-FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
- The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select
-single words?
- If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
- setting:
-
- URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
-
- If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
- more.
-
- To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
- pattern:
-
- URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
-
- Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClik* combination also
- selects words like the old code.
-
- I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I
-change/disable it?
- You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
- perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
- rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
-
- If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
- identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
- PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the rxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
- disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
- perl-ext-common resource:
-
- URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
-
- This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
- extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
- scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
- combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
-
- URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
-
- The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how
-do I switch this off?
- During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor
-outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
- These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
- circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
- line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
- but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
- some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
-
- You can permamently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
- extension:
-
- URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
-
- Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
- Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
- applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
- resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
- ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
- $HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
+RXVT-UNICODE/URXVT FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
+ Meta, Features & Commandline Issues
+ My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
+ Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
+ "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
+ interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
- If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
- are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
- every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
+ I use Gentoo, and I have a problem...
+ There are three big problems with Gentoo Linux: first of all, most if
+ not all Gentoo systems are completely broken (missing or mismatched
+ header files, broken compiler etc. are just the tip of the iceberg);
+ secondly, the Gentoo maintainer thinks it is a good idea to add broken
+ patches to the code; and lastly, it should be called Gentoo GNU/Linux.
- Also consider the form resources have to use:
+ For these reasons, it is impossible to support rxvt-unicode on Gentoo.
+ Problems appearing on Gentoo systems will usually simply be ignored
+ unless they can be reproduced on non-Gentoo systems.
- URxvt.resource: value
+ Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
+ Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
+ simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
+ should give you tabs:
- If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
- specifying resources), make sure you understand wether and why it works.
- If unsure, use the form above.
+ urxvt -pe tabbed
- I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
- First of all, transparency isn't officially supported in rxvt-unicode,
- so you are mostly on your own. Do not bug the author about it (but you
- may bug everybody else). Also, if you can't get it working consider it a
- rite of passage: ... and you failed.
+ URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
- Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
- descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
+ It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
+ managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
+ it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
+ or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
+ (murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
- 1. Use inheritPixmap:
+ How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
+ The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
+ sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When
+ using the urxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
- Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
- rxvt -ip -tint red -sh 40
+ Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
+ Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
+ you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
+ that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
+ design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
+ loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
+ characters.
- That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
- support, or you are unable to read.
+ Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
+ scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
+ bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
+ kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if
+ full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets
+ worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
- 2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
- to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
- your picture with gimp:
+ How can I start urxvtd in a race-free way?
+ Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd to open the display, create the
+ listening socket and then fork.
- convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.xpm
- rxvt -pixmap background.xpm -pe automove-background
+ How can I start urxvtd automatically when I run urxvtc?
+ If you want to start urxvtd automatically whenever you run urxvtc and
+ the daemon isn't running yet, use this script:
- That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack XPM and Perl support, or
- you are unable to read.
+ #!/bin/sh
+ urxvtc "$@"
+ if [ $? -eq 2 ]; then
+ urxvtd -q -o -f
+ urxvtc "$@"
+ fi
- 3. Use an ARGB visual:
+ This tries to create a new terminal, and if fails with exit status 2,
+ meaning it couldn't connect to the daemon, it will start the daemon and
+ re-run the command. Subsequent invocations of the script will re-use the
+ existing daemon.
- rxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
+ How do I distinguish whether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm? I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
+ The original rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export 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.
- This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
- doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
- there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
- neccessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work,
- but that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
+ How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
+ If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
+ insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
+ snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
+ wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
+ then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
+ a regular xterm.
- 4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
+ Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
+ snippets:
- xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
- -set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
+ # 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
- Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
- by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
- your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
+ How do I compile the manual pages on my own?
+ You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
+ one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2xhtml (from Pod::Xhtml).
+ Then go to the doc subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
- Isn't rxvt supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
+ Isn't rxvt-unicode supposed to be small? Don't all those features bloat?
I often get asked about this, and I think, no, they didn't cause extra
bloat. If you compare a minimal rxvt and a minimal urxvt, you can see
that the urxvt binary is larger (due to some encoding tables always
98398 1664 24 15695 1824 rxvt --disable-everything
188985 9048 66616 18222 1788 urxvt --disable-everything
- When you "--enable-everything" (which _is_ unfair, as this involves xft
+ When you "--enable-everything" (which *is* unfair, as this involves xft
and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside libX11 and my
- libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so.
+ libc), the two diverge, but not unreasonably so.
text data bss drs rss filename
163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
a minute of startup time, including the hundreds of warnings it spits
out), it fares extremely well *g*.
- Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
+ Why C++, isn't that unportable/bloated/uncool?
Is this a question? :) It comes up very often. The simple answer is: I
had to write it, and C++ allowed me to write and maintain it in a
fraction of the time and effort (which is a scarce resource for me). Put
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00002aaaaada2000)
- libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
- libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
- /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
+ libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaaeb0000)
+ libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab0ee000)
+ /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
No large bloated libraries (of course, none were linked in statically),
except maybe libX11 :)
- Does it support tabs, can I have a tabbed rxvt-unicode?
- Beginning with version 7.3, there is a perl extension that implements a
- simple tabbed terminal. It is installed by default, so any of these
- should give you tabs:
-
- rxvt -pe tabbed
+ Rendering, Font & Look and Feel Issues
+ I can't get transparency working, what am I doing wrong?
