444 1057
445 What's with this bold/blink stuff? 1058 When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
446 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
447 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).
448 1064
449 For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the 1065 This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
450 text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard 1066 early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
451 colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be 1067 main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
452 ignored. 1068 result in very little risk.
453 1069
454 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.
455 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.
456 1075
457 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.
458 1079
459 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.
460 1082
461 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
462 You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults 1084 in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
463 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.
464 1090
465 Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, 1091 Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
466 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).
467 1096
468 URxvt.color0: #000000 1097 The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
469 URxvt.color1: #A80000 1098 system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
470 URxvt.color2: #00A800 1099 complete replacements for them :)
471 URxvt.color3: #A8A800
472 URxvt.color4: #0000A8
473 URxvt.color5: #A800A8
474 URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
475 URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
476 1100
477 URxvt.color8: #000054 1101 How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
478 URxvt.color9: #FF0054 1102 rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
479 URxvt.color10: #00FF54 1103 X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
480 URxvt.color11: #FFFF54 1104 supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
481 URxvt.color12: #0000FF 1105 font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
482 URxvt.color13: #FF00FF 1106 "-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
483 URxvt.color14: #00FFFF 1107 old libW11 emulation.
484 URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
485 1108
486 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
487 (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.
488 1112
489 URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1 1113 Character widths are not correct.
490 URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1 1114 urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
491 URxvt.background: #0e0e0e 1115 width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
492 URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1 1116 likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
493 URxvt.color0: #000000 1117 single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
494 URxvt.color8: #8b8f93 1118 Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
495 URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
496 URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
497 URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
498 URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
499 URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
500 URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
501 URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
502 URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
503 URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
504 URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
505 URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
506 URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
507 1119
508 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
509 Despite it's name, rxvtd is not a real daemon, but more like a 1121 possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
510 server that answers rxvtc's requests, so it doesn't background
511 itself.
512 1122
513 To ensure rxvtd is listening on it's socket, you can use the 1123 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
514 following method to wait for the startup message before continuing:
515 1124
516 { rxvtd & } | read
517
518 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
519 Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
520 BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
521 question) there are two standard values that can be used for
522 Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
523
524 Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
525 debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
526 only correct choice :).
527
528 Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
529 value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
530 wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
531 shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
532 CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
533 your stty setting).
534
535 For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
536
537 # use Backspace = ^H
538 $ stty erase ^H
539 $ rxvt
540
541 # use Backspace = ^?
542 $ stty erase ^?
543 $ rxvt
544
545 Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
546
547 For an existing rxvt-unicode:
548
549 # use Backspace = ^H
550 $ stty erase ^H
551 $ echo -n "^[[36h"
552
553 # use Backspace = ^?
554 $ stty erase ^?
555 $ echo -n "^[[36l"
556
557 This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
558 but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
559 value properly reflects that.
560
561 The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
562 problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
563 the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
564 vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
565 termcap/terminfo.
566
567 Some other Backspace problems:
568
569 some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
570 expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
571 help.
572
573 Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
574
575 I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
576 There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
577 Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
578 option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
579 associated with keysyms.
580
581 Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
582 URxvt"
583
584 URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
585 URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
586 URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
587 URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
588 URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
589 URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
590 URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
591 URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
592 URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
593 URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
594 URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
595 URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
596 URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
597 URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
598 URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
599 URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
600 URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
601 URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
602 URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
603 URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
604
605 See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
606
607 I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
608 do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
609 following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
610 KP_Insert == Insert
611 F22 == Print
612 F27 == Home
613 F29 == Prior
614 F33 == End
615 F35 == Next
616
617 Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
618 possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
619 the keys as required for your particular machine.
620
621 How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
622 I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
623 rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
624 can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
625 slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
626 whether or not to use color.
627
628 How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
629 If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
630 insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
631 snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
632 rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
633 these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
634 distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
635
636 Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
637 script snippets:
638
639 # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
640 [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
641 if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
642 stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
643 echo -n '^[Z'
644 read term_id
645 stty icanon echo
646 if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
647 echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
648 read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
649 fi
650 fi
651
652 How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
653 You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
654 /usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
655 Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
656
657 My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
658 Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
659 channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
660 be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
661 FAQs :).
662

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