1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 Rxvt is a heavily modified version of xvt, many modifications were made by
3 Rob Nation <nation@rocket.sanders.lockheed.com> to make it a little more
4 compact and to add a few simple features.
6 This is the README that came with xvt-2.0. It is included mainly to give
7 the original author credit for his work.
9 README file for xvt 2.0
10 -----------------------
12 Xvt is an X terminal-emulator that is designed to be more or less
13 compatible with xterm while using much less swap space. It is mainly
14 intended for use at sites which use large numbers of X terminals but
15 may also be useful on single workstations that are short of memory. On
16 a SPARCstation running SunOS4, an initially invoked xvt uses about 1/3
17 megabyte of swap while xterm uses about 1.3 megabytes (obtained by
18 running pstat rather than ps which seems to give unreliable size
19 figures on SPARCs). The main way that xvt achieves its small size is
20 by avoiding the use of the X toolkit.
22 The current version of xvt is our default X terminal emulator and has
23 been used for eight months by students, computing support staff and
24 service users and so is fairly well tested.
26 Supported architectures
27 -----------------------
29 One of the major changes between xvt-1.0 and 2.0 is that xvt-2.0 is
30 much more portable. The released version should build and run on all
31 the architectures I have access to, namely: SunOS4, SunOS5, HP-UX 8.0,
32 HP-UX 9.0, DEC OSF/1 V1.2 and ULTRIX 3.?. In addition, the teletype
33 initialisation code has been completely restructured to make it more
34 portable. Almost all the system dependent code is in the single source
37 Xterm features not supported
38 ----------------------------
40 - Tektronix 4014 emulation
44 - Pop-up menus. The only one of xterm's popup menu commands that is
45 provided in xvt is displaying and hiding of the scrollbar and this
46 is done simply by pressing any mouse key in the window with the
47 CONTROL key held down.
49 - Toolkit style configurability. In particular, xvt does not allow
50 the user to remap the mouse or keyboard keys.
52 Major xterm features that are supported
53 ---------------------------------------
55 - VT100 emulation. Most of the main escape sequences are supported -
56 certainly all those used by the standard screen based UNIX
59 - Lines that scroll off the top of the window are saved can be
60 scrolled back with a scrollbar.
62 - Text selection and insertion including double and triple click for
65 Differences between xvt2.0 and xvt1.0
66 -------------------------------------
68 - xvt2.0 is eight bit clean and will generate and display eight bit
69 characters. The META key can be used to generate characters with
70 the eighth bit set (in eight bit mode) or prefix by escape (in seven
73 - The teletype setup code has been rewritten to make it much more
74 portable. See the comments at the head of ttyinit.c.
76 - Exposure handling has been made much more efficient so that xvt should
77 now be useable with window managers that provide opaque window movement.
79 - VT100 graphics characters are supported for fonts that include them.
81 - There is now a -ls option to enable the use of a login shell.
83 - Colored text cursors are now supported.
85 - There is support for the -C (console window) option but only on
88 - Bold characters are generated by overstriking if no bold font is
91 - Function keys generate escape sequences as in xterm.
93 - A number of bugs have been fixed:
95 - Setting the title without a terminating ^G no longer locks up.
97 - Paste followed by a keystroke will always insert in the correct
100 - Pasting an uninitialised string will not cause a crash.
102 Other differences between xvt and xterm
103 ---------------------------------------
105 - Xvt has a couple of additional enquiry escape sequences:
107 ESC[7n - causes xvt to respond with the name of its X display in a
108 form that can be used to initialise the DISPLAY environment
109 variable. If this is done in a user's .cshrc file it
110 provides a way to automatically update DISPLAY after an
111 rlogin. Something like the following should work if the
112 initial ^[ in the echo command is an ESC character:
114 if(!($?DISPLAY)) then
116 if($term =~ xterm*) then
118 echo -n '^[[7n' >/dev/tty
119 setenv DISPLAY `line </dev/tty`
125 ESC[8n - causes xvt to respond with a hex encoded copy of the server's
126 magic cookie which can be used to update a user's .Xauthority
127 file. We have a program to do this which could be made available
128 if anyone is interested.
133 - xvt does not know about transferring selections in installments and so
134 making large selections or trying to insert large selections will
135 fail. The maximum selection size supported is server dependent but
136 seems to be a little under 64k on all our servers.
138 - xvt does not look in all the approved places for its X resources.
139 It does, however, work correctly with resources that have been
140 loaded into the server using xrdb
142 Building and installing xvt
143 ---------------------------
145 Xvt does not use imake but does come with a simple Makefile
146 configuration scheme that provides some help with getting the Makefile
147 right. If you want to build xvt on one of the supported architectures
148 then you should uncomment the appropriate definition at the start of
149 the Makefile and then run `make config', which will modify other
150 Makefile comments to bring them into line with the chosen
153 To install xvt, you should edit the MANDIR and BIN pathnames in the
154 Makefile and then type 'make install' as root. When installed for
155 general use, xvt needs to belong to root and have the setuid flag set
156 so that it can make entries in the /etc/utmp file.
158 Thanks to all the people who have mailed bug reports, patches and
159 local improvements. Some requested additions have gone into V2.0,
160 others perhaps should have, but were left out due to lack of time.
162 Please send bug reports and WIBNIs to:
166 University of Kent at Canterbury