[ViewVC] Contents of: cvs/rxvt-unicode/doc/FAQ

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   FAQ
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----

    Q:  How do I know which rxvt version I'm using?

    A:  The version number is displayed with the usage (-h).
        For rxvt version 2.14 and later, the escape sequence `ESC[8n'
        sets the window title to the version number.

-----

    Q:  Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.

    A:  Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since
        killing some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse
        report mode.  I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting
        unless it otherwise specified.  A quick check is to see if
        cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are depressed. See
        doc/refer.txt

-----

    Q:  What's with this bold/blink stuff?  I can never get blinking text!

    A:  It is not possible, and likely will never be, for rxvt to have
        actual blinking text. Instead (if rxvt was compiled without
        NO_BOLDCOLOR), bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
        foreground/background colors ... like what you'd see on a PC video
        adapter.  There are programs, notably John Davis' SLang-based ones
        <ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/davis>, that use bold/blink attributes to
        permit 16 colors.

        color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
        color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.

        A side issue of this bold/blink stuff is the question of how the
        normal default foreground/background colors are to be treated.  If
        the default foreground/background match one of the low-intensity
        colors (color0-7), the bold/blink attribute will invoke the
        appropriate high-intensity color (color8-15).

        In the case that the default foreground doesn't match one of the
        low-intensity colors, the bold attribute will use an `overstrike'
        to simulate a bold font. But note this leaves pixel-droppings and
        so, rather than wasting an inordinate amounts of energy to fix it,
        its use is simply deprecated.

        In the case that the default background doesn't match one of the
        low-intensity colors, the blink attribute is simply ignored
        (rather than representing it as bold as xterm does).

-----

    Q:  I don't like the screen colors.  How do I change them?

    A:  You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
        resources (or as long-options) ... see the man-page.

        Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,
        including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:

                Rxvt*color0:    #000000
                Rxvt*color1:    #A80000
                Rxvt*color2:    #00A800
                Rxvt*color3:    #A8A800
                Rxvt*color4:    #0000A8
                Rxvt*color5:    #A800A8
                Rxvt*color6:    #00A8A8
                Rxvt*color7:    #A8A8A8

                Rxvt*color8:    #000054
                Rxvt*color9:    #FF0054
                Rxvt*color10:   #00FF54
                Rxvt*color11:   #FFFF54
                Rxvt*color12:   #0000FF
                Rxvt*color13:   #FF00FF
                Rxvt*color14:   #00FFFF
                Rxvt*color15:   #FFFFFF

-----

    Q:  What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?

    A:  Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
        BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
        question) there are two standard values that can be used for
        Backspace: ^H and ^?.

        Rxvt tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the value
        of `erase' to guess the value for backspace.  If rxvt wasn't started
        from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell), then the
        system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in <termios.h>,
        will be used (which may not be the same as your stty setting).

        For starting a new rxvt:

            use Backspace = ^H
                $ stty erase ^H
                $ rxvt

            use Backspace = ^?
                $ stty erase ^?
                $ rxvt

        NB: generate either value with BackSpace and Ctrl/Shift-BackSpace.
            Toggle with "ESC[36h" / "ESC[36l" as documented in "doc/refer.txt"

        For an existing rxvt:
            use Backspace = ^H
                $ stty erase ^H
                $ echo -n "^[[36h"

            use Backspace = ^?
                $ stty erase ^?
                $ echo -n "^[[36l"

        This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
        but if you use Backspace = ^?, make sure that the termcap/terminfo
        value properly reflects that.

        The Delete key (which one would expect to emit ^?) is a another
        casualty of the ill-defined Backspace problem.  To avoid confusion
        between the Backspace and Delete keys, the Delete key has been
        assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for Execute (ESC[3~)
        and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.

        Some other Backspace problems:
                some editors use termcap/terminfo,
                some editors (vim I'm told) expect Backspace = ^H,
                GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.

        Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner
        ... and maybe xterm will have Home/End values too!

-----

    Q:  Why doesn't the Backspace key work on my Linux machine?

    A:  The XFree86 server has a notorious problem of mapping the Backspace
        key as Delete in order to match the Linux console.

        The correct way to fix this:

          0 - Complain to your Linux distributer and the XFree86 team, maybe
              they'll fix it.

          1 - Use xmodmap to correct the Backspace mapping

                ! ~/.Xmodmap

                ! a correctly-mapped BackSpace
                keycode 22 = BackSpace

                *** Make sure the keycode above matches the physical
                    Backspace key on your machine!! (use xev) ***

        This will also fix the BackSpace problem with Motif applications,
        such as ``why doesn't Backspace work for Netscape?''

        You now have a Backspace key that functions as described in the
        previous question.

