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Revision 1.22 by root, Mon Jan 9 01:54:43 2006 UTC vs.
Revision 1.71 by root, Wed Dec 31 14:40:24 2014 UTC

1	FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS	1	RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
2	Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?	2	Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
3	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause	3	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
4	extra bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you	4	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
5	can see that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables	5	"#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
6	always being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS)	6	interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
7	after startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is
8	a bit unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding
9	conversion, iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
10		7
11	text data bss drs rss filename	8	I use Gentoo, and I have a problem...
12	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything	9	There are two big problems with Gentoo Linux: first, most if not all
13	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything	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.
14		13
15	When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves	14	For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo.
16	xft and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11	15	Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
17	and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so.	16	unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
18		17
19	text data bss drs rss filename
20	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
21	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
22
23	The very large size of the text section is explained by the
24	east-asian encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but
25	nothing else and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core
26	fonts that use those encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k
27	emergency buffer that my c++ compiler allocates (but of course
28	doesn't use unless you are out of memory). Also, using an xft font
29	instead of a core font immediately adds a few megabytes of RSS. Xft
30	indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even when not used.
31
32	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
33	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
34	more memory.
35
36	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k),
37	this still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
38	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or
39	konsole (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after
40	exit, plus half aminute of startup time, including the hundreds of
41	warnings it spits out), it fares extremely well *g*.
42
43	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
44	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is:
45	I had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
46	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me).
47	Put even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
48
49	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but
50	in the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability
51	limits are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale
52	support and unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than
53	C++ itself.
54
55	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write
56	programs in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to
57	write programs in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large
58	libraries, but this is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is
59	what rxvt links against on my system with a minimal config:
60
61	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
62	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
63	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
64	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
65
66	And here is rxvt-unicode:
67
68	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
69	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
70	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
71	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
72	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
73
74	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in
75	statically), except maybe libX11 :)
76
77	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?	18	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
78	rxvt-unicode does not directly support tabs. It will work fine with	19	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
79	tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing	20	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
80	programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into	21	should give you tabs:
81	other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming	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
82	"Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt)	30	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
83	terminal as an example embedding application.	31	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
84		32
85	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	33	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
86	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
87	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
88	When using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the	36	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
89	daemon.
90		37
91	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	38	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
92	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
93	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
94	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
95	download and install the genuine version	42	design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
96	(<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the	43	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
97	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	44	characters.
98	to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the
99	Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
100		45
101	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	46	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
102	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	47	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
103	also a bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for	48	bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
104	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.
105		52
106	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any	53	How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
107	recommendation?	54	Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
108	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now	55	listening socket and then fork.
109	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
110	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling
111	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl
112	interpreter should be enabled, as important functionality (menus,
113	selection, likely more in the future) depends on it.
114		56
115	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext"	57	How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
116	resources system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will	58	If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
117	result in useful behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory,	59	the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
118	add an empty "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file.	60
119	This will keep the perl interpreter disabled until the user enables	61	#!/bin/sh
		62	urxvtc "$@"
		63	if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
		64	urxvtd -q -o -f
		65	urxvtc "$@"
120	it.	66	fi
121		67
122	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal	68	This tries to create a new terminal, and if fails with exit status 2,
123	one with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with	69	meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and
124	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot	70	re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the
125	of encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely	71	existing daemon.
126	used).
127		72
128	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this	73	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular
129	safe?	74	xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.
130	Likely not. While I honestly try to make it secure, and am probably	75	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
131	not bad at it, I think it is simply unreasonable to expect all of	76	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
132	freetype + fontconfig + xft + xlib + ... + rxvt-unicode itself to	77	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
133	all be secure. Also, rxvt-unicode disables some options when it	78	variable to decide whether or not to use colour.
134	detects that it runs setuid or setgid, which is not nice.
135		79
136	Elevated privileges are only required for utmp and pty operations on	80	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
137	some systems (for example, GNU/Linux doesn't need any extra	81	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
138	privileges for ptys, but some need it for utmp support). If	82	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
139	rxvt-unicode doesn't support the library/setuid helper that your OS	83	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
140	needs I'll be happy to assist you in implementing support for it.	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.
141		87
142	So, while setuid/setgid operation is supported and not a problem on	88	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
143	your typical single-user-no-other-logins unix desktop, always	89	snippets:
144	remember that its an awful lot of code, most of which isn't checked
145	for security issues regularly.
146		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	Why is the cursor now blinking in emacs/vi/...?