+ First of all, please address all transparency related issues to Sasha
+ Vasko at sasha@aftercode.net and do not bug the author about it. Also,
+ if you can't get it working consider it a rite of passage: ... and you
+ failed.
- URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,tabbed
+ Here are four ways to get transparency. Do read the manpage and option
+ descriptions for the programs mentioned and rxvt-unicode. Really, do it!
- It will also work fine with tabbing functionality of many window
- managers or similar tabbing programs, and its embedding-features allow
- it to be embedded into other programs, as witnessed by doc/rxvt-tabbed
- or the upcoming "Gtk2::URxvt" perl module, which features a tabbed urxvt
- (murxvt) terminal as an example embedding application.
+ 1. Use transparent mode:
- How do I know which rxvt-unicode version I'm using?
- The version number is displayed with the usage (-h). Also the escape
- sequence "ESC [ 8 n" sets the window title to the version number. When
- using the rxvtc client, the version displayed is that of the daemon.
+ Esetroot wallpaper.jpg
+ urxvt -tr -tint red -sh 40
- I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
- The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large
- patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but
- unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to
- the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine
- version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce
- the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific
- to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian
- Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
+ That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack transparency and tinting
+ support, or you are unable to read.
- For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
- probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a
- bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users
- that might encounter the same issue.
+ 2. Use a simple pixmap and emulate pseudo-transparency. This enables you
+ to use effects other than tinting and shading: Just shade/tint/whatever
+ your picture with gimp or any other tool:
- I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any
-recommendation?
- You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
- enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
- runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enbaling
- them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
- should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
- more in the future) depends on it.
+ convert wallpaper.jpg -blur 20x20 -modulate 30 background.jpg
+ urxvt -pixmap "background.jpg;:root"
- You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" resources
- system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
- behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
- "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
- perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
+ That works. If you think it doesn't, you lack AfterImage support, or you
+ are unable to read.
- If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
- with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
- "--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
- encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
+ 3. Use an ARGB visual:
- I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
- It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
- install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
+ urxvt -depth 32 -fg grey90 -bg rgba:0000/0000/4444/cccc
- When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
- into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
- systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
- immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
- privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
- things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
+ This requires XFT support, and the support of your X-server. If that
+ doesn't work for you, blame Xorg and Keith Packard. ARGB visuals aren't
+ there yet, no matter what they claim. Rxvt-Unicode contains the
+ necessary bugfixes and workarounds for Xft and Xlib to make it work, but
+ that doesn't mean that your WM has the required kludges in place.
- This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
- early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
- main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
- result in very little risk.
+ 4. Use xcompmgr and let it do the job:
- When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
- The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
- as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
- arises).
+ xprop -frame -f _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 32c \
+ -set _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY 0xc0000000
- The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
- can be done like this (with ncurses' infocmp):
+ Then click on a window you want to make transparent. Replace 0xc0000000
+ by other values to change the degree of opacity. If it doesn't work and
+ your server crashes, you got to keep the pieces.
- REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
- infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
+ Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
+ Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
+ character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
+ use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
+ will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
+ wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
+ characters.
- ... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,
+ All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
+ however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
+ bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
+ way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
+ wrong in these cases).
- If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
- "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
- problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
- colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
- quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
+ It's not clear (to me at least), whether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
+ or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
+ using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
+ work, you might be forced to use a different font.
- If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
- can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
- resource to set it:
+ All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
+ bounding box data is correct.
- URxvt.termName: rxvt
+ How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
+ First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
+ ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
+ make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
+ rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
- If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
- the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one.
+ URxvt.colorBD: white
+ URxvt.colorIT: green
- "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
- Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
- "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
+ Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
+ For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
+ colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
+ standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
+ course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
+ good reasons.
- "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under rxvt.
- I need a termcap file entry.
- One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
- systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
- library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
- for "rxvt-unicode".
+ In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
+ definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
+ fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
- You could use rxvt's termcap entry with resonable results in many cases.
- You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp program
- like this:
+ Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
+ Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
+ same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
- infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
+ printf '\33]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
- Or you could use this termcap entry, generated by the command above:
-
- rxvt-unicode|rxvt-unicode terminal (X Window System):\
- :am:bw:eo:km:mi:ms:xn:xo:\
- :co#80:it#8:li#24:lm#0:\
- :AL=\E[%dL:DC=\E[%dP:DL=\E[%dM:DO=\E[%dB:IC=\E[%d@:\
- :K1=\EOw:K2=\EOu:K3=\EOy:K4=\EOq:K5=\EOs:LE=\E[%dD:\
- :RI=\E[%dC:SF=\E[%dS:SR=\E[%dT:UP=\E[%dA:ae=\E(B:al=\E[L:\
- :as=\E(0:bl=^G:cd=\E[J:ce=\E[K:cl=\E[H\E[2J:\
- :cm=\E[%i%d;%dH:cr=^M:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr:ct=\E[3g:dc=\E[P:\
- :dl=\E[M:do=^J:ec=\E[%dX:ei=\E[4l:ho=\E[H:\
- :i1=\E[?47l\E=\E[?1l:ic=\E[@:im=\E[4h:\
- :is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l:\
- :k1=\E[11~:k2=\E[12~:k3=\E[13~:k4=\E[14~:k5=\E[15~:\
- :k6=\E[17~:k7=\E[18~:k8=\E[19~:k9=\E[20~:kD=\E[3~:\
- :kI=\E[2~:kN=\E[6~:kP=\E[5~:kb=\177:kd=\EOB:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\
- :kh=\E[7~:kl=\EOD:kr=\EOC:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ku=\EOA:le=^H:\
- :mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[m\017:mr=\E[7m:nd=\E[C:rc=\E8:\
- :sc=\E7:se=\E[27m:sf=^J:so=\E[7m:sr=\EM:st=\EH:ta=^I:\
- :te=\E[r\E[?1049l:ti=\E[?1049h:ue=\E[24m:up=\E[A:\
- :us=\E[4m:vb=\E[?5h\E[?5l:ve=\E[?25h:vi=\E[?25l:\
- :vs=\E[?25h:
-
- Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
- The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
- decide wether a terminal has colour, but uses it's own configuration
- file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in it's default file (among
- with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
+ This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
+ japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
+ japanese fonts would only be in your way.
