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Revision 1.19 by root, Sat Dec 17 20:55:45 2005 UTC vs.
Revision 1.70 by root, Fri Dec 26 22:52:22 2014 UTC

1	FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS	1	RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
		2	Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
		3	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
		4	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
		5	"#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
		6	interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
		7
		8	I use Gentoo, and I have a problem...
		9	There are two big problems with Gentoo Linux: first, most if not all
		10	Gentoo systems are completely broken (missing or mismatched header
		11	files, broken compiler etc. are just the tip of the iceberg); secondly,
		12	it should be called Gentoo GNU/Linux.
		13
		14	For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo.
		15	Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
		16	unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
		17
		18	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
		19	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
		20	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
		21	should give you tabs:
		22
		23	urxvt -pe tabbed
		24
		25	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
		26
		27	It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
		28	managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
		29	it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
		30	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
		31	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
		32
2	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	33	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
3	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape	34	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.	35	sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When
		36	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
5		37
6	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	38	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
7	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large	39	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
8	patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode.	40	you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
9	Before reporting a bug to the original rxvt-unicode author please	41	that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
10	download and install the genuine version	42	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	43	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
12	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	44	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		45
16	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	46	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
17	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	47	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	48	bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
19	other users that might encounter the same issue.	49	kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if
		50	full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets
		51	worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
20		52
		53	How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
		54	Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
		55	listening socket and then fork.
		56
		57	How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
		58	If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
		59	the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
		60
		61	#!/bin/sh
		62	urxvtc "$@"
		63	if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
		64	urxvtd -q -o -f
		65	urxvtc "$@"
		66	fi
		67
		68	This tries to create a new terminal, and if fails with exit status 2,
		69	meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and
		70	re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the
		71	existing daemon.
		72
		73	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular
		74	xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.
		75	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
		76	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
		77	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
		78	variable to decide whether or not to use colour.
		79
		80	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
		81	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
		82	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
		83	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
		84	wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
		85	then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
		86	a regular xterm.
		87
		88	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
		89	snippets:
		90
		91	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
		92	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
		93	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
		94	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
		95	printf "\eZ"
		96	read term_id
		97	stty icanon echo
		98	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
		99	printf '\e[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
		100	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
		101	fi
		102	fi
		103
		104	How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
		105	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
		106	one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
		107	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
		108
		109	Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
		110	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
		111	bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
		112	that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
		113	being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
		114	startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
		115	unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
		116	iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
		117
		118	text data bss drs rss filename
		119	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
		120	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
		121
		122	When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
		123	and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
		124	libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
		125
		126	text data bss drs rss filename
		127	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
		128	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
		129
		130	The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
		131	encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
		132	and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
		133	encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
		134	compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
		135	memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
		136	a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
		137	when not used.
		138
		139	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
		140	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
		141	more memory.
		142
		143	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
		144	still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
		145	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
		146	(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
		147	a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
		148	out), it fares extremely well *g*.
		149
		150	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
		151	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
		152	had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
		153	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
		154	even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
		155
		156	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
		157	the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
		158	are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
		159	unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
		160
		161	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
		162	in C that use gobs of memory, and certainly possible to write programs
		163	in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this
		164	is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on
		165	my system with a minimal config:
		166
		167	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		168	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
		169	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
		170	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		171
		172	And here is rxvt-unicode:
		173
		174	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		175	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
		176	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
		177	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
		178	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		179
		180	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
		181	except maybe libX11 :)
		182
		183	Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
		184	I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
		185	First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
		186	so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
		187	may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
		188	rite of passage: ... and you failed.
		189
		190	Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
		191	descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
		192
		193	1. Use transparent mode:
		194
		195	Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
		196	urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
		197
		198	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
		199	support, or you are unable to read. This method requires that the
		200	background-setting program sets the _XROOTPMAP_ID or ESETROOT_PMAP_ID
		201	property. Compatible programs are Esetroot, hsetroot and feh.
		202
		203	2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
		204	to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
		205	your picture with gimp or any other tool:
		206
		207	convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
		208	urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
		209
		210	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack GDK-PixBuf support, or you
		211	are unable to read.