		434	This is likely caused by your editor/program's use of the "cvvis"
		435	terminfo capability. Emacs uses it by default, as well as some versions
		436	of vi and possibly other programs.
		437
		438	In emacs, you can switch that off by adding this to your ".emacs" file:
		439
		440	(setq visible-cursor nil)
		441
		442	For other programs, if they do not have an option, your have to remove
		443	the "cvvis" capability from the terminfo description.
		444
		445	When urxvt first added the blinking cursor option, it didn't add a
		446	"cvvis" capability, which served no purpose before. Version 9.21
		447	introduced "cvvis" (and the ability to control blinking independent of
		448	cursor shape) for compatibility with other terminals, which
		449	traditionally use a blinking cursor for "cvvis". This also reflects the
		450	intent of programs such as emacs, who expect "cvvis" to enable a
		451	blinking cursor.
		452
		453	Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
		454	The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
		455	If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
		456	setting:
		457
		458	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
		459
		460	If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
		461	more.
		462
		463	To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
		464	pattern:
		465
		466	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
		467
		468	Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClick* combination also
		469	selects words like the old code.
		470
		471	I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
		472	You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
		473	perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
		474	rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
		475
		476	If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
		477	identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
		478	PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
		479	disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
		480	perl-ext-common resource:
		481
		482	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
		483
		484	This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
		485	extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
		486	scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
		487	combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
		488
		489	URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
		490
		491	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		492	See next entry.
		493
		494	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		495	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		496	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		497	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		498	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		499	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		500
		501	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		502	extension:
		503
		504	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		505
		506	My numeric keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		507	Some Debian GNU/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		508	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		509	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		510	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		511	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		512	report if that helped.
		513
		514	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		515	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		516	correctly, or you specified a preeditType that is not supported by your
		517	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		518	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		519	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		520	will continue without an input method.
		521
		522	In this case either do not specify a preeditType or specify more than
		523	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		524
		525	If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
		526	compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
		527	don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
		528
		529	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		530	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		531	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		532	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		533	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		534	escape character and so on.
		535
		536	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		537	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		538	editors prematurely may leave it active. I've heard that tcsh may use
		539	mouse reporting unless it is otherwise specified. A quick check is to
		540	see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are pressed.
		541
		542	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		543	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		544	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		545	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		546
		547	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		548	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		549	correct choice :).
		550
		551	It is possible to toggle between "^H" and "^?" with the DECBKM private
		552	mode:
		553
		554	# use Backspace = ^H
		555	$ stty erase ^H
		556	$ printf "\e[?67h"
		557
		558	# use Backspace = ^?
		559	$ stty erase ^?
		560	$ printf "\e[?67l"
		561
		562	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		563	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		564	properly reflects that.
		565
		566	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		567	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		568	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		569	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		570
		571	Some other Backspace problems:
		572
		573	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		574	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		575
		576	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		577
		578	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		579	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		580	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		581	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		582	keysyms.
		583
		584	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		585
		586	URxvt.keysym.Prior: \033[5~
		587	URxvt.keysym.Next: \033[6~
		588	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[7~
		589	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[8~
		590	URxvt.keysym.Up: \033[A
		591	URxvt.keysym.Down: \033[B
		592	URxvt.keysym.Right: \033[C
		593	URxvt.keysym.Left: \033[D
		594
		595	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		596
		597	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
		598	KP_Insert == Insert
		599	F22 == Print
		600	F27 == Home
		601	F29 == Prior
		602	F33 == End
		603	F35 == Next
		604
		605	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		606	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		607	keys as required for your particular machine.
		608
		609	Terminal Configuration
		610	Can I see a typical configuration?
		611	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		612	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		613
		614	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		615	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		616	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		617	certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
		618
		619	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
		620	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
		621
		622	These are just for testing stuff.
		623
		624	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		625	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		626
		627	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		628	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		629	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		630	with correct-looking fonts.
		631
		632	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		633	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		634	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		635	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		636	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		637	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		638
		639	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		640	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		641	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		642	write.
		643
		644	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		645	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		646	relevant file and go to the error line number.
		647
		648	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		649	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		650
		651	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		652	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		653	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		654	scrollback buffer.
		655
		656	URxvt.background: #000000
		657	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		658	URxvt.color7: gray90
		659	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		660	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		661	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		662	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		663
		664	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		665	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		666	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		667	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		668
		669	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		670
		671	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		672	but is mostly a nice effect.