- TERM rxvt-unicode
+ You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
- to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
+ Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
+ Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
+ example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
+ Mono" completely fails in its italic face. A workaround might be to
+ enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
- alias ls='ls --color=auto'
+ URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
+ URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
- to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
+ Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
+ Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
+ is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
+ antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
+ memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
- Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
- Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
- Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
- Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
- distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
- setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
- Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
- furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
- you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
- to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
- this).
+ Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
+ Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
+ fall back to its default font search list it will prefer X11 core fonts,
+ because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
+ antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
+ look best that way.
- My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
- Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
- specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
- caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of wether and
- how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
- compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
- report if that helped.
+ If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
- Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
- Unicode does not seem to work?
- If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
- getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
- is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
+ What's with this bold/blink stuff?
+ If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
+ standard foreground colour.
- Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
- programs. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale, while the
- login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes the locale
- to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this is not
- going to work.
+ For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
+ blink when compiled with "--enable-text-blink". Without
+ "--enable-text-blink", the blink attribute will be ignored.
- The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
- run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
- .profile.
+ On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
+ foreground/background colors.
- printf '\e]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE"
+ color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
- If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
- supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
- displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
- it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
- something like:
+ color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
- locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
+ I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
+ You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
+ resources (or as long-options).
- Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
+ Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
+ the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
- If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
- you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
- support locales :(
+ URxvt.color0: #000000
+ URxvt.color1: #A80000
+ URxvt.color2: #00A800
+ URxvt.color3: #A8A800
+ URxvt.color4: #0000A8
+ URxvt.color5: #A800A8
+ URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
+ URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
+
+ URxvt.color8: #000054
+ URxvt.color9: #FF0054
+ URxvt.color10: #00FF54
+ URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
+ URxvt.color12: #0000FF
+ URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
+ URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
+ URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
+
+ And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors.
+
+ URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
+ URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
+ URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
+ URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
+ URxvt.color0: #000000
+ URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
+ URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
+ URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
+ URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
+ URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
+ URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
+ URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
+ URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
+ URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
+ URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
+ URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
+ URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
+ URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
+
+ They have been described (not by me) as "pretty girly".
- Why do some characters look so much different than others?
- How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
+ Why do some characters look so much different than others?
+ See next entry.
+
+ How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?
Most fonts do not contain the full range of Unicode, which is fine.
Chances are that the font you (or the admin/package maintainer of your
system/os) have specified does not cover all the characters you want to
In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list,
e.g.:
- rxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
+ urxvt -fn basefont,font2,font3...
When rxvt-unicode sees a character, it will first look at the base font.
If the base font does not contain the character, it will go to the next
base font, as the base font defines the terminal character cell size,
which must be the same due to the way terminals work.
- Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
+ Why do some chinese characters look so different than others?
This is because there is a difference between script and language --
rxvt-unicode does not know which language the text that is output is, as
it only knows the unicode character codes. If rxvt-unicode first sees a
Until then, you might get away with switching fonts at runtime (see "Can
I switch the fonts at runtime?" later in this document).
- Why does rxvt-unicode sometimes leave pixel droppings?
- Most fonts were not designed for terminal use, which means that
- character size varies a lot. A font that is otherwise fine for terminal
- use might contain some characters that are simply too wide. Rxvt-unicode
- will avoid these characters. For characters that are just "a bit" too
- wide a special "careful" rendering mode is used that redraws adjacent
- characters.
+ How can I make mplayer display video correctly?
+ We are working on it, in the meantime, as a workaround, use something
+ like:
- All of this requires that fonts do not lie about character sizes,
- however: Xft fonts often draw glyphs larger than their acclaimed
- bounding box, and rxvt-unicode has no way of detecting this (the correct
- way is to ask for the character bounding box, which unfortunately is
- wrong in these cases).
+ urxvt -b 600 -geometry 20x1 -e sh -c 'mplayer -wid $WINDOWID file...'
- It's not clear (to me at least), wether this is a bug in Xft, freetype,
- or the respective font. If you encounter this problem you might try
- using the "-lsp" option to give the font more height. If that doesn't
- work, you might be forced to use a different font.
