1 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
2 The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select
4 Yes. For example, if you want to select alphanumeric words, you can
5 use the following resource:
7 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
9 If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more
12 To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
15 URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
17 Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClik* combination
18 also selects words like the old code.
20 I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I
22 You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
23 perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
24 rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
26 If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
27 identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the
28 section PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the rxvtperl(3) manpage. For
29 example, to disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify
30 this perl-ext-common resource:
32 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
34 This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
35 extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
36 scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any
37 other combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback
40 URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
42 Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
43 Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
44 applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS
45 loads resources into the X display (the right way to do it),
46 rxvt-unicode will ignore any resource files in your home directory.
47 It will only read $HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to
50 If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that
51 resources are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to
52 re-login after every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
54 Also consider the form resources have to use:
58 If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
59 specifying resources), make sure you understand wether and why it
60 works. If unsure, use the form above.
62 I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
63 First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in
64 rxvt-unicode, so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author
65 about it (but you may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it
66 working consider it a rite of passage, and you failed.
68 Here are three ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and
69 option descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode.
74 Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
75 rxvt -ip -tint red -sh 40
77 That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and
78 tinting support, or you are unable to read.
80 2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables
81 you to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just
82 shade/tint/whatever your picture with gimp:
84 convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.xpm
85 rxvt -pixmap background.xpm -pe automove-background
87 That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack XPM and Perl support,
88 or you are unable to read.
90 3. Use an ARGB visual:
92 rxvt -depth 432 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/0000/c000
94 This requires XFT support, and support form your X-server. If that
95 doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals
96 aren't there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains
97 the neccessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it
100 Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
101 I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause
102 extra bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you
103 can see that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables
104 always being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory (RSS)
105 after startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this comparison is
106 a bit unfair, as many features unique to urxvt (locale, encoding
107 conversion, iso14755 etc.) are already in use in this mode.
109 text data bss drs rss filename
110 98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
111 188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
113 When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves
114 xft and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11
115 and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so.
117 text data bss drs rss filename
118 163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
119 1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
121 The very large size of the text section is explained by the
122 east-asian encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but
123 nothing else and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core
124 fonts that use those encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k
125 emergency buffer that my c++ compiler allocates (but of course
126 doesn't use unless you are out of memory). Also, using an xft font
127 instead of a core font immediately adds a few megabytes of RSS. Xft
128 indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even when not used.
130 Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead of
131 one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode use
134 Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k),
135 this still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
136 gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or
137 konsole (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after
138 exit, plus half a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of
139 warnings it spits out), it fares extremely well *g*.
141 Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
142 Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is:
143 I had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
144 fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me).
145 Put even shorter: It simply wouldn't exist without C++.
147 My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but
148 in the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability
149 limits are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale
150 support and unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than
153 Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It's easy to write
154 programs in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to
155 write programs in C++ that don't. C++ also often comes with large
156 libraries, but this is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is
157 what rxvt links against on my system with a minimal config:
159 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
160 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
161 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
162 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
164 And here is rxvt-unicode:
166 libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
167 libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
168 libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
169 libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
170 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
172 No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in
173 statically), except maybe libX11 :)
175 Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
176 Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that
177 implements a simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so
178 any of these should give you tabs:
182 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
184 It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
185 managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features
186 allow it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by
187 doc/rxvt-tabbed or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which
188 features a tabbed urxvt (murxvt) terminal as an example embedding
191 How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
192 The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
193 sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number.
194 When using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the
197 I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
198 The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large
199 patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but
200 unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug
201 to the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the
202 genuine version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try
203 to reproduce the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the
204 problems are specific to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should
205 be reported via the Debian Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to
208 For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
209 probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's
210 also a bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for
211 other users that might encounter the same issue.
213 I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any
215 You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
216 enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
217 runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling
218 them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl
219 interpreter should be enabled, as important functionality (menus,
220 selection, likely more in the future) depends on it.
222 You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext"
223 resources system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will
224 result in useful behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory,
225 add an empty "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file.
226 This will keep the perl interpreter disabled until the user enables
229 If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal
230 one with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
231 "--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot
232 of encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely
235 I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this
237 It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to
238 properly install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
240 When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will
241 fork into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling
242 on some systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop
243 privileges immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals
244 that keep privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt,
245 as it contains things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful"
248 This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
249 early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
250 main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which
251 should result in very little risk.
253 When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
254 The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely
255 available as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same
256 problem often arises).
258 The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo,
259 this can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):
261 REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
262 infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
264 ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,
266 If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
267 "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
268 problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and
269 different colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen
270 applications. It's a nice quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases,
273 If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences)
274 you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or
275 use a resource to set it:
279 If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also
280 replace the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.
282 "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
283 Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it
284 by "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
286 "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.