          1a - You may also want to fix the regular xterm if it doesn't
              generates the desired value for BackSpace

                xterm*vt100.translations: #override \
                <Key>BackSpace: string(\010) \n
            or
                xterm*vt100.translations: #override \
                <Key>BackSpace: string(\177) \n

           while you are at it, you may also want to have consistent
           values to Home/End/Delete

                xterm*vt100.translations: #override \
                <Key>Home:      string("\033[7~") \n\
                <Key>End:       string("\033[8~") \n\
                <Key>Delete:    string("\033[3~") \n

        Finally, you can also remap the rxvt key-binding at run-time (next
        question) but you'll lose the ability to have Ctrl/Shift-Backspace
        work differently as well as losing the escape sequence toggling of
        Backspace.

-----

    Q:  I don't like the key-bindings.  How do I change them?

    A:  There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
        Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
        option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
        associated with keysym 0xFF00 - 0xFFFF (function, cursor keys, etc).

        Here's an example for a tn3270 session started using
        `rxvt -name tn3270'

                !#  ----- special uses ------:
                ! tn3270 login, remap function and arrow keys.
                tn3270*font:    *clean-bold-*-*--15-*

                ! keysym - used by rxvt only
                ! Delete - ^D
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFFF:   \004

                ! Home - ^A
                tn3270*keysym.0xFF50:   \001
                ! Left - ^B
                tn3270*keysym.0xFF51:   \002
                ! Up - ^P
                tn3270*keysym.0xFF52:   \020
                ! Right - ^F
                tn3270*keysym.0xFF53:   \006
                ! Down - ^N
                tn3270*keysym.0xFF54:   \016
                ! End - ^E
                tn3270*keysym.0xFF57:   \005

                ! F1 - F12
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFBE:   \e1
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFBF:   \e2
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC0:   \e3
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC1:   \e4
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC2:   \e5
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC3:   \e6
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC4:   \e7
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC5:   \e8
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC6:   \e9
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC7:   \e0
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC8:   \e-
                tn3270*keysym.0xFFC9:   \e=

                ! map Prior/Next to F7/F8
                tn3270*keysym.0xFF55:   \e7
                tn3270*keysym.0xFF56:   \e8

-----

    Q:  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 mappings that rxvt doesn't recognize.

                KP_Insert == Insert
                F22 == Print
                F27 == Home
                F29 == Prior
                F33 == End
                F35 == Next

    A:  Rather than have rxvt try to accomodate all the various possible
        keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
        keys as required for your particular machine.

-----

    Q:  How do I distinguish if I'm running rxvt or a regular xterm?
        I need this to decide about setting colors etc.

    A:  rxvt always exports the variable "COLORTERM", so you can check and
        see if that is set.  Note that several programs, JED, slrn, Midnight
        Commander automatically check this variable to decide whether or not
        to use color.

-----

    Q:  How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?

    A:  If you've compiled rxvt with DISPLAY_IS_IP then it is
        possible to use the following shell script snippets to correctly set
        the display.  If your version of rxvt wasn't also compiled with
        ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets) then the COLORTERM
        variable can be used to distinguish rxvt from a regular xterm.

        Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
        script snippets:

        # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
        [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
        if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
            stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
            echo -n '^[Z'
            read term_id
            stty icanon echo
            if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
                echo -n '^[[7n'         # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
                read DISPLAY            # set it in our local shell
            fi
        fi

        csh/tcsh family of shells:

        if ( !(${?TERM}) ) then         # if term is unset, we are probably in an xterm
            TERM = xterm
        endif
        if ( ${TERM} =~ xterm ) then
            stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15   # see if enhanced rxvt or not
            echo -n '^[Z'
            set term_id=$<
            stty icanon echo
            if ( ""${term_id} == "^[[?1;2C" && ${?DISPLAY} == 0 ) then
                echo -n '^[[7n'         # query the rxvt we're in for the DISPLAY string
                setenv DISPLAY "$<"     # set it in our local shell
            endif
        endif

-----

    Q:  How do I compile the manual pages for myself?  Where do I obtain
        yodl from?