+ Keyboard, Mouse & User Interaction
+ The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select single words?
+ If you want to select e.g. alphanumeric words, you can use the following
+ setting:
- All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
- bounding box data is correct.
+ URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([[:word:]]+)
+
+ If you click more than twice, the selection will be extended more and
+ more.
+
+ To get a selection that is very similar to the old code, try this
+ pattern:
+
+ URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ([^"&'()*,;<=>?@[\\\\]^`{|})]+)
+
+ Please also note that the *LeftClick Shift-LeftClick* combination also
+ selects words like the old code.
+
+ I don't like the new selection/popups/hotkeys/perl, how do I change/disable it?
+ You can disable the perl extension completely by setting the
+ perl-ext-common resource to the empty string, which also keeps
+ rxvt-unicode from initialising perl, saving memory.
+
+ If you only want to disable specific features, you first have to
+ identify which perl extension is responsible. For this, read the section
+ PREPACKAGED EXTENSIONS in the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, to
+ disable the selection-popup and option-popup, specify this
+ perl-ext-common resource:
+
+ URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-selection-popup,-option-popup
+
+ This will keep the default extensions, but disable the two popup
+ extensions. Some extensions can also be configured, for example,
+ scrollback search mode is triggered by M-s. You can move it to any other
+ combination either by setting the searchable-scrollback resource:
+
+ URxvt.searchable-scrollback: CM-s
+
+ The cursor moves when selecting text in the current input line, how do I switch this off?
+ See next entry.
+
+ During rlogin/ssh/telnet/etc. sessions, clicking near the cursor outputs strange escape sequences, how do I fix this?
+ These are caused by the "readline" perl extension. Under normal
+ circumstances, it will move your cursor around when you click into the
+ line that contains it. It tries hard not to do this at the wrong moment,
+ but when running a program that doesn't parse cursor movements or in
+ some cases during rlogin sessions, it fails to detect this properly.
+
+ You can permanently switch this feature off by disabling the "readline"
+ extension:
- On Solaris 9, many line-drawing characters are too wide.
- Seems to be a known bug, read
- <http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about34198.html>. Some people use the
- following ugly workaround to get non-double-wide-characters working:
+ URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,-readline
- #define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
+ My numerical keypad acts weird and generates differing output?
+ Some Debian GNUL/Linux users seem to have this problem, although no
+ specific details were reported so far. It is possible that this is
+ caused by the wrong "TERM" setting, although the details of whether and
+ how this can happen are unknown, as "TERM=rxvt" should offer a
+ compatible keymap. See the answer to the previous question, and please
+ report if that helped.
- My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
+ My Compose (Multi_key) key is no longer working.
The most common causes for this are that either your locale is not set
correctly, or you specified a preeditStyle that is not supported by your
input method. For example, if you specified OverTheSpot and your input
In this case either do not specify a preeditStyle or specify more than
one pre-edit style, such as OverTheSpot,Root,None.
- I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
+ If it still doesn't work, then maybe your input method doesn't support
+ compose sequences - to fall back to the built-in one, make sure you
+ don't specify an input method via "-im" or "XMODIFIERS".
+
+ I cannot type "Ctrl-Shift-2" to get an ASCII NUL character due to ISO 14755
Either try "Ctrl-2" alone (it often is mapped to ASCII NUL even on
international keyboards) or simply use ISO 14755 support to your
advantage, typing <Ctrl-Shift-0> to get a ASCII NUL. This works for
other codes, too, such as "Ctrl-Shift-1-d" to type the default telnet
escape character and so on.
- How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
- First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminal settings
- ("TERM=rxvt-unicode"), which will get rid of most of these effects. Then
- make sure you have specified colours for italic and bold, as otherwise
- rxvt-unicode might use reverse video to simulate the effect:
+ Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
+ 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.
- URxvt.colorBD: white
- URxvt.colorIT: green
+ What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
+ 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 "^?".
- Some programs assume totally weird colours (red instead of blue), how can I fix that?
- For some unexplainable reason, some rare programs assume a very weird
- colour palette when confronted with a terminal with more than the
- standard 8 colours (rxvt-unicode supports 88). The right fix is, of
- course, to fix these programs not to assume non-ISO colours without very
- good reasons.
+ Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
+ debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one and only
+ correct choice :).
- In the meantime, you can either edit your "rxvt-unicode" terminfo
- definition to only claim 8 colour support or use "TERM=rxvt", which will
- fix colours but keep you from using other rxvt-unicode features.
+ Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
+ value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
+ 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).
- I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
- Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
- your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
- wether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
- wchar_t is represented as unicode.
+ For starting a new rxvt-unicode:
- As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symobl nor
- does it support it. Instead, it uses it's own internal representation of
- wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
+ # use Backspace = ^H
+ $ stty erase ^H
+ $ urxvt
- However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
- "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t.
+ # use Backspace = ^?
+ $ stty erase ^?
+ $ urxvt
- "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
- in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
- representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
- (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
- implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
- simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
- locale encoding.
+ Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l".
- Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
- carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
- them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
- conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
- encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
+ For an existing rxvt-unicode:
- The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
- system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
- complete replacements for them :)
+ # use Backspace = ^H
+ $ stty erase ^H
+ $ echo -n "^[[36h"
- I use Solaris 9 and it doesn't compile/work/etc.
