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1FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 1RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
2 Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
3 My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
4 Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
5 "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
6 interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
7
8 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 Another option is to use systemd socket-based activation (see
74 systemd.socket(5)). Here is an example of a service unit file and of a
75 socket unit file for the default socket path:
76
77 urxvtd.service
78 [Unit]
79 Description=urxvt terminal daemon
80 Requires=urxvtd.socket
81
82 [Service]
83 ExecStart=/usr/bin/urxvtd -o
84
85 urxvtd.socket
86 [Unit]
87 Description=urxvt terminal daemon socket
88
89 [Socket]
90 ListenStream=%h/.urxvt/urxvtd-%H
91
92 [Install]
93 WantedBy=sockets.target
94
95 How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular
96xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.
97 The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
98 "COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
99 programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
100 variable to decide whether or not to use colour.
101
102 How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
103 If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
104 insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
105 snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
106 wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
107 then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
108 a regular xterm.
109
110 Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
111 snippets:
112
113 # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
114 [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
115 if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
116 stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
117 printf "\eZ"
118 read term_id
119 stty icanon echo
120 if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
121 printf '\e[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
122 read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
123 fi
124 fi
125
126 How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
127 You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
128 one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
129 Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
130
131 Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
132 I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
133 bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
134 that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
135 being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
136 startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
137 unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
138 iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
139
140 text data bss drs rss filename
141 98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
142 188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
143
144 When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
145 and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
146 libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
147
148 text data bss drs rss filename
149 163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
150 1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
151
152 The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
153 encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
154 and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
155 encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
156 compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
157 memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
158 a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
159 when not used.
160
161 Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
162 one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
163 more memory.
164
165 Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
166 still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
167 gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
168 (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
169 a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
170 out), it fares extremely well *g*.
171
172 Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
173 Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
174 had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
175 fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
176 even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
177
178 My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
179 the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
180 are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
181 unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
182
183 Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
184 in C that use gobs of memory, and certainly possible to write programs
185 in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this
186 is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on
187 my system with a minimal config:
188
189 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
190 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
191 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
192 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
193
194 And here is rxvt-unicode:
195
196 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
197 libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
198 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
199 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
200 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
201
202 No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
203 except maybe libX11 :)
204
205 Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
206 I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
207 First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
208 so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
209 may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
210 rite of passage: ... and you failed.
211
212 Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
213 descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
214
215 1. Use transparent mode:
216
217 Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
218 urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
219
220 That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
221 support, or you are unable to read. This method requires that the
222 background-setting program sets the _XROOTPMAP_ID or ESETROOT_PMAP_ID
223 property. Compatible programs are Esetroot, hsetroot and feh.
224
225 2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
226 to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
227 your picture with gimp or any other tool:
228
229 convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
230 urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
231
232 That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack GDK-PixBuf support, or you
233 are unable to read.
234
235 3. Use an ARGB visual:
236
237 urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
238
239 This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
240 doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
241 there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
242 necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
243 that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
244
245 4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
246
247 xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
248 -set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
249
250 Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
251 by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
252 your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
253
254 Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
255 Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
256 character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
257 use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
258 will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
259 wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
260 characters.
261
262 All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
263 however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
264 bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
265 way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
266 wrong in these cases).
267
268 It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
269 or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
270 using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
271 work, you might be forced to use a different font.
272
273 All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
274 bounding box data is correct.
275
276 How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
277 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
278 ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
279 make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
280 rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
281
282 URxvt.colorBD: white
283 URxvt.colorIT: green
284
285 Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
286 For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
287 colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
288 standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
289 course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
290 good reasons.
291
292 In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
293 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
294 fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
295
296 Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
297 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
298 same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
299
300 printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
301
302 This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
303 japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
304 japanese fonts would only be in your way.
305
306 You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
307
308 Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
309 Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
310 example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
311 Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
312 enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
313
314 URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
315 URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
316
317 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
318 Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
319 is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
320 antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
321 memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
322
323 Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
324 Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
325 fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
326 because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
327 antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
328 look best that way.
329
330 If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
331
332 What's with this bold/blink stuff?
333 If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
334 standard foreground colour.