287 I need a termcap file entry.
288 One reason you might want this is that some distributions or
289 operating systems still compile some programs using the
290 long-obsoleted termcap library (Fedora Core's bash is one example)
291 and rely on a termcap entry for "rxvt-unicode".
293 You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many
294 cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's
295 infocmp program like this:
297 infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
299 Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:
301 rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
302 :am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
303 :co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
304 :AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
305 :K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
306 :RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
307 :as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
308 :cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
309 :dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
310 :i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
311 :is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
312 :k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
313 :k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
314 :kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
315 :kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
316 :mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
317 :sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
318 :te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
319 :us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
322 Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
323 The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
324 decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration
325 file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file
326 (among with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
330 to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
332 alias ls='ls --color=auto'
334 to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
336 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
337 Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
338 Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
339 Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
340 distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
341 setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
342 Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
343 furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file,
344 so you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I
345 log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on
348 My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
349 Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
350 specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
351 caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether
352 and how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
353 compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and
354 please report if that helped.
356 Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
357 Unicode does not seem to work?
358 If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character
359 but getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program
360 output is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale
363 Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
364 programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the
365 login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the
366 locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
367 is not going to work.
369 The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will
370 likely run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in
373 printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"
375 If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification
376 not supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command
377 which displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale
378 settings, as it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale).
379 If it displays something like:
381 locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
383 Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
385 If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly
386 then you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs
387 just don't support locales :(
389 Why do some characters look so much different than others?
390 How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
391 Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
392 Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of
393 your system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you
396 rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
397 Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
398 bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
399 don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
400 artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong: it
401 has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
404 In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
407 rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
409 When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base
410 font. If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to
411 the next font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also speed
412 up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and the
415 The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than the
416 base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell
417 size, which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
419 Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
420 This is because there is a difference between script and language --
421 rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output
422 is, as it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode
423 first sees a japanese/chinese character, it might choose a japanese
424 font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use that font.
425 Now, many chinese characters aren't represented in japanese fonts,
426 so when the first non-japanese character comes up, rxvt-unicode will
427 look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this point, it will
428 still use the japanese font for chinese characters that are also in
431 The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
432 font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
433 list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
434 japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
437 In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences at
438 runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
439 different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
440 interface for this has been designed yet).
442 Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see
443 "Can I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
445 Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
446 Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
447 character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for
448 terminal use might contain some characters that are simply too wide.
449 Rxvt-unicode will avoid these characters. For characters that are
450 just "a bit" too wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used
451 that redraws adjacent characters.
453 All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
454 however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
455 bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the
456 correct way is to ask for the character bounding box, which
457 unfortunately is wrong in these cases).
459 It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft,
460 freetype, or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you
461 might try using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If
462 that doesn't work, you might be forced to use a different font.
464 All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
465 bounding box data is correct.
467 On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
468 Seems to be a known bug, read
469 <http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
470 following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
472 #define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
474 My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
475 The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not
476 set correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported
477 by your input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and
478 your input method (e.g. the default input method handling Compose
479 keys) does not support this (for instance because it is not visual),
480 then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input method.
482 In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more
483 than one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
485 I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO
487 Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
488 international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
489 advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
490 other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default
491 telnet escape character and so on.
493 How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
494 First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal
495 settings ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these
496 effects. Then make sure you have specified colours for italic and
497 bold, as otherwise rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate
503 Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how
505 For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very
506 weird colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than
507 the standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is,
508 of course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours
509 without very good reasons.
511 In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
512 definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which
513 will fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode
516 I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
517 Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined
518 in your compile environment, or an implementation that implements
519 it, wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__"
520 requires that wchar_t is represented as unicode.
522 As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl
523 nor does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal
524 representation of wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with
525 respect to standards.
527 However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1"
528 and "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
530 "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language
531 apps in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
532 representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between
533 wchar_t (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other
534 encoding without implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and
535 every locale. There simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into
536 anything except the current locale encoding.
538 Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this
539 by carrying their own replacement functions for character set
540 handling with them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or
541 doing multiple conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the
542 OS implements encodings slightly different than the terminal
545 The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in
546 the system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app
547 to carry complete replacements for them :)
549 I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
550 Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
551 problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
553 How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
554 rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using
555 the X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no
556 longer supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a
557 single font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
558 "-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as
559 the old libW11 emulation.
561 At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
562 multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
563 likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
565 How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
566 Is there an option to switch encodings?
567 Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch,
568 and no specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't
569 even know about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to
572 The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
573 selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
574 this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
575 such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
576 Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
577 "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,
578 locale-independent table under all locales).
580 Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding.
581 All programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree
582 in the interpretation of characters.
584 Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales,
585 nor is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
587 On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
588 contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an
589 already-installed locale. Common names for locales are
590 "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15", "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e.