		212
		213	3. Use an ARGB visual:
		214
		215	urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
		216
		217	This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
		218	doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
		219	there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
		220	necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
		221	that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
		222
		223	4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
		224
		225	xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
		226	-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
		227
		228	Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
		229	by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
		230	your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
		231
		232	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
		233	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
		234	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
		235	use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
		236	will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
		237	wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
		238	characters.
		239
		240	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
		241	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
		242	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
		243	way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
		244	wrong in these cases).
		245
		246	It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
		247	or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
		248	using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
		249	work, you might be forced to use a different font.
		250
		251	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
		252	bounding box data is correct.
		253
		254	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
		255	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
		256	("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
		257	make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
		258	rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
		259
		260	URxvt.colorBD: white
		261	URxvt.colorIT: green
		262
		263	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
		264	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
		265	colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
		266	standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
		267	course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
		268	good reasons.
		269
		270	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
		271	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
		272	fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
		273
		274	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
		275	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
		276	same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
		277
		278	printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
		279
		280	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
		281	japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
		282	japanese fonts would only be in your way.
		283
		284	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
		285
		286	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
		287	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
		288	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
		289	Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
		290	enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
		291
		292	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		293	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		294
		295	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
		296	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
		297	is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
		298	antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
		299	memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
		300
		301	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
		302	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
		303	fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
		304	because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
		305	antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
		306	look best that way.
		307
		308	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
		309
		310	What's with this bold/blink stuff?
		311	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
		312	standard foreground colour.
		313
		314	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
		315	blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
		316	"--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
		317
		318	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
		319	foreground/background colours.
		320
		321	color0-7 are the low-intensity colours.
		322
		323	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colours.
		324
		325	I don't like the screen colours. How do I change them?
		326	You can change the screen colours at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
		327	resources (or as long-options).
		328
		329	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
		330	the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
		331
		332	URxvt.color0: #000000
		333	URxvt.color1: #A80000
		334	URxvt.color2: #00A800
		335	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
		336	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
		337	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
		338	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
		339	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
		340
		341	URxvt.color8: #000054
		342	URxvt.color9: #FF0054
		343	URxvt.color10: #00FF54
		344	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
		345	URxvt.color12: #0000FF
		346	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
		347	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
		348	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
		349
		350	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colours.
		351
		352	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
		353	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
		354	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
		355	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
		356	URxvt.color0: #000000
		357	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
		358	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
		359	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
		360	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
		361	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
		362	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
		363	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
		364	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
		365	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
		366	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
		367	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
		368	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
		369	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
		370
		371	They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
		372
		373	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
		374	See next entry.
		375
		376	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
		377	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
		378	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
		379	system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
		380	display.
		381
		382	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
		383	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
		384	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
		385	resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
		386	intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
		387	the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
		388
		389	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
		390	e.g.:
		391
		392	urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
		393
		394	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
		395	If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
		396	font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
		397	search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
		398
		399	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
		400	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
		401	which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
		402
		403	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
		404	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
		405	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
		406	it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
		407	japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
		408	Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
		409	characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
		410	non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
		411	font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
		412	for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
		413
		414	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
		415	list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
		416	preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
		417	first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
		418
		419	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
		420	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
		421	fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
		422	has been designed yet).
		423
		424	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
		425	I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
		426
		427	How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
		428	We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
		429	like:
		430
		431	urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
		432
		433	Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
		434	The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
		435	If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
		436	setting:
		437
		438	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
		439
		440	If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
		441	more.
		442
		443	To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
		444	pattern:
		445
		446	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
		447
		448	Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClick* combination also
		449	selects words like the old code.
		450
		451	I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
		452	You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
		453	perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
		454	rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
		455
		456	If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
		457	identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
		458	PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
		459	disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
		460	perl-ext-common resource:
		461
		462	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
		463
		464	This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
		465	extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
		466	scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
		467	combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
		468
		469	URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
		470
		471	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		472	See next entry.
