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Revision 1.72 by root, Sat May 14 08:28:25 2016 UTC

1	FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS	1	RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
		2	Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
		3	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
		4	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
		5	"#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
		6	interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
		7
		8	I use Gentoo, and I have a problem...
		9	There are two big problems with Gentoo Linux: first, most if not all
		10	Gentoo systems are completely broken (missing or mismatched header
		11	files, broken compiler etc. are just the tip of the iceberg); secondly,
		12	it should be called Gentoo GNU/Linux.
		13
		14	For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo.
		15	Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
		16	unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
		17
		18	Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
		19	Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
		20	simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
		21	should give you tabs:
		22
		23	urxvt -pe tabbed
		24
		25	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
		26
		27	It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
		28	managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
		29	it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
		30	or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
		31	(murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
		32
2	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?	33	How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
3	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape	34	The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
4	sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number.	35	sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When
		36	using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
5		37
6	I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...	38	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
7	The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode contains large patches	39	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
8	that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode. Before	40	you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
9	reporting a bug to the original rxvt-unicode author please download	41	that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
10	and install the genuine version	42	design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
11	(<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the	43	loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
12	problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific	44	characters.
13	to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the
14	Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
15		45
16	For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and	46	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
17	probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's	47	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
18	also a bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for	48	bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
19	other users that might encounter the same issue.	49	kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if
		50	full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets
		51	worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
20		52
		53	How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
		54	Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
		55	listening socket and then fork.
		56
		57	How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
		58	If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
		59	the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
		60
		61	#!/bin/sh
		62	urxvtc "$@"
		63	if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
		64	urxvtd -q -o -f
		65	urxvtc "$@"
		66	fi
		67
		68	This tries to create a new terminal, and if fails with exit status 2,
		69	meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and
		70	re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the
		71	existing daemon.
		72
		73	How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular
		74	xterm? I need this to decide about setting colours etc.
		75	The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable
		76	"COLORTERM", so you can check and see if that is set. Note that several
		77	programs, JED, slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this
		78	variable to decide whether or not to use colour.
		79
		80	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
		81	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
		82	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
		83	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
		84	wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
		85	then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
		86	a regular xterm.
		87
		88	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
		89	snippets:
		90
		91	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
		92	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
		93	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
		94	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
		95	printf "\eZ"
		96	read term_id
		97	stty icanon echo
		98	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
		99	printf '\e[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
		100	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
		101	fi
		102	fi
		103
		104	How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
		105	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
		106	one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
		107	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
		108
		109	Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
		110	I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
		111	bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
		112	that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
		113	being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) after
		114	startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is a bit
		115	unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding conversion,
		116	iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
		117
		118	text data bss drs rss filename
		119	98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
		120	188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
		121
		122	When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
		123	and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
		124	libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
		125
		126	text data bss drs rss filename
		127	163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
		128	1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
		129
		130	The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-asian
		131	encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but nothing else
		132	and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core fonts that use those
		133	encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k emergency buffer that my c++
		134	compiler allocates (but of course doesn't use unless you are out of
		135	memory). Also, using an xft font instead of a core font immediately adds
		136	a few megabytes of RSS. Xft indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even
		137	when not used.
		138
		139	Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
		140	one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
		141	more memory.
		142
		143	Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), this
		144	still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
		145	gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or konsole
		146	(22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after exit, plus half
		147	a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
		148	out), it fares extremely well *g*.
		149
		150	Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
		151	Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
		152	had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
		153	fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
		154	even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
		155
		156	My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but in
		157	the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability limits
		158	are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale support and
		159	unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than C++ itself.
		160
		161	Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write programs
		162	in C that use gobs of memory, and certainly possible to write programs
		163	in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large libraries, but this
		164	is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is what rxvt links against on
		165	my system with a minimal config:
		166
		167	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		168	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
		169	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
		170	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		171
		172	And here is rxvt-unicode:
		173
		174	libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
		175	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
		176	libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
		177	libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
		178	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
		179
		180	No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
		181	except maybe libX11 :)
		182
		183	Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
		184	I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
		185	First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
		186	so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
		187	may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
		188	rite of passage: ... and you failed.
