| 1 |
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS |
| 2 |
Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat? |
| 3 |
I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause |
| 4 |
extra bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you |
| 5 |
can see that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables |
| 6 |
always being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS) |
| 7 |
after startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is |
| 8 |
a bit unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding |
| 9 |
conversion, iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode. |
| 10 |
|
| 11 |
text data bss drs rss filename |
| 12 |
98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything |
| 13 |
188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything |
| 14 |
|
| 15 |
When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves |
| 16 |
xft and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 |
| 17 |
and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so. |
| 18 |
|
| 19 |
text data bss drs rss filename |
| 20 |
163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything |
| 21 |
1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything |
| 22 |
|
| 23 |
The very large size of the text section is explained by the |
| 24 |
east-asian encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but |
| 25 |
nothing else and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core |
| 26 |
fonts that use those encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k |
| 27 |
emergency buffer that my c++ compiler allocates (but of course |
| 28 |
doesn't use unless you are out of memory). Also, using an xft font |
| 29 |
instead of a core font immediately adds a few megabytes of RSS. Xft |
| 30 |
indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even when not used. |
| 31 |
|
| 32 |
Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of |
| 33 |
one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use |
| 34 |
more memory. |
| 35 |
|
| 36 |
Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k), |
| 37 |
this still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like |
| 38 |
gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or |
| 39 |
konsole (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after |
| 40 |
exit, plus half a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of |
| 41 |
warnings it spits out), it fares extremely well *g*. |
| 42 |
|
| 43 |
Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool? |
| 44 |
Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: |
| 45 |
I had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a |
| 46 |
fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). |
| 47 |
Put even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++. |
| 48 |
|
| 49 |
My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but |
| 50 |
in the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability |
| 51 |
limits are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale |
| 52 |
support and unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than |
| 53 |
C++ itself. |
| 54 |
|
| 55 |
Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write |
| 56 |
programs in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to |
| 57 |
write programs in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large |
| 58 |
libraries, but this is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is |
| 59 |
what rxvt links against on my system with a minimal config: |
| 60 |
|
| 61 |
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) |
| 62 |
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000) |
| 63 |
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000) |
| 64 |
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) |
| 65 |
|
| 66 |
And here is rxvt-unicode: |
| 67 |
|
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libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000) |
| 69 |
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000) |
| 70 |
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000) |
| 71 |
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000) |
| 72 |
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000) |
| 73 |
|
| 74 |
No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in |
| 75 |
statically), except maybe libX11 :) |
| 76 |
|
| 77 |
Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode? |
| 78 |
rxvt-unicode does not directly support tabs. It will work fine with |
| 79 |
tabbing functionality of many window managers or similar tabbing |
| 80 |
programs, and its embedding-features allow it to be embedded into |
| 81 |
other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming |
| 82 |
"Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt) |
| 83 |
terminal as an example embedding application. |
| 84 |
|
| 85 |
How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using? |
| 86 |
The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape |
| 87 |
sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. |
| 88 |
When using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the |
| 89 |
daemon. |
| 90 |
|
| 91 |
I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem... |
| 92 |
The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large |
| 93 |
patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode. |
| 94 |
Before reporting a bug to the original rxvt-unicode author please |
| 95 |
download and install the genuine version |
| 96 |
(<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce the |
| 97 |
problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific |
| 98 |
to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the |
| 99 |
Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug). |
| 100 |
|
| 101 |
For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and |
| 102 |
probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's |
| 103 |
also a bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for |
| 104 |
other users that might encounter the same issue. |
| 105 |
|
| 106 |
I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any |
| 107 |
recommendation? |
| 108 |
You should build one binary with the default options. configure now |
| 109 |
enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them |
| 110 |
runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling |
| 111 |
them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl |
| 112 |
interpreter should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, |
| 113 |
selection, likely more in the future) depends on it. |
| 114 |
|
| 115 |
You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" |
| 116 |
resources system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will |
| 117 |
result in useful behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, |
| 118 |
add an empty "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. |
| 119 |
This will keep the perl interpreter disabled until the user enables |