		473
		474	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		475	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		476	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		477	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		478	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		479	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		480
		481	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		482	extension:
		483
		484	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		485
		486	My numeric keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		487	Some Debian GNU/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		488	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		489	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		490	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		491	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		492	report if that helped.
		493
		494	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		495	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		496	correctly, or you specified a preeditType that is not supported by your
		497	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		498	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		499	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		500	will continue without an input method.
		501
		502	In this case either do not specify a preeditType or specify more than
		503	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		504
		505	If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
		506	compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
		507	don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
		508
		509	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		510	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		511	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		512	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		513	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		514	escape character and so on.
		515
		516	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		517	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		518	editors prematurely may leave it active. I've heard that tcsh may use
		519	mouse reporting unless it is otherwise specified. A quick check is to
		520	see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are pressed.
		521
		522	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		523	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		524	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		525	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		526
		527	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		528	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		529	correct choice :).
		530
		531	It is possible to toggle between "^H" and "^?" with the DECBKM private
		532	mode:
		533
		534	# use Backspace = ^H
		535	$ stty erase ^H
		536	$ printf "\e[?67h"
		537
		538	# use Backspace = ^?
		539	$ stty erase ^?
		540	$ printf "\e[?67l"
		541
		542	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		543	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		544	properly reflects that.
		545
		546	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		547	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		548	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		549	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		550
		551	Some other Backspace problems:
		552
		553	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		554	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		555
		556	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		557
		558	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		559	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		560	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		561	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		562	keysyms.
		563
		564	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		565
		566	URxvt.keysym.Prior: \033[5~
		567	URxvt.keysym.Next: \033[6~
		568	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[7~
		569	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[8~
		570	URxvt.keysym.Up: \033[A
		571	URxvt.keysym.Down: \033[B
		572	URxvt.keysym.Right: \033[C
		573	URxvt.keysym.Left: \033[D
		574
		575	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		576
		577	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
		578	KP_Insert == Insert
		579	F22 == Print
		580	F27 == Home
		581	F29 == Prior
		582	F33 == End
		583	F35 == Next
		584
		585	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		586	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		587	keys as required for your particular machine.
		588
		589	Terminal Configuration
		590	Can I see a typical configuration?
		591	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		592	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		593
		594	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		595	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		596	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		597	certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
		598
		599	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
		600	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
		601
		602	These are just for testing stuff.
		603
		604	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		605	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		606
		607	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		608	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		609	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		610	with correct-looking fonts.
		611
		612	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		613	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		614	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		615	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		616	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		617	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		618
		619	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		620	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		621	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		622	write.
		623
		624	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		625	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		626	relevant file and go to the error line number.
		627
		628	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		629	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		630
		631	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		632	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		633	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		634	scrollback buffer.
		635
		636	URxvt.background: #000000
		637	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		638	URxvt.color7: gray90
		639	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		640	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		641	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		642	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		643
		644	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		645	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		646	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		647	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		648
		649	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		650
		651	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		652	but is mostly a nice effect.
		653
		654	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		655	URxvt.loginShell: false
		656	URxvt.meta: ignore
		657	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		658
		659	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		660	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		661
		662	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		663
		664	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		665
		666	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		667
		668	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		669	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		670
		671	URxvt.visualBell: true
		672
		673	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		674
		675	URxvt.insecure: true
		676
		677	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		678
		679	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		680
		681	I once thought this is a great idea.
		682
		683	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		684	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		685	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		686	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		687	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		688	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		689	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		690	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		691	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		692
		693	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		694	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		695	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		696	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		697	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		698	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		699	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		700	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		701	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		702
		703	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		704	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		705	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		706	bold and normal fonts.