		189
		190	Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
		191	descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
		192
		193	1. Use transparent mode:
		194
		195	Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
		196	urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
		197
		198	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
		199	support, or you are unable to read. This method requires that the
		200	background-setting program sets the _XROOTPMAP_ID or ESETROOT_PMAP_ID
		201	property. Compatible programs are Esetroot, hsetroot and feh.
		202
		203	2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
		204	to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
		205	your picture with gimp or any other tool:
		206
		207	convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
		208	urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
		209
		210	That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack GDK-PixBuf support, or you
		211	are unable to read.
		212
		213	3. Use an ARGB visual:
		214
		215	urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
		216
		217	This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
		218	doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
		219	there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
		220	necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
		221	that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
		222
		223	4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
		224
		225	xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
		226	-set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
		227
		228	Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
		229	by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
		230	your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
		231
		232	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
		233	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
		234	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
		235	use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
		236	will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
		237	wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
		238	characters.
		239
		240	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
		241	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
		242	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
		243	way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
		244	wrong in these cases).
		245
		246	It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
		247	or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
		248	using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
		249	work, you might be forced to use a different font.
		250
		251	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
		252	bounding box data is correct.
		253
		254	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
		255	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
		256	("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
		257	make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
		258	rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
		259
		260	URxvt.colorBD: white
		261	URxvt.colorIT: green
		262
		263	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
		264	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
		265	colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
		266	standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
		267	course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
		268	good reasons.
		269
		270	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
		271	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
		272	fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
		273
		274	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
		275	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
		276	same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
		277
		278	printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
		279
		280	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
		281	japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
		282	japanese fonts would only be in your way.
		283
		284	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
		285
		286	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
		287	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
		288	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
		289	Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
		290	enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
		291
		292	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		293	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		294
		295	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
		296	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
		297	is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
		298	antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
		299	memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
		300
		301	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
		302	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
		303	fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
		304	because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
		305	antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
		306	look best that way.
		307
		308	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
		309
		310	What's with this bold/blink stuff?
		311	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
		312	standard foreground colour.
		313
		314	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
		315	blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
		316	"--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
		317
		318	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
		319	foreground/background colours.
		320
		321	color0-7 are the low-intensity colours.
		322
		323	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colours.
		324
		325	I don't like the screen colours. How do I change them?
		326	You can change the screen colours at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
		327	resources (or as long-options).
		328
		329	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
		330	the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
		331
		332	URxvt.color0: #000000
		333	URxvt.color1: #A80000
		334	URxvt.color2: #00A800
		335	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
		336	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
		337	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
		338	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
		339	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
		340
		341	URxvt.color8: #000054
		342	URxvt.color9: #FF0054
		343	URxvt.color10: #00FF54
		344	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
		345	URxvt.color12: #0000FF
		346	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
		347	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
		348	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
		349
		350	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colours.
		351
		352	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
		353	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
		354	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
		355	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
		356	URxvt.color0: #000000
		357	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
		358	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
		359	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
		360	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
		361	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
		362	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
		363	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
		364	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
		365	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
		366	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
		367	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
		368	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
		369	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
		370
		371	They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
		372
		373	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
		374	See next entry.
		375
		376	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
		377	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
		378	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
		379	system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
		380	display.
		381
		382	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
		383	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
		384	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that don't
		385	resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
		386	intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe
		387	the font that the characters it claims to contain indeed look correct.
		388
		389	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
		390	e.g.:
		391
		392	urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
		393
		394	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
		395	If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
		396	font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed up this
		397	search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the X-server.
		398
		399	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
		400	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
		401	which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
		402
		403	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
		404	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
		405	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
		406	it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
		407	japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese font for display.
		408	Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. Now, many chinese
		409	characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the first
		410	non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese
		411	font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the japanese font
		412	for chinese characters that are also in the japanese font.
		413
		414	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your font
		415	list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font list as a
		416	preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a japanese font
		417	first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font first.
		418
		419	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
		420	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
		421	fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for this
		422	has been designed yet).