| 120 |
it. |
| 121 |
|
| 122 |
If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal |
| 123 |
one with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with |
| 124 |
"--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot |
| 125 |
of encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely |
| 126 |
used). |
| 127 |
|
| 128 |
I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this |
| 129 |
safe? |
| 130 |
Likely not. While I honestly try to make it secure, and am probably |
| 131 |
not bad at it, I think it is simply unreasonable to expect all of |
| 132 |
freetype + fontconfig + xft + xlib + perl + ... + rxvt-unicode |
| 133 |
itself to all be secure. Also, rxvt-unicode disables some options |
| 134 |
when it detects that it runs setuid or setgid, which is not nice. |
| 135 |
Besides, with the embedded perl interpreter the possibility for |
| 136 |
security problems easily multiplies. |
| 137 |
|
| 138 |
Elevated privileges are only required for utmp and pty operations on |
| 139 |
some systems (for example, GNU/Linux doesn't need any extra |
| 140 |
privileges for ptys, but some need it for utmp support). It is |
| 141 |
planned to mvoe this into a forked handler process, but this is not |
| 142 |
yet done. |
| 143 |
|
| 144 |
So, while setuid/setgid operation is supported and not a problem on |
| 145 |
your typical single-user-no-other-logins unix desktop, always |
| 146 |
remember that its an awful lot of code, most of which isn't checked |
| 147 |
for security issues regularly. |
| 148 |
|
| 149 |
When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? |
| 150 |
The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely |
| 151 |
available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same |
| 152 |
problem often arises). |
| 153 |
|
| 154 |
The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, |
| 155 |
this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp): |
| 156 |
|
| 157 |
REMOTE=remotesystem.domain |
| 158 |
infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti" |
| 159 |
|
| 160 |
... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system, |
| 161 |
|
| 162 |
If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set |
| 163 |
"TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of |
| 164 |
problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and |
| 165 |
different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen |
| 166 |
applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, |
| 167 |
though. |
| 168 |
|
| 169 |
If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) |
| 170 |
you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or |
| 171 |
use a resource to set it: |
| 172 |
|
| 173 |
URxvt.termName: rxvt |
| 174 |
|
| 175 |
If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also |
| 176 |
replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one. |
| 177 |
|
| 178 |
"tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry. |
| 179 |
Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it |
| 180 |
by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again. |
| 181 |
|
| 182 |
"bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt. |
| 183 |
I need a termcap file entry. |
| 184 |
One reason you might want this is that some distributions or |
| 185 |
operating systems still compile some programs using the |
| 186 |
long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) |
| 187 |
and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode". |
| 188 |
|
| 189 |
You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many |
| 190 |
cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's |
| 191 |
infocmp program like this: |
| 192 |
|
| 193 |
infocmp -C rxvt-unicode |
| 194 |
|
| 195 |
Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above: |
| 196 |
|
| 197 |
rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\ |
| 198 |
:am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\ |
| 199 |
:co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\ |
| 200 |
:AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\ |
| 201 |
:K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\ |
| 202 |
:RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\ |
| 203 |
:as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\ |
| 204 |
:cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\ |
| 205 |
:dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\ |
| 206 |
:i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\ |
| 207 |
:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\ |
| 208 |
:k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\ |
| 209 |
:k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\ |
| 210 |
:kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\ |
| 211 |
:kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\ |
| 212 |
:mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\ |
| 213 |
:sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\ |
| 214 |
:te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\ |
| 215 |
:us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\ |
| 216 |
:vs=\E[?25h: |
| 217 |
|
| 218 |
Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output? |
| 219 |
The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to |
| 220 |
decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration |
| 221 |
file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file |
| 222 |
(among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add: |
| 223 |
|
| 224 |
TERM rxvt-unicode |
| 225 |
|
| 226 |
to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add: |
| 227 |
|
| 228 |
alias ls='ls --color=auto' |
| 229 |
|
| 230 |
to your ".profile" or ".bashrc". |
| 231 |
|
| 232 |
Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode? |
| 233 |
Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic? |
| 234 |
Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly? |
| 235 |
Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged |
| 236 |
distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by |
| 237 |
setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features. |
| 238 |
Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux) |
| 239 |
furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, |
| 240 |
so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I |
| 241 |
log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on |
| 242 |
how to do this). |
| 243 |
|
| 244 |
My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output? |
| 245 |
Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no |
| 246 |
specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is |
| 247 |
caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether |
| 248 |
and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a |
| 249 |
compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and |
| 250 |
please report if that helped. |
| 251 |
|
| 252 |
Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding? |