591 "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e. "de" or "german")
594 Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
595 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
596 "de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to
599 If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you
600 start rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
602 Can I switch locales at runtime?
603 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
604 rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
606 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
608 See also the previous answer.
610 Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in
611 one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don't support it
612 (e.g. UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which
613 first switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
615 printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
617 printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
619 You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
620 except for some locales where character width differs between
621 program- and rxvt-unicode-locales.
623 Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
624 Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has
625 the same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect
628 printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
630 This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer
631 a japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily,
632 where japanese fonts would only be in your way.
634 You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
636 Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
637 Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
638 example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera
639 Sans Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might
640 be to enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
642 URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
643 URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
645 My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
646 You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest
647 of the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
649 URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
651 Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and
652 still use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not
653 be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then,
654 as your input method limits you.
656 Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
657 Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
658 design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
659 leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering
660 at exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods) generally
661 succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In the end,
662 however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both sides
665 So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
667 Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
668 Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for
669 something you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure
670 out all settings that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a
671 resource hog by design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no
672 Xft font will be loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find
673 a font for your characters.
675 Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
676 scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will
677 use 6 bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to
678 almost a kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will
679 then (if full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3"
680 it gets worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
682 Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
683 Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely,
684 as it is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to
685 disable antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves
686 lots of memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
688 Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
689 Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
690 fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core
691 fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It
692 has antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author
693 thinks they look best that way.
695 If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
697 Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
698 Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since killing
699 some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse report mode.
700 I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting unless it otherwise
701 specified. A quick check is to see if cut/paste works when the Alt
702 or Shift keys are depressed.
704 What's with this bold/blink stuff?
705 If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using
706 the standard foreground colour.
708 For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the
709 text blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard
710 colours. Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be
713 On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set
714 high-intensity foreground/background colors.
716 color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
718 color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
720 I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
721 You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
722 resources (or as long-options).
724 Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,
725 including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
727 URxvt.color0: #000000
728 URxvt.color1: #A80000
729 URxvt.color2: #00A800
730 URxvt.color3: #A8A800
731 URxvt.color4: #0000A8
732 URxvt.color5: #A800A8
733 URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
734 URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
736 URxvt.color8: #000054
737 URxvt.color9: #FF0054
738 URxvt.color10: #00FF54
739 URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
740 URxvt.color12: #0000FF
741 URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
742 URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
743 URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
745 And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described
746 (not by me) as "pretty girly".
748 URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
749 URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
750 URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
751 URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
752 URxvt.color0: #000000
753 URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
754 URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
755 URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
756 URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
757 URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
758 URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
759 URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
760 URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
761 URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
762 URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
763 URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
764 URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
765 URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
767 How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?
768 Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the
769 listening socket and then fork.
771 What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
772 Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
773 BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
774 question) there are two standard values that can be used for
775 Backspace: "^H" and "^?".
777 Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
778 debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only
779 only correct choice :).
781 Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
782 value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
783 wasn't started from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote
784 shell), then the system value of `erase', which corresponds to
785 CERASE in <termios.h>, will be used (which may not be the same as
788 For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
798 Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l".
800 For an existing rxvt-unicode:
810 This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
811 but if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo
812 value properly reflects that.
814 The Delete key is a another casualty of the ill-defined Backspace
815 problem. To avoid confusion between the Backspace and Delete keys,
816 the Delete key has been assigned an escape sequence to match the
817 vt100 for Execute ("ESC [ 3 ~") and is in the supplied
820 Some other Backspace problems:
822 some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told)
823 expect Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for
826 Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
828 I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
829 There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
830 Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
831 option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
832 associated with keysyms.
834 Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name
837 URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
838 URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
839 URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
840 URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
841 URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
842 URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
843 URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
844 URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
845 URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
846 URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
847 URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
848 URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
849 URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
850 URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
851 URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
852 URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
853 URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
854 URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
855 URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
856 URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
858 See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
860 I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys. How
861 do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4 has the
862 following mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn't recognize.
870 Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
871 possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap
872 the keys as required for your particular machine.
874 How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
875 I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
876 rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export the variable "COLORTERM", so you
877 can check and see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED,
878 slrn, Midnight Commander automatically check this variable to decide
879 whether or not to use color.
881 How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
882 If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
883 insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
884 snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of
885 rxvt-unicode wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in
886 these snippets) then the COLORTERM variable can be used to
887 distinguish rxvt-unicode from a regular xterm.
889 Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
892 # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
893 [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
894 if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
895 stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
899 if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
900 echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
901 read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
905 How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
906 You need to have a recent version of perl installed as
907 /usr/bin/perl, one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html.
908 Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
910 My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
911 Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net",
912 channel "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might
913 be interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not
projects / dana / urxvt.git / blob