    A:  You need to obtain yodl and compile it to make the manual pages
        from source.  The source code for yodl can currently be obtained
        from http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien/yodl/index.html
--
EOF
Revision:	1.1
Committed:	Mon Nov 24 17:28:08 2003 UTC (20 years, 6 months ago) by pcg
Branch:	MAIN
CVS Tags:	rel-1_9, rel-3_5, rel-3_4, rel-3_3, rel-3_2, rel-2_8, rel-3_0, rel-2_7, rel-2_4, rel-2_5, rel-2_2, rel-2_3, rel-2_0, rxvt-2-0, rel-1-9, stable, rel-2_1_0, rel-1-3, rel-1-2
Log Message:	* empty log message *
#	Content
1	--------------------------------------------------------------------------
2	FAQ
3	--------------------------------------------------------------------------
4
5	-----
6
7	Q: How do I know which rxvt version I'm using?
8
9	A: The version number is displayed with the usage (-h).
10	For rxvt version 2.14 and later, the escape sequence `ESC[8n'
11	sets the window title to the version number.
12
13	-----
14
15	Q: Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
16
17	A: Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since
18	killing some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse
19	report mode. I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting
20	unless it otherwise specified. A quick check is to see if
21	cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are depressed. See
22	doc/refer.txt
23
24	-----
25
26	Q: What's with this bold/blink stuff? I can never get blinking text!
27
28	A: It is not possible, and likely will never be, for rxvt to have
29	actual blinking text. Instead (if rxvt was compiled without
30	NO_BOLDCOLOR), bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
31	foreground/background colors ... like what you'd see on a PC video
32	adapter. There are programs, notably John Davis' SLang-based ones
33	<ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/davis>, that use bold/blink attributes to
34	permit 16 colors.
35
36	color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
37	color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
38
39	A side issue of this bold/blink stuff is the question of how the
40	normal default foreground/background colors are to be treated. If
41	the default foreground/background match one of the low-intensity
42	colors (color0-7), the bold/blink attribute will invoke the
43	appropriate high-intensity color (color8-15).
44
45	In the case that the default foreground doesn't match one of the
46	low-intensity colors, the bold attribute will use an `overstrike'
47	to simulate a bold font. But note this leaves pixel-droppings and
48	so, rather than wasting an inordinate amounts of energy to fix it,
49	its use is simply deprecated.
50
51	In the case that the default background doesn't match one of the
52	low-intensity colors, the blink attribute is simply ignored
53	(rather than representing it as bold as xterm does).
54
55	-----
56
57	Q: I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
58
59	A: You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
60	resources (or as long-options) ... see the man-page.
61
62	Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,
63	including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
64
65	Rxvt*color0: #000000
66	Rxvt*color1: #A80000
67	Rxvt*color2: #00A800
68	Rxvt*color3: #A8A800
69	Rxvt*color4: #0000A8
70	Rxvt*color5: #A800A8
71	Rxvt*color6: #00A8A8
72	Rxvt*color7: #A8A8A8
73
74	Rxvt*color8: #000054
75	Rxvt*color9: #FF0054
76	Rxvt*color10: #00FF54
77	Rxvt*color11: #FFFF54
78	Rxvt*color12: #0000FF
79	Rxvt*color13: #FF00FF
80	Rxvt*color14: #00FFFF
81	Rxvt*color15: #FFFFFF
82
83	-----
84
85	Q: What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
86
87	A: Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
88	BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
89	question) there are two standard values that can be used for
90	Backspace: ^H and ^?.
91
92	Rxvt tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the value
93	of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt wasn't started
94	from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell), then the
95	system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in <termios.h>,
96	will be used (which may not be the same as your stty setting).
97
98	For starting a new rxvt:
99
100	use Backspace = ^H
101	$ stty erase ^H
102	$ rxvt
103
104	use Backspace = ^?
105	$ stty erase ^?
106	$ rxvt
107
108	NB: generate either value with BackSpace and Ctrl/Shift-BackSpace.
109	Toggle with "ESC[36h" / "ESC[36l" as documented in "doc/refer.txt"
110
111	For an existing rxvt:
112	use Backspace = ^H
113	$ stty erase ^H
114	$ echo -n "^[[36h"
115
116	use Backspace = ^?
117	$ stty erase ^?
118	$ echo -n "^[[36l"
119
120	This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
121	but if you use Backspace = ^?, make sure that the termcap/terminfo
122	value properly reflects that.
123
124	The Delete key (which one would expect to emit ^?) is a another
125	casualty of the ill-defined Backspace problem. To avoid confusion
126	between the Backspace and Delete keys, the Delete key has been
127	assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for Execute (ESC[3~)
128	and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
129
130	Some other Backspace problems:
131	some editors use termcap/terminfo,
132	some editors (vim I'm told) expect Backspace = ^H,
133	GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
134
135	Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner
136	... and maybe xterm will have Home/End values too!
137
138	-----
139
140	Q: Why doesn't the Backspace key work on my Linux machine?
141
142	A: The XFree86 server has a notorious problem of mapping the Backspace
143	key as Delete in order to match the Linux console.
144
145	The correct way to fix this:
146
147	0 - Complain to your Linux distributer and the XFree86 team, maybe
148	they'll fix it.
149
150	1 - Use xmodmap to correct the Backspace mapping
151
152	! ~/.Xmodmap
153
154	! a correctly-mapped BackSpace
155	keycode 22 = BackSpace
156
157	*** Make sure the keycode above matches the physical
158	Backspace key on your machine!! (use xev) ***
159
160	This will also fix the BackSpace problem with Motif applications,
161	such as ``why doesn't Backspace work for Netscape?''
162
163	You now have a Backspace key that functions as described in the
164	previous question.
165
166	1a - You may also want to fix the regular xterm if it doesn't
167	generates the desired value for BackSpace
168
169	xterm*vt100.translations: #override \
170	<Key>BackSpace: string(\010) \n
171	or
172	xterm*vt100.translations: #override \
173	<Key>BackSpace: string(\177) \n
174
175	while you are at it, you may also want to have consistent
176	values to Home/End/Delete
177
178	xterm*vt100.translations: #override \
179	<Key>Home: string("\033[7~") \n\
180	<Key>End: string("\033[8~") \n\
181	<Key>Delete: string("\033[3~") \n
182
183	Finally, you can also remap the rxvt key-binding at run-time (next
184	question) but you'll lose the ability to have Ctrl/Shift-Backspace
185	work differently as well as losing the escape sequence toggling of
186	Backspace.
187
188	-----
189
190	Q: I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
191
192	A: There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
193	Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
194	option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
195	associated with keysym 0xFF00 - 0xFFFF (function, cursor keys, etc).
196
197	Here's an example for a tn3270 session started using
198	`rxvt -name tn3270'
199
200	!# ----- special uses ------:
201	! tn3270 login, remap function and arrow keys.
202	tn3270font: clean-bold----15-*
203
204	! keysym - used by rxvt only
205	! Delete - ^D
206	tn3270*keysym.0xFFFF: \004
207
208	! Home - ^A
209	tn3270*keysym.0xFF50: \001
210	! Left - ^B
211	tn3270*keysym.0xFF51: \002
212	! Up - ^P
213	tn3270*keysym.0xFF52: \020
214	! Right - ^F
215	tn3270*keysym.0xFF53: \006
216	! Down - ^N
217	tn3270*keysym.0xFF54: \016
218	! End - ^E
219	tn3270*keysym.0xFF57: \005
220
221	! F1 - F12
222	tn3270*keysym.0xFFBE: \e1
223	tn3270*keysym.0xFFBF: \e2
224	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC0: \e3
225	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC1: \e4
226	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC2: \e5
227	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC3: \e6
228	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC4: \e7
229	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC5: \e8
230	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC6: \e9
231	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC7: \e0
232	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC8: \e-
233	tn3270*keysym.0xFFC9: \e=
234
235	! map Prior/Next to F7/F8
236	tn3270*keysym.0xFF55: \e7
237	tn3270*keysym.0xFF56: \e8
238
239	-----
240
241	Q: I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys.
242	How do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4
243	has the following mappings that rxvt doesn't recognize.
244
245	KP_Insert == Insert
246	F22 == Print
247	F27 == Home
248	F29 == Prior
249	F33 == End
250	F35 == Next
251
252	A: Rather than have rxvt try to accomodate all the various possible
253	keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
254	keys as required for your particular machine.
255
256	-----
257
258	Q: How do I distinguish if I'm running rxvt or a regular xterm?
259	I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
260
261	A: rxvt always exports the variable "COLORTERM", so you can check and
262	see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED, slrn, Midnight
263	Commander automatically check this variable to decide whether or not
264	to use color.
265
266	-----
267
268	Q: How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
269
270	A: If you've compiled rxvt with DISPLAY_IS_IP then it is
271	possible to use the following shell script snippets to correctly set
272	the display. If your version of rxvt wasn't also compiled with
273	ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets) then the COLORTERM
274	variable can be used to distinguish rxvt from a regular xterm.
275
276	Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
277	script snippets:
278
279	# Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
280	[ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
281	if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
282	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
283	echo -n '^[Z'
284	read term_id
285	stty icanon echo
286	if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
287	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
288	read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
289	fi
290	fi
291
292	csh/tcsh family of shells:
293
294	if ( !(${?TERM}) ) then # if term is unset, we are probably in an xterm
295	TERM = xterm
296	endif
297	if ( ${TERM} =~ xterm ) then
298	stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
299	echo -n '^[Z'
300	set term_id=$<
301	stty icanon echo
302	if ( ""${term_id} == "^[[?1;2C" && ${?DISPLAY} == 0 ) then
303	echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we're in for the DISPLAY string
304	setenv DISPLAY "$<" # set it in our local shell
305	endif
306	endif
307
308	-----
309
310	Q: How do I compile the manual pages for myself? Where do I obtain
311	yodl from?
312
313	A: You need to obtain yodl and compile it to make the manual pages
314	from source. The source code for yodl can currently be obtained
315	from http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien/yodl/index.html
316	--
317	EOF