| 253 |
Unicode does not seem to work? |
| 254 |
If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character |
| 255 |
but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program |
| 256 |
output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale |
| 257 |
settings. |
| 258 |
|
| 259 |
Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the |
| 260 |
programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the |
| 261 |
login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the |
| 262 |
locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this |
| 263 |
is not going to work. |
| 264 |
|
| 265 |
The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will |
| 266 |
likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in |
| 267 |
your .profile. |
| 268 |
|
| 269 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" |
| 270 |
|
| 271 |
If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification |
| 272 |
not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command |
| 273 |
which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale |
| 274 |
settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). |
| 275 |
If it displays something like: |
| 276 |
|
| 277 |
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ... |
| 278 |
|
| 279 |
Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system. |
| 280 |
|
| 281 |
If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly |
| 282 |
then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs |
| 283 |
just don't support locales :( |
| 284 |
|
| 285 |
Why do some characters look so much different than others? |
| 286 |
How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts? |
| 287 |
Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine. |
| 288 |
Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of |
| 289 |
your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you |
| 290 |
want to display. |
| 291 |
|
| 292 |
rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font. |
| 293 |
Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks |
| 294 |
bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that |
| 295 |
don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the |
| 296 |
artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it |
| 297 |
has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain |
| 298 |
indeed look correct. |
| 299 |
|
| 300 |
In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font |
| 301 |
list, e.g.: |
| 302 |
|
| 303 |
rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3... |
| 304 |
|
| 305 |
When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base |
| 306 |
font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to |
| 307 |
the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed |
| 308 |
up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the |
| 309 |
X-server. |
| 310 |
|
| 311 |
The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the |
| 312 |
base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell |
| 313 |
size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work. |
| 314 |
|
| 315 |
Why do some chinese characters look so different than others? |
| 316 |
This is because there is a difference between script and language -- |
| 317 |
rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output |
| 318 |
is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode |
| 319 |
first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese |
| 320 |
font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font. |
| 321 |
Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts, |
| 322 |
so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will |
| 323 |
look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will |
| 324 |
still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in |
| 325 |
the japanese font. |
| 326 |
|
| 327 |
The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your |
| 328 |
font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font |
| 329 |
list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a |
| 330 |
japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font |
| 331 |
first. |
| 332 |
|
| 333 |
In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at |
| 334 |
runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using |
| 335 |
different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no |
| 336 |
interface for this has been designed yet). |
| 337 |
|
| 338 |
Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see |
| 339 |
"Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document). |
| 340 |
|
| 341 |
Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings? |
| 342 |
Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that |
| 343 |
character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for |
| 344 |
terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. |
| 345 |
Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are |
| 346 |
just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used |
| 347 |
that redraws adjacent characters. |
| 348 |
|
| 349 |
All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes, |
| 350 |
however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed |
| 351 |
bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the |
| 352 |
correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which |
| 353 |
unfortunately is wrong in these cases). |
| 354 |
|
| 355 |
It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft, |
| 356 |
freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you |
| 357 |
might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If |
| 358 |
that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font. |
| 359 |
|
| 360 |
All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their |
| 361 |
bounding box data is correct. |
| 362 |
|
| 363 |
On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide. |
| 364 |
Seems to be a known bug, read |
| 365 |
<http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the |
| 366 |
following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working: |
| 367 |
|
| 368 |
#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x) |
| 369 |
|
| 370 |
My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working. |
| 371 |
The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not |
| 372 |
set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported |
| 373 |
by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and |
| 374 |
your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose |
| 375 |
keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual), |
| 376 |
then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method. |
| 377 |
|
| 378 |
In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more |
| 379 |
than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None. |
| 380 |
|
| 381 |
I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO |
| 382 |
14755 |
| 383 |
Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on |
| 384 |