		673
		674	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		675	URxvt.loginShell: false
		676	URxvt.meta: ignore
		677	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		678
		679	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		680	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		681
		682	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		683
		684	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		685
		686	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		687
		688	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		689	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		690
		691	URxvt.visualBell: true
		692
		693	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		694
		695	URxvt.insecure: true
		696
		697	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		698
		699	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		700
		701	I once thought this is a great idea.
		702
		703	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		704	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		705	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		706	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		707	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		708	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		709	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		710	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		711	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		712
		713	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		714	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		715	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		716	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		717	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		718	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		719	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		720	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		721	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		722
		723	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		724	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		725	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		726	bold and normal fonts.
		727
		728	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		729	class name. That is because I use different configs for different
		730	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		731	uses these defaults:
		732
		733	IRC*title: IRC
		734	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		735	IRC*saveLines: 0
		736	IRC*mapAlert: true
		737	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		738	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		739	IRC*colorBD: white
		740	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		741	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		742
		743	"Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		744	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		745	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		746	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		747
		748	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		749	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		750	file for different hosts, for example, on my main desktop, I use:
		751
		752	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		753	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		754	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		755	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		756	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		757
		758	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		759	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		760	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		761	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		762	combinations :->
		763
		764	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		765	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		766	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		767	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		768	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		769	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		770
		771	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		772	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		773	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		774
		775	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		776
		777	URxvt.resource: value
		778
		779	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		780	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		781	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		782
147	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	783	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
148	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely	784	The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
149	available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same	785	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
150	problem often arises).	786	arises).
151		787
152	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	788	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
153	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	789	can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
		790	well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
		791	the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
		792	user and root):
154		793
155	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	794	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
156	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	795	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
157		796
158	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	797	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		798	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
159		799
160	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	800	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
161	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of	801	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
162	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	802	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
163	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	803	colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
164	applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,	804	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
165	though.
166		805
167	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	806	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
168	you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or	807	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
169	use a resource to set it:	808	resource to set it:
170		809
171	URxvt.termName: rxvt	810	URxvt.termName: rxvt
172		811
173	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	812	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
174	replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.	813	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
175		814
		815	nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
		816	This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
		817	nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
		818	your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
		819
176	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.	820	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
177	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it	821	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
178	by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.	822	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
179		823
180	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	824	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		825	See next entry.
		826
181	I need a termcap file entry.	827	I need a termcap file entry.
182	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	828	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
183	operating systems still compile some programs using the	829	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
184	long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)	830	library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
185	and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	831	for "rxvt-unicode".
186		832
187	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	833	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
188	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's	834	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
189	infocmp program like this:	835	program like this:
190		836
191	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	837	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
192		838
193	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	839	Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
		840	generated by the command above.
194		841
195	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
196	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
197	:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
198	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
199	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
200	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
201	:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
202	:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
203	:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
204	:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
205	:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
206	:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
207	:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
208	:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
209	:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
210	:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
211	:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
212	:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
213	:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
214	:vs=\E[?25h:
215
216	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?	842	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
217	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	843	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
218	decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration	844	decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
219	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file	845	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
220	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	846	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
221		847
222	TERM rxvt-unicode	848	TERM rxvt-unicode
223		849
224	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	850	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
225		851
226	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	852	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
227		853
228	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	854	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
229		855
230	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	856	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		857	See next entry.
		858
231	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	859	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		860	See next entry.
		861
232	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	862	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
233	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	863	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
234	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	864	distributions break rxvt-unicode by setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which
235	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	865	doesn't have these extra features. Unfortunately, some of these
236	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
237	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	866	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
238	so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I	867	you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
239	log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on	868	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
240	how to do this).	869	this).
241		870
242	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	871	Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
243	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
244	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
245	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
246	and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
247	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
248	please report if that helped.
249
250	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?	872	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		873	See next entry.
		874
251	Unicode does not seem to work?	875	Unicode does not seem to work?
252	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	876	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
253	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	877	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
254	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	878	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
255	settings.
256		879
257	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	880	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
258	programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the	881	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
259	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	882	while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
260	locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this	883	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
261	is not going to work.	884	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
262		885
263	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	886	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
264	likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in	887	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
265	your .profile.	888	.profile.
266		889
267	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	890	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
268		891
269	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	892	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
270	not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command	893	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
271	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	894	displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
272	settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).	895	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
273	If it displays something like:	896	something like:
274		897
275	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	898	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
276		899
277	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	900	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
278		901
279	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	902	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
280	then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs	903	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
281	just don't support locales :(	904	support locales :(
282		905
283	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
284	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
285	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
286	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
287	your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
288	want to display.