		423
		424	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
		425	I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
		426
		427	How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
		428	We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
		429	like:
		430
		431	urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
		432
		433	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 by adding a keysym resource that binds the desired
		488	combination to the "start" action of "searchable-scrollback" and another
		489	one that binds M-s to the "builtin:" action:
		490
		491	URxvt.keysym.CM-s: searchable-scrollback:start
		492	URxvt.keysym.M-s: builtin:
		493
		494	The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
		495	See next entry.
		496
		497	During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
		498	These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
		499	circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
		500	line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
		501	but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
		502	some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
		503
		504	You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
		505	extension:
		506
		507	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
		508
		509	My numeric keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
		510	Some Debian GNU/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
		511	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
		512	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
		513	how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
		514	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
		515	report if that helped.
		516
		517	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
		518	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
		519	correctly, or you specified a preeditType that is not supported by your
		520	input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
		521	method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose keys) does not
		522	support this (for instance because it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode
		523	will continue without an input method.
		524
		525	In this case either do not specify a preeditType or specify more than
		526	one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
		527
		528	If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
		529	compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
		530	don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
		531
		532	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
		533	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
		534	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
		535	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
		536	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
		537	escape character and so on.
		538
		539	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
		540	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing some
		541	editors prematurely may leave it active. I've heard that tcsh may use
		542	mouse reporting unless it is otherwise specified. A quick check is to
		543	see if cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are pressed.
		544
		545	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
		546	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the Backspace
		547	keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following question) there are
		548	two standard values that can be used for Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
		549
		550	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
		551	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
		552	correct choice :).
		553
		554	It is possible to toggle between "^H" and "^?" with the DECBKM private
		555	mode:
		556
		557	# use Backspace = ^H
		558	$ stty erase ^H
		559	$ printf "\e[?67h"
		560
		561	# use Backspace = ^?
		562	$ stty erase ^?
		563	$ printf "\e[?67l"
		564
		565	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
		566	if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
		567	properly reflects that.
		568
		569	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
		570	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, the
		571	Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for
		572	Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
		573
		574	Some other Backspace problems:
		575
		576	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
		577	Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
		578
		579	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
		580
		581	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
		582	There are some compile-time selections available via configure. Unless
		583	you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" option you can
		584	use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings associated with
		585	keysyms.
		586
		587	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
		588
		589	URxvt.keysym.Prior: \033[5~
		590	URxvt.keysym.Next: \033[6~
		591	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[7~
		592	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[8~
		593	URxvt.keysym.Up: \033[A
		594	URxvt.keysym.Down: \033[B
		595	URxvt.keysym.Right: \033[C
		596	URxvt.keysym.Left: \033[D
		597
		598	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
		599
		600	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
		601	KP_Insert == Insert
		602	F22 == Print
		603	F27 == Home
		604	F29 == Prior
		605	F33 == End
		606	F35 == Next
		607
		608	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
		609	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
		610	keys as required for your particular machine.
		611
		612	Terminal Configuration
		613	Can I see a typical configuration?
		614	The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
		615	that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
		616
		617	As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
		618	time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
		619	author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
		620	certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
		621
		622	URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
		623	URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
		624
		625	These are just for testing stuff.
		626
		627	URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
		628	URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
		629
		630	This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
		631	the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
		632	type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
		633	with correct-looking fonts.
		634
		635	URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
		636	URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
		637	URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
		638	URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
		639	URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		640	URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
		641
		642	This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
		643	directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
		644	develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
		645	write.
		646
		647	The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
		648	and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
		649	relevant file and go to the error line number.
		650
		651	URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
		652	URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
		653
		654	As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
		655	author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
		656	apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
		657	scrollback buffer.
		658
		659	URxvt.background: #000000
		660	URxvt.foreground: gray90
		661	URxvt.color7: gray90
		662	URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
		663	URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
		664	URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
		665	URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
		666
		667	Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
		668	but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
		669	foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
		670	colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
		671
		672	URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
		673
		674	Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
		675	but is mostly a nice effect.