- Try the diff in doc/solaris9.patch as a base. It fixes the worst
- problems with "wcwidth" and a compile problem.
+ # use Backspace = ^?
+ $ stty erase ^?
+ $ echo -n "^[[36l"
- How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
- rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
- X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
- supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
- font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
- "-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
- old libW11 emulation.
+ This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
+ if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
+ properly reflects that.
- At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
- multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
- likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
+ The Delete key 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.
- How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
- Is there an option to switch encodings?
- Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
- specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
- about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
+ Some other Backspace problems:
- The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
- selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
- this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
- such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
- Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
- "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses it's own,
- locale-independent table under all locales).
+ some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
+ Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
- Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
- programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
- interpretation of characters.
+ Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
- Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
- is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
+ I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
+ 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
+ keysyms.
- On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
- contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
- locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
- "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
+ Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "urxvt -name URxvt"
+
+ URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
+ URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
+ URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
+ URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
+ URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
+ URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
+ URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
+ URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
+ URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
+ URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
+ URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
+ URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
+ URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
+ URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
+ URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
+ URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
+ URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
+ URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
+ URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
+ URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
+
+ See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
+
+ 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 map
+ KP_Insert == Insert
+ F22 == Print
+ F27 == Home
+ F29 == Prior
+ F33 == End
+ F35 == Next
+
+ Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
+ possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
+ keys as required for your particular machine.
+
+ Terminal Configuration
+ Can I see a typical configuration?
+ The default configuration tries to be xterm-like, which I don't like
+ that much, but it's least surprise to regular users.
+
+ As a rxvt or rxvt-unicode user, you are practically supposed to invest
+ time into customising your terminal. To get you started, here is the
+ author's .Xdefaults entries, with comments on what they do. It's
+ certainly not *typical*, but what's typical...
+
+ URxvt.cutchars: "()*,<>[]{}|'
+ URxvt.print-pipe: cat >/tmp/xxx
+
+ These are just for testing stuff.
+
+ URxvt.imLocale: ja_JP.UTF-8
+ URxvt.preeditType: OnTheSpot,None
+
+ This tells rxvt-unicode to use a special locale when communicating with
+ the X Input Method, and also tells it to only use the OnTheSpot pre-edit
+ type, which requires the "xim-onthespot" perl extension but rewards me
+ with correct-looking fonts.
+
+ URxvt.perl-lib: /root/lib/urxvt
+ URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,selection-autotransform,selection-pastebin,xim-onthespot,remote-clipboard
+ URxvt.selection.pattern-0: ( at .*? line \\d+)
+ URxvt.selection.pattern-1: ^(/[^:]+):\
+ URxvt.selection-autotransform.0: s/^([^:[:space:]]+):(\\d+):?$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
+ URxvt.selection-autotransform.1: s/^ at (.*?) line (\\d+)$/:e \\Q$1\\E\\x0d:$2\\x0d/
+
+ This is my perl configuration. The first two set the perl library
+ directory and also tells urxvt to use a large number of extensions. I
+ develop for myself mostly, so I actually use most of the extensions I
+ write.
+
+ The selection stuff mainly makes the selection perl-error-message aware
+ and tells it to convert perl error messages into vi-commands to load the
+ relevant file and go tot he error line number.
+
+ URxvt.scrollstyle: plain
+ URxvt.secondaryScroll: true
+
+ As the documentation says: plain is the preferred scrollbar for the
+ author. The "secondaryScroll" configures urxvt to scroll in full-screen
+ apps, like screen, so lines scrolled out of screen end up in urxvt's
+ scrollback buffer.
+
+ URxvt.background: #000000
+ URxvt.foreground: gray90
+ URxvt.color7: gray90
+ URxvt.colorBD: #ffffff
+ URxvt.cursorColor: #e0e080
+ URxvt.throughColor: #8080f0
+ URxvt.highlightColor: #f0f0f0
+
+ Some colours. Not sure which ones are being used or even non-defaults,
+ but these are in my .Xdefaults. Most notably, they set
+ foreground/background to light gray/black, and also make sure that the
+ colour 7 matches the default foreground colour.
+
+ URxvt.underlineColor: yellow
+
+ Another colour, makes underline lines look different. Sometimes hurts,
+ but is mostly a nice effect.
+
+ URxvt.geometry: 154x36
+ URxvt.loginShell: false
+ URxvt.meta: ignore
+ URxvt.utmpInhibit: true
+
+ Uh, well, should be mostly self-explanatory. By specifying some defaults
+ manually, I can quickly switch them for testing.
+
+ URxvt.saveLines: 8192
+
+ A large scrollback buffer is essential. Really.
+
+ URxvt.mapAlert: true
+
+ The only case I use it is for my IRC window, which I like to keep
+ iconified till people msg me (which beeps).
+
+ URxvt.visualBell: true
+
+ The audible bell is often annoying, especially when in a crowd.
+
+ URxvt.insecure: true
+
+ Please don't hack my mutt! Ooops...
+
+ URxvt.pastableTabs: false
+
+ I once thought this is a great idea.