international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your |
| 385 |
advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for |
| 386 |
other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default |
| 387 |
telnet escape character and so on. |
| 388 |
|
| 389 |
How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much? |
| 390 |
First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal |
| 391 |
settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these |
| 392 |
effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and |
| 393 |
bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate |
| 394 |
the effect: |
| 395 |
|
| 396 |
URxvt.colorBD: white |
| 397 |
URxvt.colorIT: green |
| 398 |
|
| 399 |
Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how |
| 400 |
can I fix that? |
| 401 |
For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very |
| 402 |
weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than |
| 403 |
the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, |
| 404 |
of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours |
| 405 |
without very good reasons. |
| 406 |
|
| 407 |
In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo |
| 408 |
definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which |
| 409 |
will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode |
| 410 |
features. |
| 411 |
|
| 412 |
I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all. |
| 413 |
Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined |
| 414 |
in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements |
| 415 |
it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" |
| 416 |
requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode. |
| 417 |
|
| 418 |
As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl |
| 419 |
nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal |
| 420 |
representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with |
| 421 |
respect to standards. |
| 422 |
|
| 423 |
However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" |
| 424 |
and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t. |
| 425 |
|
| 426 |
"__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language |
| 427 |
apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized) |
| 428 |
representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between |
| 429 |
wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other |
| 430 |
encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and |
| 431 |
every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into |
| 432 |
anything except the current locale encoding. |
| 433 |
|
| 434 |
Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this |
| 435 |
by carrying their own replacement functions for character set |
| 436 |
handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or |
| 437 |
doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the |
| 438 |
OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal |
| 439 |
emulator). |
| 440 |
|
| 441 |
The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in |
| 442 |
the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app |
| 443 |
to carry complete replacements for them :) |
| 444 |
|
| 445 |
I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc. |
| 446 |
Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst |
| 447 |
problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem. |
| 448 |
|
| 449 |
How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin? |
| 450 |
rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using |
| 451 |
the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no |
| 452 |
longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a |
| 453 |
single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or |
| 454 |
"-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as |
| 455 |
the old libW11 emulation. |
| 456 |
|
| 457 |
At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any |
| 458 |
multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are |
| 459 |
likely limited to 8-bit encodings. |
| 460 |
|
| 461 |
How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use? |
| 462 |
Is there an option to switch encodings? |
| 463 |
Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, |
| 464 |
and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't |
| 465 |
even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to |
| 466 |
terminal I/O. |
| 467 |
|
| 468 |
The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for |
| 469 |
selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating |
| 470 |
this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties |
| 471 |
such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*. |
| 472 |
Applications not using that info will have problems (for example, |
| 473 |
"xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own, |
| 474 |
locale-independent table under all locales). |
| 475 |
|
| 476 |
Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. |
| 477 |
All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree |
| 478 |
in the interpretation of characters. |
| 479 |
|
| 480 |
Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, |
| 481 |
nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like. |
| 482 |
|
| 483 |
On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable |
| 484 |
contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an |
| 485 |
already-installed locale. Common names for locales are |
| 486 |
"en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. |
| 487 |
"language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german") |
| 488 |
are also common. |
| 489 |
|
| 490 |
Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the |
| 491 |
encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e. |
| 492 |
"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to |
| 493 |
rxvt-unicode. |
| 494 |
|
| 495 |
If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you |
| 496 |
start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category. |
| 497 |
|
| 498 |
Can I switch locales at runtime? |
| 499 |
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets |
| 500 |
rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE". |
| 501 |
|
| 502 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS |
| 503 |
|
| 504 |
See also the previous answer. |
| 505 |
|
| 506 |
Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in |
| 507 |
one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it |
| 508 |
(e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which |
| 509 |
first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later: |
| 510 |
|
| 511 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS |
| 512 |
xjdic -js |
| 513 |
printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8 |
| 514 |
|
| 515 |
You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine, |
| 516 |
except for some locales where character width differs between |
| 517 |