289
290	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
291	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
292	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
293	don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
294	artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
295	has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
296	indeed look correct.
297
298	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
299	list, e.g.:
300
301	rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
302
303	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
304	font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
305	the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
306	up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
307	X-server.
308
309	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
310	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
311	size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
312
313	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
314	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
315	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
316	is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
317	first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
318	font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
319	Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
320	so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
321	look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
322	still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
323	the japanese font.
324
325	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
326	font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
327	list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
328	japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
329	first.
330
331	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
332	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
333	different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
334	interface for this has been designed yet).
335
336	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
337	"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
338
339	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
340	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
341	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
342	terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
343	Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
344	just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
345	that redraws adjacent characters.
346
347	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
348	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
349	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
350	correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
351	unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
352
353	It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
354	freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
355	might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
356	that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
357
358	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
359	bounding box data is correct.
360
361	On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
362	Seems to be a known bug, read
363	<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
364	following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
365
366	#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
367
368	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
369	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
370	set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
371	by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
372	your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
373	keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
374	then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
375
376	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
377	than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
378
379	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
380	14755
381	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
382	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
383	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
384	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
385	telnet escape character and so on.
386
387	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
388	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
389	settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
390	effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
391	bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
392	the effect:
393
394	URxvt.colorBD: white
395	URxvt.colorIT: green
396
397	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
398	can I fix that?
399	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
400	weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
401	the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
402	of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
403	without very good reasons.
404
405	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
406	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
407	will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
408	features.
409
410	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
411	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
412	in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
413	it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
414	requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
415
416	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
417	nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
418	representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
419	respect to standards.
420
421	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
422	and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
423
424	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
425	apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
426	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
427	wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
428	encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
429	every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
430	anything except the current locale encoding.
431
432	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
433	by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
434	handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
435	doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
436	OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
437	emulator).
438
439	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
440	the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
441	to carry complete replacements for them :)
442
443	I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
444	Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
445	problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
446
447	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
448	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using
449	the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no
450	longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a
451	single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
452	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as
453	the old libW11 emulation.
454
455	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
456	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
457	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
458
459	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?	906	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		907	See next entry.
		908
460	Is there an option to switch encodings?	909	Is there an option to switch encodings?
461	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	910	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
462	and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't	911	specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
463	even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to	912	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
464	terminal I/O.
465		913
466	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	914	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
467	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	915	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
468	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	916	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
469	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.	917	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
470	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	918	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
471	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	919	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
472	locale-independent table under all locales).	920	locale-independent table under all locales).
473		921
474	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	922	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
475	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	923	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
476	in the interpretation of characters.	924	interpretation of characters.
477		925
478	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	926	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
479	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	927	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
480		928
481	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	929	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
482	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	930	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
483	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	931	locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
484	"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.	932	"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
485	"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")	933	"de" or "german") are also common.
486	are also common.
487		934
488	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	935	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
489	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	936	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
490	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	937	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
491	rxvt-unicode.
492		938
493	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	939	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
494	start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.	940	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
495		941
496	Can I switch locales at runtime?	942	Can I switch locales at runtime?
497	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	943	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
498	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	944	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
499		945
500	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	946	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
501		947
502	See also the previous answer.	948	See also the previous answer.
503		949
504	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	950	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
505	one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it	951	locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
506	(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which	952	UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
507	first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:	953	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
508		954
509	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	955	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
510	xjdic -js	956	xjdic -js
511	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	957	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
512		958
513	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	959	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
514	except for some locales where character width differs between	960	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
515	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	961	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
516		962
517	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	963	I have problems getting my input method working.
518	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	964	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
519	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	965	method server.
520	immediately:
521		966
522	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	967	Here is a checklist:
523		968
524	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	969	- Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
525	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	970	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
526	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
527		971
528	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	972	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		973	XIM.
		974	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		975	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
529		976
530	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	977	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
531	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	978	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
532	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	979	*starting* rxvt-unicode.
533	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	980	When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
534	be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:	981	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		982	running with this command:
535		983
536	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	984	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
537	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
538		985
539	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	986	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
540	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest	987	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
541	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	988	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
542		989
543	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	990	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
544		991
545	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	992	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
546	still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not	993	use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
547	be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,	994	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
548	as your input method limits you.	995	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
549		996
550	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.	997	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
551	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by	998	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
552	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory	999	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
553	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering	1000	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
554	at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally	1001	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
555	succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,	1002	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
556	however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides	1003	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
557	cooperate.