+
+ urxvt.font: 9x15bold,\
+ -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1,\
+ -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1, \
+ [codeset=JISX0208]xft:Kochi Gothic, \
+ xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:autohint=true, \
+ xft:Code2000:antialias=false
+ urxvt.boldFont: -xos4-terminus-bold-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso8859-15
+ urxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
+ urxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
+
+ I wrote rxvt-unicode to be able to specify fonts exactly. So don't be
+ overwhelmed. A special note: the "9x15bold" mentioned above is actually
+ the version from XFree-3.3, as XFree-4 replaced it by a totally
+ different font (different glyphs for ";" and many other harmless
+ characters), while the second font is actually the "9x15bold" from
+ XFree4/XOrg. The bold version has less chars than the medium version, so
+ I use it for rare characters, too. When editing sources with vim, I use
+ italic for comments and other stuff, which looks quite good with
+ Bitstream Vera anti-aliased.
+
+ Terminus is a quite bad font (many very wrong glyphs), but for most of
+ my purposes, it works, and gives a different look, as my normal
+ (Non-bold) font is already bold, and I want to see a difference between
+ bold and normal fonts.
+
+ Please note that I used the "urxvt" instance name and not the "URxvt"
+ class name. Thats because I use different configs for different
+ purposes, for example, my IRC window is started with "-name IRC", and
+ uses these defaults:
+
+ IRC*title: IRC
+ IRC*geometry: 87x12+535+542
+ IRC*saveLines: 0
+ IRC*mapAlert: true
+ IRC*font: suxuseuro
+ IRC*boldFont: suxuseuro
+ IRC*colorBD: white
+ IRC*keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
+ IRC*keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007
+
+ "Alt-Ctrl-1" and "Alt-Ctrl-2" switch between two different font sizes.
+ "suxuseuro" allows me to keep an eye (and actually read) stuff while
+ keeping a very small window. If somebody pastes something complicated
+ (e.g. japanese), I temporarily switch to a larger font.
+
+ The above is all in my ".Xdefaults" (I don't use ".Xresources" nor
+ "xrdb"). I also have some resources in a separate ".Xdefaults-hostname"
+ file for different hosts, for example, on ym main desktop, I use:
+
+ URxvt.keysym.C-M-q: command:\033[3;5;5t
+ URxvt.keysym.C-M-y: command:\033[3;5;606t
+ URxvt.keysym.C-M-e: command:\033[3;1605;5t
+ URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: command:\033[3;1605;606t
+ URxvt.keysym.C-M-p: perl:test
+
+ The first for keysym definitions allow me to quickly bring some windows
+ in the layout I like most. Ion users might start laughing but will stop
+ immediately when I tell them that I use my own Fvwm2 module for much the
+ same effect as Ion provides, and I only very rarely use the above key
+ combinations :->
+
+ Why doesn't rxvt-unicode read my resources?
+ Well, why, indeed? It does, in a way very similar to other X
+ applications. Most importantly, this means that if you or your OS loads
+ resources into the X display (the right way to do it), rxvt-unicode will
+ ignore any resource files in your home directory. It will only read
+ $HOME/.Xdefaults when no resources are attached to the display.
+
+ If you have or use an $HOME/.Xresources file, chances are that resources
+ are loaded into your X-server. In this case, you have to re-login after
+ every change (or run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources).
+
+ Also consider the form resources have to use:
+
+ URxvt.resource: value
+
+ If you want to use another form (there are lots of different ways of
+ specifying resources), make sure you understand whether and why it
+ works. If unsure, use the form above.
+
+ When I log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
+ The terminal description used by rxvt-unicode is not as widely available
+ as that for xterm, or even rxvt (for which the same problem often
+ arises).
+
+ The correct solution for this problem is to install the terminfo, this
+ can be done by simply installing rxvt-unicode on the remote system as
+ well (in case you have a nice package manager ready), or you can install
+ the terminfo database manually like this (with ncurses infocmp. works as
+ user and root):
+
+ REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
+ infocmp rxvt-unicode | ssh $REMOTE "mkdir -p .terminfo && cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
+
+ One some systems you might need to set $TERMINFO to the full path of
+ $HOME/.terminfo for this to work.
+
+ If you cannot or do not want to do this, then you can simply set
+ "TERM=rxvt" or even "TERM=xterm", and live with the small number of
+ problems arising, which includes wrong keymapping, less and different
+ colours and some refresh errors in fullscreen applications. It's a nice
+ quick-and-dirty workaround for rare cases, though.
+
+ If you always want to do this (and are fine with the consequences) you
+ can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a
+ resource to set it:
+
+ URxvt.termName: rxvt
+
+ If you don't plan to use rxvt (quite common...) you could also replace
+ the rxvt terminfo file with the rxvt-unicode one and use "TERM=rxvt".
+
+ nano fails with "Error opening terminal: rxvt-unicode"
+ This exceptionally confusing and useless error message is printed by
+ nano when it can't find the terminfo database. Nothing is wrong with
+ your terminal, read the previous answer for a solution.
+
+ "tic" outputs some error when compiling the terminfo entry.
+ Most likely it's the empty definition for "enacs=". Just replace it by
+ "enacs=\E[0@" and try again.
+
+ "bash"'s readline does not work correctly under urxvt.
+ See next entry.
+
+ I need a termcap file entry.
+ One reason you might want this is that some distributions or operating
+ systems still compile some programs using the long-obsoleted termcap
+ library (Fedora Core's bash is one example) and rely on a termcap entry
+ for "rxvt-unicode".