		707
		708	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		709	class name. That is because I use different configs for different
		710	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		711	uses these defaults:
		712
		713	IRC*title: IRC
		714	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		715	IRC*saveLines: 0
		716	IRC*mapAlert: true
		717	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		718	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		719	IRC*colorBD: white
		720	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		721	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		722
		723	"Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		724	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		725	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		726	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		727
		728	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		729	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		730	file for different hosts, for example, on my main desktop, I use:
		731
		732	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		733	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		734	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		735	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		736	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		737
		738	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		739	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		740	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		741	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		742	combinations :->
		743
		744	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		745	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		746	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		747	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		748	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		749	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		750
		751	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		752	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		753	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		754
		755	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		756
		757	URxvt.resource: value
		758
		759	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		760	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		761	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		762
21	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	763	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	764	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	765	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
24	problem often arises).	766	arises).
25		767
26	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	768	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
27	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	769	can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
		770	well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
		771	the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
		772	user and root):
28		773
29	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	774	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
30	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	775	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
31		776
32	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	777	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		778	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
33		779
34	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	780	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	781	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
36	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	782	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
37	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	783	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,	784	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
39	though.
40		785
41	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	786	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	787	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
43	use a resource to set it:	788	resource to set it:
44		789
45	URxvt.termName: rxvt	790	URxvt.termName: rxvt
46		791
47	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	792	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.	793	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
49		794
		795	nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
		796	This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
		797	nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
		798	your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
		799
50	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.	800	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
51	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it	801	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
52	by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.	802	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
53		803
54	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	804	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		805	See next entry.
		806
55	I need a termcap file entry.	807	I need a termcap file entry.
56	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	808	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
57	operating systems still compile some programs using the	809	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
58	long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)	810	library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
59	and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	811	for "rxvt-unicode".
60		812
61	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	813	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
62	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's	814	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
63	infocmp program like this:	815	program like this:
64		816
65	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	817	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
66		818
67	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	819	Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
		820	generated by the command above.
68		821
69	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
70	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
71	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
72	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
73	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
74	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
75	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
76	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
77	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
78	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
79	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
80	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
81	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
82	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
83	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
84	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
85	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
86	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
87	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
88	:vs=\E[?25h:
89
90	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?	822	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
91	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	823	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
92	decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration	824	decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
93	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file	825	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
94	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	826	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
95		827
96	TERM rxvt-unicode	828	TERM rxvt-unicode
97		829
98	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	830	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
99		831
100	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	832	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
101		833
102	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	834	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
103		835
104	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	836	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		837	See next entry.
		838
105	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	839	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		840	See next entry.
		841
106	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	842	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
107	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	843	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
108	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	844	distributions break rxvt-unicode by setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which
109	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	845	doesn't have these extra features. Unfortunately, some of these
110	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
111	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	846	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
112	so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I	847	you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
113	log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on	848	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
114	how to do this).	849	this).
115		850
116	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	851	Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
117	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
118	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
119	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
120	and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
121	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
122	please report if that helped.
123
124	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?	852	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		853	See next entry.
		854
125	Unicode does not seem to work?	855	Unicode does not seem to work?
126	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	856	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
127	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	857	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
128	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	858	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
129	settings.
130		859
131	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	860	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
132	programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the	861	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
133	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	862	while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
134	locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this	863	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
135	is not going to work.	864	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
136		865
137	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	866	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
138	likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in	867	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
139	your .profile.	868	.profile.
140		869
141	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	870	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
142		871
143	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	872	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
144	not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command	873	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
145	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	874	displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
146	settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).	875	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
147	If it displays something like:	876	something like:
148		877
149	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	878	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
150		879
151	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	880	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
152		881
153	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	882	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
154	then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs	883	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
155	just don't support locales :(	884	support locales :(
156		885
157	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
158	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
159	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
160	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
161	your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
162	want to display.
163
164	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
165	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
166	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
167	don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
168	artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
169	has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
170	indeed look correct.
171
172	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
173	list, e.g.:
174
175	rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
176
177	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
178	font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
179	the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
180	up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
181	X-server.
182
183	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
184	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
185	size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
186
187	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
188	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
189	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
190	is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
191	first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
192	font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
193	Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
194	so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
195	look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
196	still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
197	the japanese font.
198
199	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
200	font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
201	list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
202	japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
203	first.
204
205	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
206	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
207	different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
208	interface for this has been designed yet).