558		1004
559	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.	1005	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
560		1006
561	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	1007	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
562	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	1008	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
563	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	1009	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
564	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	1010	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
565	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	1011	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
566	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	1012	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
567	a font for your characters.	1013	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		1014	more in the future) depends on it.
568		1015
569	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	1016	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
570	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will	1017	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
571	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to	1018	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
572	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will	1019	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
573	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"	1020	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
574	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
575		1021
576	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1022	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
577	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1023	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
578	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1024	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
579	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves	1025	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
580	lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
581		1026
582	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1027	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
583	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1028	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
584	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1029	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
585	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It
586	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
587	thinks they look best that way.
588		1030
589	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1031	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
		1032	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
		1033	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1034	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1035	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1036	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
590		1037
591	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1038	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
592	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1039	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
593	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1040	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
594	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise	1041	result in very little risk.
595	specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
596	or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
597		1042
598	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1043	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
599	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1044	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
600	the standard foreground colour.	1045	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1046	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1047	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
601		1048
602	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1049	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
603	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1050	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
604	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1051	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
605	ignored.
606		1052
607	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1053	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
608	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1054	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
609		1055
610	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1056	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
		1057	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
		1058	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1059	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1060	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1061	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1062	locale encoding.
611		1063
612	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1064	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
		1065	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1066	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1067	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1068	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
613		1069
614	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1070	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
615	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1071	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
616	resources (or as long-options).	1072	complete replacements for them :)
617		1073
618	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1074	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
619	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1075	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
		1076	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
		1077	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
		1078	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
		1079	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
		1080	old libW11 emulation.
620		1081
621	URxvt.color0: #000000	1082	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
622	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1083	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
623	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1084	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
624	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
625	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
626	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
627	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
628	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
629		1085
630	URxvt.color8: #000054	1086	Character widths are not correct.
631	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1087	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
632	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1088	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
633	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1089	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
634	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1090	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
635	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1091	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
636	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
637	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
638		1092
639	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1093	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
640	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1094	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
641		1095
642	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1096	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
643	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
644	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
645	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
646	URxvt.color0: #000000
647	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
648	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
649	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
650	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
651	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
652	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
653	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
654	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
655	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
656	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
657	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
658	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
659	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
660		1097
661	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?
662	Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the
663	listening socket and then fork.
664
665	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
666	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
667	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
668	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
669	Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
670
671	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
672	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
673	only correct choice :).
674
675	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
676	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
677	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
678	shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
679	CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
680	your stty setting).
681
682	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
683
684	# use Backspace = ^H
685	$ stty erase ^H
686	$ rxvt
687
688	# use Backspace = ^?
689	$ stty erase ^?
690	$ rxvt
691
692	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
693
694	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
695
696	# use Backspace = ^H
697	$ stty erase ^H
698	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
699
700	# use Backspace = ^?
701	$ stty erase ^?
702	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
703
704	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
705	but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
706	value properly reflects that.
707
708	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
709	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
710	the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
711	vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
712	termcap/terminfo.
713
714	Some other Backspace problems:
715
716	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
717	expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
718	help.
719
720	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
721
722	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
723	There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
724	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
725	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
726	associated with keysyms.
727
728	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
729	URxvt"
730
731	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
732	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
733	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
734	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
735	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
736	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
737	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
738	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
739	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
740	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
741	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
742	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
743	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
744	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
745	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
746	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
747	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
748	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
749	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
750	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
751
752	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
753
754	I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
755	do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
756	following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
757	KP_Insert == Insert
758	F22 == Print
759	F27 == Home
760	F29 == Prior
761	F33 == End
762	F35 == Next
763
764	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
765	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
766	the keys as required for your particular machine.
767
768	How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
769	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
770	rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
771	can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
772	slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
773	whether or not to use color.
774
775	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
776	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
777	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
778	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
779	rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
780	these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
781	distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
782
783	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
784	script snippets:
785
786	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
787	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
788	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
789	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
790	echo -n '^[Z'
791	read term_id
792	stty icanon echo
793	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
794	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
795	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
796	fi
797	fi
798
799	How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
800	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
801	/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
802	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
803
804	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
805	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
806	channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
807	be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
808	FAQs :).
809

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