335
336 For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
337 blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
338 "--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
339
340 On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
341 foreground/background colours.
342
343 color0-7 are the low-intensity colours.
344
345 color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colours.
346
347 I don't like the screen colours. How do I change them?
348 You can change the screen colours at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
349 resources (or as long-options).
350
351 Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
352 the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
353
354 URxvt.color0: #000000
355 URxvt.color1: #A80000
356 URxvt.color2: #00A800
357 URxvt.color3: #A8A800
358 URxvt.color4: #0000A8
359 URxvt.color5: #A800A8
360 URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
361 URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
362
363 URxvt.color8: #000054
364 URxvt.color9: #FF0054
365 URxvt.color10: #00FF54
366 URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
367 URxvt.color12: #0000FF
368 URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
369 URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
370 URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
371
372 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colours.
373
374 URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
375 URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
376 URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
377 URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
378 URxvt.color0: #000000
379 URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
380 URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
381 URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
382 URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
383 URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
384 URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
385 URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
386 URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
387 URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
388 URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
389 URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
390 URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
391 URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
392
393 They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
394
395 Why do some characters look so much different than others?
396 See next entry.
397
398 How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
399 Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
400 Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
401 system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
402 display.
403
404 rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
405 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
406 bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
407 resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
408 intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
409 the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
410
411 In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
412 e.g.:
413
414 urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
415
416 When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
417 If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
418 font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
419 search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
420
421 The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
422 base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
423 which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
424
425 Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
426 This is because there is a difference between script and language --
427 rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
428 it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
429 japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
430 Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
431 characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
432 non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
433 font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
434 for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
435
436 The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
437 list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
438 preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
439 first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
440
441 In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
442 runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
443 fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
444 has been designed yet).
445
446 Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
447 I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
448
449 How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
450 We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
451 like:
452
453 urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
454
455 Why is the cursor now blinking in emacs/vi/...?
456 This is likely caused by your editor/program's use of the "cvvis"
457 terminfo capability. Emacs uses it by default, as well as some versions
458 of vi and possibly other programs.
459
460 In emacs, you can switch that off by adding this to your ".emacs" file:
461
462 (setq visible-cursor nil)
463
464 For other programs, if they do not have an option, your have to remove
465 the "cvvis" capability from the terminfo description.
466
467 When urxvt first added the blinking cursor option, it didn't add a
468 "cvvis" capability, which served no purpose before. Version 9.21
469 introduced "cvvis" (and the ability to control blinking independent of
470 cursor shape) for compatibility with other terminals, which
471 traditionally use a blinking cursor for "cvvis". This also reflects the
472 intent of programs such as emacs, who expect "cvvis" to enable a
473 blinking cursor.
474
475 Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
476 The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
477 If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
478 setting:
479
480 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
481
482 If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
483 more.
484
485 To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
486 pattern:
487
488 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
489
490 Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClick* combination also
491 selects words like the old code.
492
493 I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
494 You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
495 perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
496 rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
497
498 If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
499 identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
500 PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
501 disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
502 perl-ext-common resource:
503
504 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
505
506 This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
507 extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
508 scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
509 combination by adding a keysym resource that binds the desired
510 combination to the "start" action of "searchable-scrollback" and another
511 one that binds M-s to the "builtin:" action:
512
513 URxvt.keysym.CM-s: searchable-scrollback:start
514 URxvt.keysym.M-s: builtin:
515
516 The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
517 See next entry.
518
519 During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
520 These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
521 circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
522 line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
523 but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
524 some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
525
526 You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
527 extension:
528
529 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
530
531 My numeric keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
532 Some Debian GNU/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
533 specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
534 caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
535 how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
536 compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
537 report if that helped.
538
539 My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
540 The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
541 correctly, or you specified a preeditType that is not supported by your
542 input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
543 method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
544 support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
545 will continue without an input method.
546
547 In this case either do not specify a preeditType or specify more than
548 one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
549
550 If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
551 compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
552 don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
553
554 I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
555 Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
556 international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
557 advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
558 other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
559 escape character and so on.