		676
		677	URxvt.geometry: 154x36
		678	URxvt.loginShell: false
		679	URxvt.meta: ignore
		680	URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
		681
		682	Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
		683	manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
		684
		685	URxvt.saveLines: 8192
		686
		687	A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
		688
		689	URxvt.mapAlert: true
		690
		691	The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
		692	iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
		693
		694	URxvt.visualBell: true
		695
		696	The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
		697
		698	URxvt.insecure: true
		699
		700	Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
		701
		702	URxvt.pastableTabs: false
		703
		704	I once thought this is a great idea.
		705
		706	urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
		707	-misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
		708	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
		709	[codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
		710	xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
		711	xft:Code2000:antialias=false
		712	urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
		713	urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
		714	urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
		715
		716	I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
		717	overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
		718	the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
		719	different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
		720	characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
		721	XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
		722	I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
		723	italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
		724	Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
		725
		726	Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
		727	my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
		728	(Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
		729	bold and normal fonts.
		730
		731	Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
		732	class name. That is because I use different configs for different
		733	purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
		734	uses these defaults:
		735
		736	IRC*title: IRC
		737	IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
		738	IRC*saveLines: 0
		739	IRC*mapAlert: true
		740	IRC*font: suxuseuro
		741	IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
		742	IRC*colorBD: white
		743	IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
		744	IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
		745
		746	"Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
		747	"suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
		748	keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
		749	(e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
		750
		751	The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
		752	"xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
		753	file for different hosts, for example, on my main desktop, I use:
		754
		755	URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
		756	URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
		757	URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
		758	URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
		759	URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
		760
		761	The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
		762	in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
		763	immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
		764	same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
		765	combinations :->
		766
		767	Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
		768	Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
		769	applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
		770	resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
		771	ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
		772	$HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
		773
		774	If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
		775	are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
		776	every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
		777
		778	Also consider the form resources have to use:
		779
		780	URxvt.resource: value
		781
		782	If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
		783	specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
		784	works. If unsure, use the form above.
		785
21	When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?	786	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	787	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	788	as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
24	problem often arises).	789	arises).
25		790
26	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,	791	The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
27	this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):	792	can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
		793	well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
		794	the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
		795	user and root):
28		796
29	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain	797	REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
30	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"	798	infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
31		799
32	... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,	800	One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
		801	$HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
33		802
34	If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set	803	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	804	"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
36	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and	805	problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
37	different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen	806	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,	807	quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
39	though.
40		808
41	If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)	809	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	810	can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
43	use a resource to set it:	811	resource to set it:
44		812
45	URxvt.termName: rxvt	813	URxvt.termName: rxvt
46		814
47	If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also	815	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.	816	the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
49		817
		818	nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
		819	This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
		820	nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
		821	your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
		822
		823	"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
		824	Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
		825	"enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
		826
50	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.	827	"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
		828	See next entry.
		829
51	I need a termcap file entry.	830	I need a termcap file entry.
52	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or	831	One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
53	operating systems still compile some programs using the	832	systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
54	long-obsoleted termcap (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely	833	library (Fedora's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry for
55	on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".	834	"rxvt-unicode".
56		835
57	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many	836	You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
58	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's	837	cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
59	infocmp program like this:	838	program like this:
60		839
61	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode	840	infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
62		841
63	Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:	842	Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
		843	generated by the command above.
64		844
65	rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
66	:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
67	:co#80:it#8:li#24:\
68	:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
69	:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
70	:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=^O:al=\E[L:\
71	:as=^N:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:\
72	:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:dl=\E[M:do=^J:\
73	:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:\
74	:im=\E[4h:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
75	:k0=\E[21~:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:\
76	:k5=\E[15~:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:\
77	:kD=\E[3~:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:\
78	:ke=\E[?1l\E>:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:\
79	:ku=\EOA:le=^H:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:\
80	:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:\
81	:st=\EH:ta=^I:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:\
82	:up=\E[A:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
83	:vs=\E[?25h:
84
85	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?	845	Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
86	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to	846	The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
87	decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration	847	decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
88	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file	848	file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
89	(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:	849	with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
90		850
91	TERM rxvt-unicode	851	TERM rxvt-unicode
92		852
93	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:	853	to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
94		854
95	alias ls='ls --color=auto'	855	alias ls='ls --color=auto'
96		856
97	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".	857	to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
98		858
99	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?	859	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