+
+ You could use rxvt's termcap entry with reasonable results in many
+ cases. You can also create a termcap entry by using terminfo's infocmp
+ program like this:
+
+ infocmp -C rxvt-unicode
+
+ Or you could use the termcap entry in doc/etc/rxvt-unicode.termcap,
+ generated by the command above.
+
+ Why does "ls" no longer have coloured output?
+ The "ls" in the GNU coreutils unfortunately doesn't use terminfo to
+ decide whether a terminal has colour, but uses its own configuration
+ file. Needless to say, "rxvt-unicode" is not in its default file (among
+ with most other terminals supporting colour). Either add:
+
+ TERM rxvt-unicode
+
+ to "/etc/DIR_COLORS" or simply add:
+
+ alias ls='ls --color=auto'
+
+ to your ".profile" or ".bashrc".
+
+ Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. use the 88 colour mode?
+ See next entry.
+
+ Why doesn't vim/emacs etc. make use of italic?
+ See next entry.
+
+ Why are the secondary screen-related options not working properly?
+ Make sure you are using "TERM=rxvt-unicode". Some pre-packaged
+ distributions (most notably Debian GNU/Linux) break rxvt-unicode by
+ setting "TERM" to "rxvt", which doesn't have these extra features.
+ Unfortunately, some of these (most notably, again, Debian GNU/Linux)
+ furthermore fail to even install the "rxvt-unicode" terminfo file, so
+ you will need to install it on your own (See the question When I log-in
+ to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data? on how to do
+ this).
+
+ Encoding / Locale / Input Method Issues
+ Rxvt-unicode does not seem to understand the selected encoding?
+ See next entry.
+
+ Unicode does not seem to work?
+ If you encounter strange problems like typing an accented character but
+ getting two unrelated other characters or similar, or if program output
+ is subtly garbled, then you should check your locale settings.
+
+ Rxvt-unicode must be started with the same "LC_CTYPE" setting as the
+ programs running in it. Often rxvt-unicode is started in the "C" locale,
+ while the login script running within the rxvt-unicode window changes
+ the locale to something else, e.g. "en_GB.UTF-8". Needless to say, this
+ is not going to work, and is the most common cause for problems.
+
+ The best thing is to fix your startup environment, as you will likely
+ run into other problems. If nothing works you can try this in your
+ .profile.
+
+ printf '\33]701;%s\007' "$LC_CTYPE" # $LANG or $LC_ALL are worth a try, too
+
+ If this doesn't work, then maybe you use a "LC_CTYPE" specification not
+ supported on your systems. Some systems have a "locale" command which
+ displays this (also, "perl -e0" can be used to check locale settings, as
+ it will complain loudly if it cannot set the locale). If it displays
+ something like:
+
+ locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: ...
+
+ Then the locale you specified is not supported on your system.
+
+ If nothing works and you are sure that everything is set correctly then
+ you will need to remember a little known fact: Some programs just don't
+ support locales :(
+
+ How does rxvt-unicode determine the encoding to use?
+ See next entry.
+
+ Is there an option to switch encodings?
+ Unlike some other terminals, rxvt-unicode has no encoding switch, and no
+ specific "utf-8" mode, such as xterm. In fact, it doesn't even know
+ about UTF-8 or any other encodings with respect to terminal I/O.
+
+ The reasons is that there exists a perfectly fine mechanism for
+ selecting the encoding, doing I/O and (most important) communicating
+ this to all applications so everybody agrees on character properties
+ such as width and code number. This mechanism is the *locale*.
+ Applications not using that info will have problems (for example,
+ "xterm" gets the width of characters wrong as it uses its own,
+ locale-independent table under all locales).
+
+ Rxvt-unicode uses the "LC_CTYPE" locale category to select encoding. All
+ programs doing the same (that is, most) will automatically agree in the
+ interpretation of characters.
+
+ Unfortunately, there is no system-independent way to select locales, nor
+ is there a standard on how locale specifiers will look like.
+
+ On most systems, the content of the "LC_CTYPE" environment variable
+ contains an arbitrary string which corresponds to an already-installed
+ locale. Common names for locales are "en_US.UTF-8", "de_DE.ISO-8859-15",
+ "ja_JP.EUC-JP", i.e. "language_country.encoding", but other forms (i.e.
"de" or "german") are also common.
Rxvt-unicode ignores all other locale categories, and except for the
If you want to use a specific encoding you have to make sure you start
rxvt-unicode with the correct "LC_CTYPE" category.
- Can I switch locales at runtime?
+ Can I switch locales at runtime?
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which sets
rxvt-unicode's idea of "LC_CTYPE".
- printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
+ printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
See also the previous answer.
UTF-8). For example, I use this script to start "xjdic", which first
switches to a locale supported by xjdic and back later:
- printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
+ printf '\33]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS
xjdic -js
- printf '\e]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
+ printf '\33]701;%s\007' de_DE.UTF-8
You can also use xterm's "luit" program, which usually works fine,
except for some locales where character width differs between program-
and rxvt-unicode-locales.
- Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
- Yes, using an escape sequence. Try something like this, which has the
- same effect as using the "-fn" switch, and takes effect immediately:
+ I have problems getting my input method working.
+ Try a search engine, as this is slightly different for every input
+ method server.