560
561 Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
562 Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
563 editors prematurely may leave it active. I've heard that tcsh may use
564 mouse reporting unless it is otherwise specified. A quick check is to
565 see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are pressed.
566
567 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
568 Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
569 keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
570 two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
571
572 Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
573 debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
574 correct choice :).
575
576 It is possible to toggle between "^H" and "^?" with the DECBKM private
577 mode:
578
579 # use Backspace = ^H
580 $ stty erase ^H
581 $ printf "\e[?67h"
582
583 # use Backspace = ^?
584 $ stty erase ^?
585 $ printf "\e[?67l"
586
587 This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
588 if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
589 properly reflects that.
590
591 The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
592 problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
593 Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
594 Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
595
596 Some other Backspace problems:
597
598 some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
599 Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
600
601 Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
602
603 I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
604 There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
605 you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
606 use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
607 keysyms.
608
609 Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
610
611 URxvt.keysym.Prior: \033[5~
612 URxvt.keysym.Next: \033[6~
613 URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[7~
614 URxvt.keysym.End: \033[8~
615 URxvt.keysym.Up: \033[A
616 URxvt.keysym.Down: \033[B
617 URxvt.keysym.Right: \033[C
618 URxvt.keysym.Left: \033[D
619
620 See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
621
622 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
623 KP_Insert == Insert
624 F22 == Print
625 F27 == Home
626 F29 == Prior
627 F33 == End
628 F35 == Next
629
630 Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
631 possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
632 keys as required for your particular machine.
633
634 Terminal Configuration
635 Can I see a typical configuration?
636 The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
637 that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
638
639 As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
640 time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
641 author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
642 certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
643
644 URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
645 URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/some/path
646
647 These are just for testing stuff.
648
649 URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
650 URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
651
652 This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
653 the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
654 type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
655 with correct-looking fonts.
656
657 URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
658 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
659 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
660 URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
661 URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
662 URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
663
664 This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
665 directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
666 develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
667 write.
668
669 The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
670 and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
671 relevant file and go to the error line number.
672
673 URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
674 URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
675
676 As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
677 author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
678 apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
679 scrollback buffer.
680
681 URxvt.background: #000000
682 URxvt.foreground: gray90
683 URxvt.color7: gray90
684 URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
685 URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
686 URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
687 URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
688
689 Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
690 but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
691 foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
692 colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
693
694 URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
695
696 Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
697 but is mostly a nice effect.
698
699 URxvt.geometry: 154x36
700 URxvt.loginShell: false
701 URxvt.meta: ignore
702 URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
703
704 Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
705 manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
706
707 URxvt.saveLines: 8192
708
709 A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
710
711 URxvt.mapAlert: true
712
713 The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
714 iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
715
716 URxvt.visualBell: true
717
718 The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
719
720 URxvt.insecure: true
721
722 Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
723
724 URxvt.pastableTabs: false
725
726 I once thought this is a great idea.
727
728 urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
729 -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
730 -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
731 [codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
732 xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
733 xft:Code2000:antialias=false
734 urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
735 urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
736 urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
737
738 I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
739 overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
740 the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
741 different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
742 characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
743 XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
744 I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
745 italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
746 Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
747
748 Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
749 my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
750 (Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
751 bold and normal fonts.
752
753 Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
754 class name. That is because I use different configs for different
755 purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
756 uses these defaults:
757
758 IRC*title: IRC
759 IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
760 IRC*saveLines: 0
761 IRC*mapAlert: true
762 IRC*font: suxuseuro
763 IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
764 IRC*colorBD: white
765 IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
766 IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
767
768 "Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
769 "suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
770 keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
771 (e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
772
773 The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
774 "xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
775 file for different hosts, for example, on my main desktop, I use:
776
777 URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
778 URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
779 URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
780 URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
781 URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
782
783 The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
784 in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
785 immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
786 same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
787 combinations :->
788
789 Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
790 Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
791 applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
792 resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
793 ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
794 $HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
795
796 If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
797 are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
798 every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
799
800 Also consider the form resources have to use:
801
802 URxvt.resource: value
803
804 If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
805 specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
806 works. If unsure, use the form above.