program- and rxvt-unicode-locales. |
| 518 |
|
| 519 |
Can I switch the fonts at runtime? |
| 520 |
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has |
| 521 |
the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect |
| 522 |
immediately: |
| 523 |
|
| 524 |
printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic" |
| 525 |
|
| 526 |
This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer |
| 527 |
a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, |
| 528 |
where japanese fonts would only be in your way. |
| 529 |
|
| 530 |
You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching. |
| 531 |
|
| 532 |
Why do italic characters look as if clipped? |
| 533 |
Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For |
| 534 |
example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera |
| 535 |
Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might |
| 536 |
be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this: |
| 537 |
|
| 538 |
URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true |
| 539 |
URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true |
| 540 |
|
| 541 |
My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do? |
| 542 |
You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest |
| 543 |
of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale": |
| 544 |
|
| 545 |
URxvt*imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP |
| 546 |
|
| 547 |
Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and |
| 548 |
still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not |
| 549 |
be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then, |
| 550 |
as your input method limits you. |
| 551 |
|
| 552 |
Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits. |
| 553 |
Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by |
| 554 |
design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory |
| 555 |
leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering |
| 556 |
at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally |
| 557 |
succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end, |
| 558 |
however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides |
| 559 |
cooperate. |
| 560 |
|
| 561 |
So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers. |
| 562 |
|
| 563 |
Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that? |
| 564 |
Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for |
| 565 |
something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure |
| 566 |
out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a |
| 567 |
resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no |
| 568 |
Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find |
| 569 |
a font for your characters. |
| 570 |
|
| 571 |
Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger |
| 572 |
scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will |
| 573 |
use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to |
| 574 |
almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will |
| 575 |
then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" |
| 576 |
it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell. |
| 577 |
|
| 578 |
Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow? |
| 579 |
Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, |
| 580 |
as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to |
| 581 |
disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves |
| 582 |
lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably. |
| 583 |
|
| 584 |
Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong? |
| 585 |
Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to |
| 586 |
fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core |
| 587 |
fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It |
| 588 |
has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author |
| 589 |
thinks they look best that way. |
| 590 |
|
| 591 |
If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually. |
| 592 |
|
| 593 |
Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works. |
| 594 |
Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing |
| 595 |
some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode. |
| 596 |
I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise |
| 597 |
specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt |
| 598 |
or Shift keys are depressed. See rxvt(7) |
| 599 |
|
| 600 |
What's with this bold/blink stuff? |
| 601 |
If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using |
| 602 |
the standard foreground colour. |
| 603 |
|
| 604 |
For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the |
| 605 |
text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard |
| 606 |
colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be |
| 607 |
ignored. |
| 608 |
|
| 609 |
On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set |
| 610 |
high-intensity foreground/background colors. |
| 611 |
|
| 612 |
color0-7 are the low-intensity colors. |
| 613 |
|
| 614 |
color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors. |
| 615 |
|
| 616 |
I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them? |
| 617 |
You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults |
| 618 |
resources (or as long-options). |
| 619 |
|
| 620 |
Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, |
| 621 |
including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow: |
| 622 |
|
| 623 |
URxvt.color0: #000000 |
| 624 |
URxvt.color1: #A80000 |
| 625 |
URxvt.color2: #00A800 |
| 626 |
URxvt.color3: #A8A800 |
| 627 |
URxvt.color4: #0000A8 |
| 628 |
URxvt.color5: #A800A8 |
| 629 |
URxvt.color6: #00A8A8 |
| 630 |
URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8 |
| 631 |
|
| 632 |
URxvt.color8: #000054 |
| 633 |
URxvt.color9: #FF0054 |
| 634 |
URxvt.color10: #00FF54 |
| 635 |
URxvt.color11: #FFFF54 |
| 636 |
URxvt.color12: #0000FF |
| 637 |
URxvt.color13: #FF00FF |
| 638 |
URxvt.color14: #00FFFF |
| 639 |
URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF |
| 640 |
|
| 641 |
And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described |
| 642 |
(not by me) as "pretty girly". |
| 643 |
|
| 644 |
URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1 |
| 645 |
URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1 |
| 646 |
URxvt.background: #0e0e0e |
| 647 |
URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1 |
| 648 |
URxvt.color0: #000000 |
| 649 |
URxvt.color8: #8b8f93 |
| 650 |
URxvt.color1: #dc74d1 |
| 651 |
URxvt.color9: #dc74d1 |
| 652 |
URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7 |
| 653 |
URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7 |
| 654 |
URxvt.color3: #dfe37e |
| 655 |
URxvt.color11: #dfe37e |
| 656 |
URxvt.color5: #9e88f0 |
| 657 |
URxvt.color13: #9e88f0 |
| 658 |
URxvt.color6: #73f7ff |
| 659 |
URxvt.color14: #73f7ff |
| 660 |
URxvt.color7: #e1dddd |
| 661 |
URxvt.color15: #e1dddd |
| 662 |
|
| 663 |
How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way? |