		860	See next entry.
		861
100	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?	862	Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
		863	See next entry.
		864
101	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?	865	Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
102	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged	866	Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
103	distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by	867	distributions break rxvt-unicode by setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which
104	setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.	868	doesn't have these extra features. Unfortunately, some of these
105	Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
106	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,	869	furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
107	so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I	870	you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
108	log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on	871	to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
109	how to do this).	872	this).
110		873
111	My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?	874	Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
112	Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
113	specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
114	caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
115	and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
116	compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
117	please report if that helped.
118
119	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?	875	Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
		876	See next entry.
		877
120	Unicode does not seem to work?	878	Unicode does not seem to work?
121	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character	879	If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
122	but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program	880	getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
123	output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale	881	is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
124	settings.
125		882
126	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the	883	Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
127	programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the	884	programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
128	login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the	885	while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
129	locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this	886	the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
130	is not going to work.	887	is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
131		888
132	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will	889	The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
133	likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in	890	run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
134	your .profile.	891	.profile.
135		892
136	printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"	893	printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
137		894
138	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification	895	If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
139	not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command	896	supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
140	which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale	897	displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
141	settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).	898	it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
142	If it displays something like:	899	something like:
143		900
144	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...	901	locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
145		902
146	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.	903	Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
147		904
148	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly	905	If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
149	then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs	906	you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
150	just don't support locales :(	907	support locales :(
151		908
152	Why do some characters look so much different than others?
153	How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
154	Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
155	Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
156	your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
157	want to display.
158
159	rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
160	Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
161	bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
162	don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
163	artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
164	has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
165	indeed look correct.
166
167	In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
168	list, e.g.:
169
170	rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
171
172	When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
173	font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
174	the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
175	up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
176	X-server.
177
178	The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
179	base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
180	size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
181
182	Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
183	This is because there is a difference between script and language --
184	rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
185	is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
186	first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
187	font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
188	Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
189	so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
190	look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
191	still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
192	the japanese font.
193
194	The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
195	font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
196	list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
197	japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
198	first.
199
200	In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
201	runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
202	different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
203	interface for this has been designed yet).
204
205	Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
206	"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
207
208	Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
209	Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
210	character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
211	terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
212	Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
213	just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
214	that redraws adjacent characters.
215
216	All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
217	however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
218	bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
219	correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
220	unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
221
222	It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
223	freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
224	might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
225	that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
226
227	All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
228	bounding box data is correct.
229
230	My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
231	The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
232	set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
233	by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
234	your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
235	keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
236	then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
237
238	In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
239	than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
240
241	I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
242	14755
243	Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
244	international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
245	advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
246	other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
247	telnet escape character and so on.
248
249	How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
250	First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
251	settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
252	effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
253	bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
254	the effect:
255
256	URxvt.colorBD: white
257	URxvt.colorIT: green
258
259	Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
260	can I fix that?
261	For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
262	weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
263	the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
264	of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
265	without very good reasons.
266
267	In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
268	definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
269	will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
270	features.
271
272	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
273	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
274	in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
275	it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
276	requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
277
278	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
279	nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
280	representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
281	respect to standards.
282
283	However, "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support
284	multi-language apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and
285	non-standardized) representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to
286	convert between wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and
287	any other encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for
288	each and every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t
289	into anything except the current locale encoding.
290
291	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
292	by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
293	handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
294	doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
295	OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
296	emulator).
297
298	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
299	the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
300	to carry complete replacements for them :)
301
302	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?	909	How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
		910	See next entry.
		911
303	Is there an option to switch encodings?	912	Is there an option to switch encodings?
304	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,	913	Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
305	and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't	914	specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
306	even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to	915	about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
307	terminal I/O.
308		916
309	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for	917	The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
310	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating	918	selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
311	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties	919	this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
312	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.	920	such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
313	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,	921	Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
314	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,	922	"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
315	locale-independent table under all locales).	923	locale-independent table under all locales).