807
21 When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? 808 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 809 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 810 as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
24 problem often arises). 811 arises).
25 812
26 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, 813 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
27 this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp): 814 can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
815 well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
816 the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
817 user and root):
28 818
29 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain 819 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
30 infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti" 820 infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
31 821
32 ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system, 822 One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
823 $HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
33 824
34 If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set 825 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 826 "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
36 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and 827 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
37 different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen 828 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, 829 quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
39 though.
40 830
41 If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) 831 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 832 can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
43 use a resource to set it: 833 resource to set it:
44 834
45 URxvt.termName: rxvt 835 URxvt.termName: rxvt
46 836
47 If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also 837 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. 838 the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
49 839
840 nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
841 This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
842 nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
843 your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
844
50 "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry. 845 "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
51 Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it 846 Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
52 by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again. 847 "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
53 848
54 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt. 849 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
850 See next entry.
851
55 I need a termcap file entry. 852 I need a termcap file entry.
56 One reason you might want this is that some distributions or 853 One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
57 operating systems still compile some programs using the 854 systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
58 long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) 855 library (Fedora's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry for
59 and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode". 856 "rxvt-unicode".
60 857
61 You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many 858 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 859 cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
63 infocmp program like this: 860 program like this:
64 861
65 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode 862 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
66 863
67 Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above: 864 Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
865 generated by the command above.
68 866
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? 867 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
91 The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to 868 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 869 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 870 file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
94 (among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add: 871 with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
95 872
96 TERM rxvt-unicode 873 TERM rxvt-unicode
97 874
98 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add: 875 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
99 876
100 alias ls='ls --color=auto' 877 alias ls='ls --color=auto'
101 878
102 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc". 879 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
103 880
104 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode? 881 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
882 See next entry.
883
105 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic? 884 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
885 See next entry.
886
106 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly? 887 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
107 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged 888 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
108 distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by 889 distributions break rxvt-unicode by setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which
109 setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features. 890 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, 891 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 892 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 893 to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
114 how to do this). 894 this).
115 895
116 My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output? 896 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? 897 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
898 See next entry.
899
125 Unicode does not seem to work? 900 Unicode does not seem to work?
126 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character 901 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
127 but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program 902 getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
128 output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale 903 is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
129 settings.
130 904
131 Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the 905 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 906 programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
133 login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the 907 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 908 the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
135 is not going to work. 909 is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
136 910
137 The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will 911 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 912 run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
139 your .profile. 913 .profile.
140 914
141 printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" 915 printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
142 916
143 If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification 917 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 918 supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
145 which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale 919 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). 920 it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
147 If it displays something like: 921 something like:
148 922
149 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ... 923 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
150 924
151 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system. 925 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
152 926
153 If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly 927 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 928 you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
155 just don't support locales :( 929 support locales :(
156 930
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 urxvt -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? 931 How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
932 See next entry.
933
334 Is there an option to switch encodings? 934 Is there an option to switch encodings?
335 Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, 935 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 936 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 937 about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
338 terminal I/O.
339 938
340 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for 939 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
341 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating 940 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
342 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties 941 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
343 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*. 942 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
344 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example, 943 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
345 "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own, 944 "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
346 locale-independent table under all locales). 945 locale-independent table under all locales).
347 946
348 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. 947 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
349 All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree 948 programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
350 in the interpretation of characters. 949 interpretation of characters.
351 950
352 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, 951 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
353 nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like. 952 is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
354 953
355 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable 954 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
356 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an 955 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
357 already-installed locale. Common names for locales are 956 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. 957 "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") 958 "de" or "german") are also common.
360 are also common.
361 959
362 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the 960 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
363 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e. 961 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
364 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to 962 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
365 rxvt-unicode.
366 963
367 If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you 964 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. 965 rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
369 966
370 Can I switch locales at runtime? 967 Can I switch locales at runtime?
371 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets 968 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
372 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE". 969 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
373 970
374 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS 971 printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
375 972
376 See also the previous answer. 973 See also the previous answer.
377 974
378 Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in 975 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 976 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 977 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: 978 switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
382 979
383 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS 980 printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
384 xjdic -js 981 xjdic -js
385 printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8 982 printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
386 983
387 You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine, 984 You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
388 except for some locales where character width differs between 985 except for some locales where character width differs between program-
389 program- and rxvt-unicode-locales. 986 and rxvt-unicode-locales.