209
210	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
211	"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
212
213	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
214	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
215	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
216	terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
217	Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
218	just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
219	that redraws adjacent characters.
220
221	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
222	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
223	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
224	correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
225	unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
226
227	It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
228	freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
229	might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
230	that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
231
232	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
233	bounding box data is correct.
234
235	On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
236	Seems to be a known bug, read
237	<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
238	following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
239
240	#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
241
242	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
243	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
244	set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
245	by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
246	your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
247	keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
248	then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
249
250	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
251	than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
252
253	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
254	14755
255	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
256	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
257	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
258	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
259	telnet escape character and so on.
260
261	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
262	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
263	settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
264	effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
265	bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
266	the effect:
267
268	URxvt.colorBD: white
269	URxvt.colorIT: green
270
271	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
272	can I fix that?
273	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
274	weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
275	the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
276	of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
277	without very good reasons.
278
279	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
280	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
281	will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
282	features.
283
284	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
285	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
286	in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
287	it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
288	requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
289
290	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
291	nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
292	representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
293	respect to standards.
294
295	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
296	and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
297
298	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
299	apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
300	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
301	wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
302	encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
303	every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
304	anything except the current locale encoding.
305
306	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
307	by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
308	handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
309	doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
310	OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
311	emulator).
312
313	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
314	the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
315	to carry complete replacements for them :)
316
317	I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
318	Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
319	problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
320
321	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
322	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using
323	the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no
324	longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a
325	single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
326	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as
327	the old libW11 emulation.
328
329	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
330	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
331	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
332
333	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?	886	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		887	See next entry.
		888
334	Is there an option to switch encodings?	889	Is there an option to switch encodings?
335	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	890	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
336	and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't	891	specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
337	even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to	892	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
338	terminal I/O.
339		893
340	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	894	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
341	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	895	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
342	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	896	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
343	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.	897	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
344	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	898	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
345	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	899	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
346	locale-independent table under all locales).	900	locale-independent table under all locales).
347		901
348	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	902	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
349	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	903	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
350	in the interpretation of characters.	904	interpretation of characters.
351		905
352	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	906	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
353	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	907	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
354		908
355	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	909	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
356	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	910	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
357	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	911	locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
358	"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.	912	"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
359	"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")	913	"de" or "german") are also common.
360	are also common.
361		914
362	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	915	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
363	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	916	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
364	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	917	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
365	rxvt-unicode.
366		918
367	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	919	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
368	start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.	920	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
369		921
370	Can I switch locales at runtime?	922	Can I switch locales at runtime?
371	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	923	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
372	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	924	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
373		925
374	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	926	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
375		927
376	See also the previous answer.	928	See also the previous answer.
377		929
378	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	930	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
379	one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it	931	locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
380	(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which	932	UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
381	first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:	933	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
382		934
383	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	935	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
384	xjdic -js	936	xjdic -js
385	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	937	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
386		938
387	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	939	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
388	except for some locales where character width differs between	940	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
389	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	941	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
390		942
391	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	943	I have problems getting my input method working.
392	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	944	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
393	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	945	method server.
394	immediately:
395		946
396	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	947	Here is a checklist:
397		948
398	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	949	- Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
399	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	950	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
400	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
401		951
402	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	952	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		953	XIM.
		954	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		955	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
403		956
404	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	957	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
405	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	958	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
406	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	959	*starting* rxvt-unicode.
407	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	960	When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
408	be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:	961	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		962	running with this command:
409		963
410	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	964	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
411	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
412		965
413	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	966	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
414	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest	967	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
415	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	968	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
416		969
417	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	970	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
418		971
419	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	972	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
420	still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not	973	use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
421	be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,	974	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
422	as your input method limits you.	975	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
423		976
424	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.	977	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
425	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by	978	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
426	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory	979	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
427	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering	980	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
428	at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally	981	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
429	succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,	982	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
430	however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides	983	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
431	cooperate.
432		984
433	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.	985	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
434		986
435	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	987	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
436	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	988	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
437	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	989	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
438	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	990	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
439	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	991	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
440	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	992	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
441	a font for your characters.	993	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		994	more in the future) depends on it.
