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Revision: 1.1
Committed: Tue Jan 11 02:24:59 2005 UTC (19 years, 4 months ago) by root
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1 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
2 How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
3 The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
4 sequence "ESC[8n" sets the window title to the version number.
5
6 When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
7 The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely
8 available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same
9 problem often arises).
10
11 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,
12 this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):
13
14 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
15 infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
16
17 ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,
18
19 If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
20 "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
21 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and
22 different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen
23 applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,
24 though.
25
26 If you always want to do this you can either recompile rxvt-unicode
27 with the desired TERM value or use a resource to set it:
28
29 URxvt.termName: rxvt
30
31 If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also
32 replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.
33
34 I need a termcap file entry.
35 You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many
36 cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's
37 infocmp program like this:
38
39 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
40
41 OR you could this termcap entry:
42
43 rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
44 :am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
45 :co#80:it#8:li#24:\
46 :AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
47 :K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
48 :RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=^O:al=\E[L:\
49 :as=^N:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:\
50 :cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:dl=\E[M:do=^J:\
51 :ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:\
52 :im=\E[4h:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
53 :k0=\E[21~:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:\
54 :k5=\E[15~:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:\
55 :kD=\E[3~:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:\
56 :ke=\E[?1l\E>:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:\
57 :ku=\EOA:le=^H:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:\
58 :nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:\
59 :st=\EH:ta=^I:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:\
60 :up=\E[A:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
61 :vs=\E[?25h:
62
63 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
64 The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
65 decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration
66 file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file
67 (among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
68
69 TERM rxvt-unicode
70
71 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
72
73 alias ls='ls --color=auto'
74
75 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
76
77 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
78 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
79 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
80 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
81 distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
82 setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
83 Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
84 furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,
85 so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I
86 log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on
87 how to do this).
88
89 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
90 Unicode does not seem to work?
91 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character
92 but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program
93 output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale
94 settings.
95
96 Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
97 programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the
98 login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the
99 locale to sth. else, e.h. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this is
100 not going to work.
101
102 The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will
103 likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in
104 your .profile.
105
106 printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"
107
108 If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification
109 not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command
110 which displays this. If it displays sth. like:
111
112 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
113
114 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
115
116 If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly
117 then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs
118 just don't support locales :(
119
120 Why do some characters look so much different than others?
121 How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
122 Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
123 Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
124 your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
125 want to display.
126
127 rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
128 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks bad.
129 Many fonts have totally strange characters that don't resemble the
130 correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial
131 intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to
132 believe the font that the characters it contains indeed look
133 correct.
134
135 In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
136 list, e.g.:
137
138 rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
139
140 When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
141 font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
142 the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
143 up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
144 X-server.
145
146 The only limitation is that all the fonts must not be larger than
147 the base font, as the base font defines the principal cell size,
148 which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
149
150 Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
151 This is because there is a difference between script and language --
152 rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
153 is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
154 first sees a japanese character, it might choose a japanese font for
155 it. Subsequent japanese characters will take that font. Now, many
156 chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, so when the
157 first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will look for a
158 chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will still use the
159 japanese font for japanese characters that are also chinese.
160
161 The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
162 font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
163 list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
164 japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
165 first.
166
167 In the future it might be possible to switch preferences at runtime
168 (the internal data structure has no problem with using different
169 fonts for the same character at the same time, but no interface for
170 this has been designed yet).
171
172 Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
173 Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
174 character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
175 terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
176 Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
177 just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
178 that redraws adjacent characters.
179
180 All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
181 however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
182 bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
183 correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
184 unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
185
186 It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
187 freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
188 might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
189 that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
190
191 All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
192 bounding box data is correct.
193
194 My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
195 The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
196 set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
197 by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
198 your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
199 keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
200 then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
201
202 In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
203 than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
204
205 I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
206 14755
207 Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
208 international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
209 advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
210 other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
211 telnet escape character and so on.
212
213 How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
214 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminfo
215 ("urxvt"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then make
216 sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
217 rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
218
219 URxvt*colorBD: white
220 URxvt*colorIT: green
221
222 Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
223 can I fix that?
224 For some unexplainable reason, some programs (i.e. irssi) assume a
225 very weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more
226 than the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right
227 fix is, of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO
228 colours without very good reasons.
229
230 In the meantime, you can either edit your "urxvt" terminfo
231 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
232 will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
233 features.
234
235 I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
236 Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
237 in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
238 it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
239 requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
240
241 As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
242 nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
243 representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely legal.
244
245 However, "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support
246 multi-language apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and
247 non-standardized) representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to
248 convert between wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and
249 any other encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for
250 each and every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t
251 into anything except the current locale encoding.
252
253 Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
254 by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
255 handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
256 doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
257 OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
258 emulator).
259
260 The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
261 the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
262 to carry complete replacements.
263
264 How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
265 Is there an option to switch encodings?
266 Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,
267 and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't
268 even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to
269 terminal I/O.
270
271 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
272 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
273 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
274 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
275
276 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.
277 All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree
278 in the interpretation of characters.
279
280 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,
281 nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
282
283 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
284 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an
285 already-installed locale. Common names for locales are
286 "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.
287 "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")
288 are also common.
289
290 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
291 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
292 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the same for rxvt-unicode.
293
294 If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you
295 start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
296
297 Can I switch locales at runtime?
298 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try sth. like this, which sets
299 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
300
301 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
302
303 See also the previous question.
304
305 Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in
306 one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support
307 UTF-8. For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
308 switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
309
310 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
311 xjdic -js
312 printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
313
314 Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
315 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try sth. like this, which has the
316 same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
317
318 printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
319
320 This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer
321 a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,
322 where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
323
324 You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
325
326 Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
327 Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
328 example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera
329 Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround is to
330 enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
331
332 URxvt*italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
333 URxvt*boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
334
335 My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
336 You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest
337 of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
338
339 URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
340
341 Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and
342 still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not
343 be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,
344 as your input method limits you.