390 987
391 Can I switch the fonts at runtime? 988 I have problems getting my input method working.
392 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has 989 Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
393 the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect 990 method server.
394 immediately:
395 991
396 printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic" 992 Here is a checklist:
397 993
398 This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer 994 - Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
399 a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, 995 Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
400 where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
401 996
402 You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching. 997 - Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
998 XIM.
999 For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
1000 "ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
403 1001
404 Why do italic characters look as if clipped? 1002 - Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
405 Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For 1003 - Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
406 example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera 1004 *starting* rxvt-unicode.
407 Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might 1005 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: 1006 For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
1007 running with this command:
409 1008
410 URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true 1009 xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
411 URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
412 1010
413 My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do? 1011 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 1012 You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
415 of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale": 1013 the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
416 1014
417 URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP 1015 URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
418 1016
419 Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and 1017 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 1018 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, 1019 Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
422 as your input method limits you. 1020 in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
423 1021
424 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits. 1022 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
425 Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by 1023 Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
426 design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory 1024 design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
427 leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering 1025 leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
428 at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally 1026 exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
429 succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, 1027 SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
430 however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides 1028 cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
431 cooperate.
432 1029
433 So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers. 1030 So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
434 1031
435 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that? 1032 Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
436 Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for 1033 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 1034 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 1035 enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
439 resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no 1036 runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
440 Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find 1037 them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
441 a font for your characters. 1038 should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
1039 more in the future) depends on it.
442 1040
443 Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger 1041 You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
444 scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will 1042 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 1043 behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
446 almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will 1044 "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" 1045 perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
448 it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
449 1046
450 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? 1047 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, 1048 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 1049 "--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
453 disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves 1050 encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
454 lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
455 1051
456 Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong? 1052 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 1053 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 1054 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 1055
463 If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually. 1056 When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
1057 into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
1058 systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
1059 immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
1060 privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
1061 things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
464 1062
465 Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works. 1063 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 1064 early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
467 some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. 1065 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 1066 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 urxvt(7)
471 1067
472 What's with this bold/blink stuff? 1068 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 1069 Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
474 the standard foreground colour. 1070 your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
1071 whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
1072 wchar_t is represented as unicode.
475 1073
476 For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the 1074 As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
477 text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard 1075 does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
478 colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be 1076 wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
479 ignored.
480 1077
481 On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set 1078 However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
482 high-intensity foreground/background colors. 1079 "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
483 1080
484 color0-7 are the low-intensity colors. 1081 "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
1082 in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
1083 representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
1084 (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
1085 implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
1086 simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
1087 locale encoding.
485 1088
486 color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors. 1089 Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
1090 carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
1091 them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
1092 conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
1093 encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
487 1094
488 I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them? 1095 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 1096 system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
490 resources (or as long-options). 1097 complete replacements for them :)
491 1098
492 Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, 1099 How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
493 including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow: 1100 rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
1101 X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
1102 supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
1103 font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
1104 "-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
1105 old libW11 emulation.
494 1106
495 URxvt.color0: #000000 1107 At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
496 URxvt.color1: #A80000 1108 multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
497 URxvt.color2: #00A800 1109 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 1110
504 URxvt.color8: #000054 1111 Character widths are not correct.
505 URxvt.color9: #FF0054 1112 urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
506 URxvt.color10: #00FF54 1113 width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
507 URxvt.color11: #FFFF54 1114 likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
508 URxvt.color12: #0000FF 1115 single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
509 URxvt.color13: #FF00FF 1116 Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
510 URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
511 URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
512 1117
513 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described 1118 The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
514 (not by me) as "pretty girly". 1119 possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
515 1120
516 URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1 1121 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 1122
535 How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
536 Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create
537 the 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 $ urxvt
561
562 # use Backspace = ^?
563 $ stty erase ^?
564 $ urxvt
565
566 Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in urxvt(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 "urxvt -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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