442		995
443	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	996	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
444	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will	997	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
445	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to	998	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
446	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will	999	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
447	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"	1000	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
448	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
449		1001
450	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1002	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
451	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1003	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
452	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1004	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
453	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves	1005	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
454	lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
455		1006
456	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1007	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
457	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1008	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
458	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1009	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
459	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It
460	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
461	thinks they look best that way.
462		1010
463	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1011	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
		1012	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
		1013	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1014	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1015	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1016	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
464		1017
465	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1018	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
466	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1019	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
467	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1020	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
468	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise	1021	result in very little risk.
469	specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
470	or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
471		1022
472	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1023	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
473	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1024	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
474	the standard foreground colour.	1025	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1026	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1027	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
475		1028
476	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1029	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
477	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1030	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
478	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1031	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
479	ignored.
480		1032
481	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1033	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
482	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1034	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
483		1035
484	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1036	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
		1037	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
		1038	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1039	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1040	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1041	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1042	locale encoding.
485		1043
486	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1044	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
		1045	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1046	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1047	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1048	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
487		1049
488	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1050	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
489	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1051	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
490	resources (or as long-options).	1052	complete replacements for them :)
491		1053
492	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1054	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
493	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1055	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
		1056	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
		1057	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
		1058	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
		1059	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
		1060	old libW11 emulation.
494		1061
495	URxvt.color0: #000000	1062	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
496	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1063	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
497	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1064	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
498	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
499	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
500	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
501	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
502	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
503		1065
504	URxvt.color8: #000054	1066	Character widths are not correct.
505	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1067	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
506	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1068	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
507	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1069	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
508	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1070	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
509	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1071	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
510	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
511	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
512		1072
513	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1073	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
514	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1074	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
515		1075
516	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1076	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
517	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
518	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
519	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
520	URxvt.color0: #000000
521	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
522	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
523	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
524	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
525	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
526	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
527	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
528	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
529	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
530	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
531	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
532	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
533	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
534		1077
535	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?
536	Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the
537	listening socket and then fork.
538
539	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
540	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
541	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
542	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
543	Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
544
545	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
546	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
547	only correct choice :).
548
549	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
550	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
551	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
552	shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
553	CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
554	your stty setting).
555
556	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
557
558	# use Backspace = ^H
559	$ stty erase ^H
560	$ rxvt
561
562	# use Backspace = ^?
563	$ stty erase ^?
564	$ rxvt
565
566	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
567
568	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
569
570	# use Backspace = ^H
571	$ stty erase ^H
572	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
573
574	# use Backspace = ^?
575	$ stty erase ^?
576	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
577
578	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
579	but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
580	value properly reflects that.
581
582	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
583	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
584	the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
585	vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
586	termcap/terminfo.
587
588	Some other Backspace problems:
589
590	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
591	expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
592	help.
593
594	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
595
596	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
597	There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
598	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
599	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
600	associated with keysyms.
601
602	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
603	URxvt"
604
605	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
606	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
607	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
608	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
609	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
610	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
611	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
612	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
613	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
614	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
615	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
616	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
617	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
618	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
619	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
620	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
621	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
622	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
623	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
624	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
625
626	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
627
628	I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
629	do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
630	following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
631	KP_Insert == Insert
632	F22 == Print
633	F27 == Home
634	F29 == Prior
635	F33 == End
636	F35 == Next
637
638	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
639	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
640	the keys as required for your particular machine.
641
642	How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
643	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
644	rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
645	can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
646	slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
647	whether or not to use color.
648
649	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
650	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
651	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
652	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
653	rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
654	these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
655	distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
656
657	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
658	script snippets:
659
660	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
661	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
662	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
663	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
664	echo -n '^[Z'
665	read term_id
666	stty icanon echo
667	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
668	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
669	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
670	fi
671	fi
672
673	How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
674	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
675	/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
676	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
677
678	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
679	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
680	channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
681	be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
682	FAQs :).
683

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