316		924
317	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.	925	Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
318	All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree	926	programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
319	in the interpretation of characters.	927	interpretation of characters.
320		928
321	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,	929	Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
322	nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.	930	is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
323		931
324	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable	932	On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
325	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an	933	contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
326	already-installed locale. Common names for locales are	934	locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
327	"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.	935	"ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
328	"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")	936	"de" or "german") are also common.
329	are also common.
330		937
331	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the	938	Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
332	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.	939	encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
333	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to	940	"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to rxvt-unicode.
334	rxvt-unicode.
335		941
336	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you	942	If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
337	start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.	943	rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
338		944
339	Can I switch locales at runtime?	945	Can I switch locales at runtime?
340	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets	946	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
341	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".	947	rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
342		948
343	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	949	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
344		950
345	See also the previous answer.	951	See also the previous answer.
346		952
347	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in	953	Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in one
348	one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it	954	locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it (e.g.
349	(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which	955	UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
350	first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:	956	switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
351		957
352	printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS	958	printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
353	xjdic -js	959	xjdic -js
354	printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8	960	printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
355		961
356	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,	962	You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
357	except for some locales where character width differs between	963	except for some locales where character width differs between program-
358	program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.	964	and rxvt-unicode-locales.
359		965
360	Can I switch the fonts at runtime?	966	I have problems getting my input method working.
361	Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has	967	Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
362	the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect	968	method server.
363	immediately:
364		969
365	printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"	970	Here is a checklist:
366		971
367	This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer	972	- Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
368	a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,	973	Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
369	where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
370		974
371	You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.	975	- Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
		976	XIM.
		977	For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
		978	"ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
372		979
373	Why do italic characters look as if clipped?	980	- Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
374	Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For	981	- Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
375	example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera	982	*starting* rxvt-unicode.
376	Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might	983	When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
377	be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:	984	For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
		985	running with this command:
378		986
379	URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true	987	xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
380	URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
381		988
382	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?	989	My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
383	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest	990	You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
384	of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":	991	the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
385		992
386	URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP	993	URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
387		994
388	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and	995	Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
389	still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not	996	use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
390	be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,	997	Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
391	as your input method limits you.	998	in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
392		999
393	Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?	1000	Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
394	Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for	1001	Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
395	something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure	1002	design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
396	out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a	1003	leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
397	resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no	1004	exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally succeeds, while
398	Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find	1005	SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, however, crashes
399	a font for your characters.	1006	cannot be completely avoided even if both sides cooperate.
400		1007
401	Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger	1008	So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
402	scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will
403	use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to
404	almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will
405	then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
406	it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
407		1009
408	Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?	1010	Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
409	Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,	1011	I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
410	as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to	1012	You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
411	disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialiasing=false"), which	1013	enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
412	saves lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.	1014	runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
		1015	them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
		1016	should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
		1017	more in the future) depends on it.
413		1018
414	Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?	1019	You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" and "perl-ext" resources
415	Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to	1020	system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
416	fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core	1021	behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
417	fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It	1022	"perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
418	has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author	1023	perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
419	thinks they look best that way.
420		1024
421	If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.	1025	If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
		1026	with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
		1027	"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
		1028	encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
422		1029
423	Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.	1030	I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
424	Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing	1031	It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
425	some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.	1032	install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
426	I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
427	specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
428	or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
429		1033
430	What's with this bold/blink stuff?	1034	When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
431	If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using	1035	into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
432	the standard foreground colour.	1036	systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
		1037	immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
		1038	privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
		1039	things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
433		1040
434	For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the	1041	This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
435	text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard	1042	early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
436	colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be	1043	main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
437	ignored.	1044	result in very little risk.
438		1045
439	On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set	1046	I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
440	high-intensity foreground/background colors.	1047	Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
		1048	your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
		1049	whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
		1050	wchar_t is represented as unicode.
441		1051
442	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.	1052	As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
		1053	does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
		1054	wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
443		1055
444	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.	1056	However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
		1057	"UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
445		1058
446	I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?	1059	"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
447	You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults	1060	in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
448	resources (or as long-options).	1061	representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
		1062	(as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
		1063	implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
		1064	simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
		1065	locale encoding.