| 664 |
Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the |
| 665 |
listening socket and then fork. |
| 666 |
|
| 667 |
What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour? |
| 668 |
Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the |
| 669 |
BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following |
| 670 |
question) there are two standard values that can be used for |
| 671 |
Backspace: "^H" and "^?". |
| 672 |
|
| 673 |
Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the |
| 674 |
debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only |
| 675 |
only correct choice :). |
| 676 |
|
| 677 |
Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the |
| 678 |
value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode |
| 679 |
wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote |
| 680 |
shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to |
| 681 |
CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as |
| 682 |
your stty setting). |
| 683 |
|
| 684 |
For starting a new rxvt-unicode: |
| 685 |
|
| 686 |
# use Backspace = ^H |
| 687 |
$ stty erase ^H |
| 688 |
$ rxvt |
| 689 |
|
| 690 |
# use Backspace = ^? |
| 691 |
$ stty erase ^? |
| 692 |
$ rxvt |
| 693 |
|
| 694 |
Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l" as documented in rxvt(7). |
| 695 |
|
| 696 |
For an existing rxvt-unicode: |
| 697 |
|
| 698 |
# use Backspace = ^H |
| 699 |
$ stty erase ^H |
| 700 |
$ echo -n "^[[36h" |
| 701 |
|
| 702 |
# use Backspace = ^? |
| 703 |
$ stty erase ^? |
| 704 |
$ echo -n "^[[36l" |
| 705 |
|
| 706 |
This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, |
| 707 |
but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo |
| 708 |
value properly reflects that. |
| 709 |
|
| 710 |
The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace |
| 711 |
problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys, |
| 712 |
the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the |
| 713 |
vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied |
| 714 |
termcap/terminfo. |
| 715 |
|
| 716 |
Some other Backspace problems: |
| 717 |
|
| 718 |
some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) |
| 719 |
expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for |
| 720 |
help. |
| 721 |
|
| 722 |
Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner. |
| 723 |
|
| 724 |
I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them? |
| 725 |
There are some compile-time selections available via configure. |
| 726 |
Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources" |
| 727 |
option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings |
| 728 |
associated with keysyms. |
| 729 |
|
| 730 |
Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name |
| 731 |
URxvt" |
| 732 |
|
| 733 |
URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~ |
| 734 |
URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~ |
| 735 |
URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'> |
| 736 |
URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/> |
| 737 |
URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;> |
| 738 |
URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`> |
| 739 |
URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,> |
| 740 |
URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.> |
| 741 |
URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`> |
| 742 |
URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab> |
| 743 |
URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return> |
| 744 |
URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return> |
| 745 |
URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space> |
| 746 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up> |
| 747 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down> |
| 748 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left> |
| 749 |
URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right> |
| 750 |
URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 > |
| 751 |
URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz > |
| 752 |
URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007 |
| 753 |
|
| 754 |
See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource. |
| 755 |
|
| 756 |
I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How |
| 757 |
do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the |
| 758 |
following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize. |
| 759 |
KP_Insert == Insert |
| 760 |
F22 == Print |
| 761 |
F27 == Home |
| 762 |
F29 == Prior |
| 763 |
F33 == End |
| 764 |
F35 == Next |
| 765 |
|
| 766 |
Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various |
| 767 |
possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap |
| 768 |
the keys as required for your particular machine. |
| 769 |
|
| 770 |
How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? |
| 771 |
I need this to decide about setting colors etc. |
| 772 |
rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you |
| 773 |
can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED, |
| 774 |
slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide |
| 775 |
whether or not to use color. |
| 776 |
|
| 777 |
How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable? |
| 778 |
If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled |
| 779 |
insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script |
| 780 |
snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of |
| 781 |
rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in |
| 782 |
these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to |
| 783 |
distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm. |
| 784 |
|
| 785 |
Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell |
| 786 |
script snippets: |
| 787 |
|
| 788 |
# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells: |
| 789 |
[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know |
| 790 |
if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then |
| 791 |
stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not |
| 792 |
echo -n '^[Z' |
| 793 |
read term_id |
| 794 |
stty icanon echo |
| 795 |
if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then |
| 796 |
echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string |
| 797 |
read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell |
| 798 |
fi |
| 799 |
fi |
| 800 |
|
| 801 |
How do I compile the manual pages for myself? |
| 802 |
You need to have a recent version of perl installed as |
| 803 |
/usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html. |
| 804 |
Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc". |
| 805 |
|
| 806 |
My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human? |
| 807 |
Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", |
| 808 |
channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might |
| 809 |
be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not |
| 810 |
FAQs :). |
| 811 |
|