345
346 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
347 Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for sth. you
348 don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
349 that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
350 design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
351 loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
352 characters.
353
354 Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
355 scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will
356 use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to
357 almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will
358 then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
359 it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
360
361 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
362 Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,
363 as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to
364 disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialiasing=false"), which
365 saves lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
366
367 Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
368 Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
369 fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core
370 fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It
371 has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
372 thinks they look best that way.
373
374 If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
375
376 Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
377 Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing
378 some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.
379 I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
380 specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
381 or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7)
382
383 What's with this bold/blink stuff?
384 If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using
385 the standard foreground colour.
386
387 For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the
388 text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard
389 colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be
390 ignored.
391
392 On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set
393 high-intensity foreground/background colors.
394
395 color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
396
397 color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
398
399 I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
400 You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
401 resources (or as long-options).
402
403 Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,
404 including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
405
406 URxvt*color0: #000000
407 URxvt*color1: #A80000
408 URxvt*color2: #00A800
409 URxvt*color3: #A8A800
410 URxvt*color4: #0000A8
411 URxvt*color5: #A800A8
412 URxvt*color6: #00A8A8
413 URxvt*color7: #A8A8A8
414
415 URxvt*color8: #000054
416 URxvt*color9: #FF0054
417 URxvt*color10: #00FF54
418 URxvt*color11: #FFFF54
419 URxvt*color12: #0000FF
420 URxvt*color13: #FF00FF
421 URxvt*color14: #00FFFF
422 URxvt*color15: #FFFFFF
423
424 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described as
425 "pretty girly":
426
427 URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
428 URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
429 URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
430 URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
431 URxvt.color0: #000000
432 URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
433 URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
434 URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
435 URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
436 URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
437 URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
438 URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
439 URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
440 URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
441 URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
442 URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
443 URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
444 URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
445
446 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
447 Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
448 BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
449 question) there are two standard values that can be used for
450 Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
451
452 Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
453 debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
454 only correct choice :).
455
456 Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
457 value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
458 wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
459 shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
460 CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
461 your stty setting).
462
463 For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
464
465 # use Backspace = ^H
466 $ stty erase ^H
467 $ rxvt
468
469 # use Backspace = ^?
470 $ stty erase ^?
471 $ rxvt
472
473 Toggle with "ESC[36h" / "ESC[36l" as documented in rxvt(7).
474
475 For an existing rxvt-unicode:
476
477 # use Backspace = ^H
478 $ stty erase ^H
479 $ echo -n "^[[36h"
480
481 # use Backspace = ^?
482 $ stty erase ^?
483 $ echo -n "^[[36l"
484
485 This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
486 but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
487 value properly reflects that.
488
489 The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
490 problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
491 the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
492 vt100 for Execute (ESC[3~) and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
493
494 Some other Backspace problems:
495
496 some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
497 expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
498 help.
499
500 Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
501
502 I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
503 There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
504 Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
505 option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
506 associated with keysym 0xFF00 - 0xFFFF (function, cursor keys, etc).
507
508 Here's an example for a tn3270 session started using `rxvt -name
509 tn3270'
510
511 !# ----- special uses ------:
512 ! tn3270 login, remap function and arrow keys.
513 tn3270*font: *clean-bold-*-*--15-*
514
515 ! keysym - used by rxvt only
516 ! Delete - ^D
517 tn3270*keysym.0xFFFF: \004
518
519 ! Home - ^A
520 tn3270*keysym.0xFF50: \001
521 ! Left - ^B
522 tn3270*keysym.0xFF51: \002
523 ! Up - ^P
524 tn3270*keysym.0xFF52: \020
525 ! Right - ^F
526 tn3270*keysym.0xFF53: \006
527 ! Down - ^N
528 tn3270*keysym.0xFF54: \016
529 ! End - ^E
530 tn3270*keysym.0xFF57: \005
531
532 ! F1 - F12
533 tn3270*keysym.0xFFBE: \e1
534 tn3270*keysym.0xFFBF: \e2
535 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC0: \e3
536 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC1: \e4
537 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC2: \e5
538 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC3: \e6
539 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC4: \e7
540 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC5: \e8
541 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC6: \e9
542 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC7: \e0
543 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC8: \e-
544 tn3270*keysym.0xFFC9: \e=
545
546 ! map Prior/Next to F7/F8
547 tn3270*keysym.0xFF55: \e7
548 tn3270*keysym.0xFF56: \e8
549
550 I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
551 do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
552 following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
553 KP_Insert == Insert
554 F22 == Print
555 F27 == Home
556 F29 == Prior
557 F33 == End
558 F35 == Next
559
560 Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
561 possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
562 the keys as required for your particular machine.
563
564 How do I distinguish if I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? I
565 need this to decide about setting colors etc.
566 rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
567 can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
568 slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
569 whether or not to use color.
570
571 How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
572 If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
573 insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
574 snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
575 rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
576 these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
577 distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
578
579 Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
580 script snippets:
581
582 # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
583 [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
584 if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
585 stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
586 echo -n '^[Z'
587 read term_id
588 stty icanon echo
589 if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
590 echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
591 read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
592 fi
593 fi
594
595 How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
596 You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
597 /usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
598 Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
599
600 My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
601 Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
602 channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
603 be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
604 FAQs :).
605