449		1066
450	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,	1067	Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
451	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:	1068	carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
		1069	them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
		1070	conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
		1071	encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
452		1072
453	URxvt.color0: #000000	1073	The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
454	URxvt.color1: #A80000	1074	system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
455	URxvt.color2: #00A800	1075	complete replacements for them :)
456	URxvt.color3: #A8A800
457	URxvt.color4: #0000A8
458	URxvt.color5: #A800A8
459	URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
460	URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
461		1076
462	URxvt.color8: #000054	1077	How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
463	URxvt.color9: #FF0054	1078	rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
464	URxvt.color10: #00FF54	1079	X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
465	URxvt.color11: #FFFF54	1080	supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
466	URxvt.color12: #0000FF	1081	font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
467	URxvt.color13: #FF00FF	1082	"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
468	URxvt.color14: #00FFFF	1083	old libW11 emulation.
469	URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
470		1084
471	And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described	1085	At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
472	(not by me) as "pretty girly".	1086	multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
		1087	likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
473		1088
474	URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1	1089	Character widths are not correct.
475	URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1	1090	urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
476	URxvt.background: #0e0e0e	1091	width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
477	URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1	1092	likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
478	URxvt.color0: #000000	1093	single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
479	URxvt.color8: #8b8f93	1094	Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
480	URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
481	URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
482	URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
483	URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
484	URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
485	URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
486	URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
487	URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
488	URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
489	URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
490	URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
491	URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
492		1095
493	How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?	1096	The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
494	Despite it's name, rxvtd is not a real daemon, but more like a	1097	possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
495	server that answers rxvtc's requests, so it doesn't background
496	itself.
497		1098
498	To ensure rxvtd is listening on it's socket, you can use the	1099	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
499	following method to wait for the startup message before continuing:
500		1100
501	{ rxvtd & } | read
502
503	What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
504	Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
505	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
506	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
507	Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
508
509	Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
510	debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
511	only correct choice :).
512
513	Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
514	value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
515	wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
516	shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
517	CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
518	your stty setting).
519
520	For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
521
522	# use Backspace = ^H
523	$ stty erase ^H
524	$ rxvt
525
526	# use Backspace = ^?
527	$ stty erase ^?
528	$ rxvt
529
530	Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7).
531
532	For an existing rxvt-unicode:
533
534	# use Backspace = ^H
535	$ stty erase ^H
536	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
537
538	# use Backspace = ^?
539	$ stty erase ^?
540	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
541
542	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
543	but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
544	value properly reflects that.
545
546	The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
547	problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
548	the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
549	vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
550	termcap/terminfo.
551
552	Some other Backspace problems:
553
554	some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
555	expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
556	help.
557
558	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
559
560	I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
561	There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
562	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
563	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
564	associated with keysyms.
565
566	Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
567	URxvt"
568
569	URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
570	URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
571	URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
572	URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
573	URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
574	URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
575	URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
576	URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
577	URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
578	URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
579	URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
580	URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
581	URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
582	URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
583	URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
584	URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
585	URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
586	URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
587	URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
588	URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
589
590	See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
591
592	I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
593	do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
594	following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
595	KP_Insert == Insert
596	F22 == Print
597	F27 == Home
598	F29 == Prior
599	F33 == End
600	F35 == Next
601
602	Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
603	possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
604	the keys as required for your particular machine.
605
606	How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
607	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
608	rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
609	can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
610	slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
611	whether or not to use color.
612
613	How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
614	If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
615	insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
616	snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
617	rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
618	these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
619	distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
620
621	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
622	script snippets:
623
624	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
625	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
626	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
627	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
628	echo -n '^[Z'
629	read term_id
630	stty icanon echo
631	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
632	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
633	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
634	fi
635	fi
636
637	How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
638	You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
639	/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
640	Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
641
642	My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
643	Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
644	channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
645	be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
646	FAQs :).
647

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