- printf '\e]50;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
+ Here is a checklist:
- This is useful if you e.g. work primarily with japanese (and prefer a
- japanese font), but you have to switch to chinese temporarily, where
- japanese fonts would only be in your way.
+ - Make sure your locale *and* the imLocale are supported on your OS.
+ Try "locale -a" or check the documentation for your OS.
- You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
+ - Make sure your locale or imLocale matches a locale supported by your
+ XIM.
+ For example, kinput2 does not support UTF-8 locales, you should use
+ "ja_JP.EUC-JP" or equivalent.
- Why do italic characters look as if clipped?
- Many fonts have difficulties with italic characters and hinting. For
- example, the otherwise very nicely hinted font "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans
- Mono" completely fails in it's italic face. A workaround might be to
- enable freetype autohinting, i.e. like this:
+ - Make sure your XIM server is actually running.
+ - Make sure the "XMODIFIERS" environment variable is set correctly when
+ *starting* rxvt-unicode.
+ When you want to use e.g. kinput2, it must be set to "@im=kinput2".
+ For scim, use "@im=SCIM". You can see what input method servers are
+ running with this command:
- URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
- URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
+ xprop -root XIM_SERVERS
- My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
+
+
+ My input method wants <some encoding> but I want UTF-8, what can I do?
You can specify separate locales for the input method and the rest of
the terminal, using the resource "imlocale":
URxvt.imlocale: ja_JP.EUC-JP
Now you can start your terminal with "LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8" and still
- use your input method. Please note, however, that you will not be able
- to input characters outside "EUC-JP" in a normal way then, as your input
- method limits you.
+ use your input method. Please note, however, that, depending on your
+ Xlib version, you may not be able to input characters outside "EUC-JP"
+ in a normal way then, as your input method limits you.
- Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
+ Rxvt-unicode crashes when the X Input Method changes or exits.
Unfortunately, this is unavoidable, as the XIM protocol is racy by
design. Applications can avoid some crashes at the expense of memory
leaks, and Input Methods can avoid some crashes by careful ordering at
So the only workaround is not to kill your Input Method Servers.
- Rxvt-unicode uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
- Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for something
- you don't use. One thing you should try is to configure out all settings
- that you don't need, for example, Xft support is a resource hog by
- design, when used. Compiling it out ensures that no Xft font will be
- loaded accidentally when rxvt-unicode tries to find a font for your
- characters.
-
- Also, many people (me included) like large windows and even larger
- scrollback buffers: Without "--enable-unicode3", rxvt-unicode will use 6
- bytes per screen cell. For a 160x?? window this amounts to almost a
- kilobyte per line. A scrollback buffer of 10000 lines will then (if
- full) use 10 Megabytes of memory. With "--enable-unicode3" it gets
- worse, as rxvt-unicode then uses 8 bytes per screen cell.
-
- Can I speed up Xft rendering somehow?
- Yes, the most obvious way to speed it up is to avoid Xft entirely, as it
- is simply slow. If you still want Xft fonts you might try to disable
- antialiasing (by appending ":antialias=false"), which saves lots of
- memory and also speeds up rendering considerably.
-
- Rxvt-unicode doesn't seem to anti-alias its fonts, what is wrong?
- Rxvt-unicode will use whatever you specify as a font. If it needs to
- fall back to it's default font search list it will prefer X11 core
- fonts, because they are small and fast, and then use Xft fonts. It has
- antialiasing disabled for most of them, because the author thinks they
- look best that way.
-
- If you want antialiasing, you have to specify the fonts manually.
-
- Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
- 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.
-
- What's with this bold/blink stuff?
- If no bold colour is set via "colorBD:", bold will invert text using the
- standard foreground colour.
-
- For the standard background colour, blinking will actually make the text
- blink when compiled with "--enable-blinking". with standard colours.
- Without "--enable-blinking", the blink attribute will be ignored.
-
- On ANSI colours, bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
- foreground/background colors.
-
- color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
-
- color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
-
- I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
- You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
- resources (or as long-options).
-
- Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen, including
- the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
-
- URxvt.color0: #000000
- URxvt.color1: #A80000
- URxvt.color2: #00A800
- URxvt.color3: #A8A800
- URxvt.color4: #0000A8
- URxvt.color5: #A800A8
- URxvt.color6: #00A8A8
- URxvt.color7: #A8A8A8
-
- URxvt.color8: #000054
- URxvt.color9: #FF0054
- URxvt.color10: #00FF54
- URxvt.color11: #FFFF54
- URxvt.color12: #0000FF
- URxvt.color13: #FF00FF
- URxvt.color14: #00FFFF
- URxvt.color15: #FFFFFF
-
- And here is a more complete set of non-standard colors described (not by
- me) as "pretty girly".
-
- URxvt.cursorColor: #dc74d1
- URxvt.pointerColor: #dc74d1
- URxvt.background: #0e0e0e
- URxvt.foreground: #4ad5e1
- URxvt.color0: #000000
- URxvt.color8: #8b8f93
- URxvt.color1: #dc74d1
- URxvt.color9: #dc74d1
- URxvt.color2: #0eb8c7
- URxvt.color10: #0eb8c7
- URxvt.color3: #dfe37e
- URxvt.color11: #dfe37e
- URxvt.color5: #9e88f0
- URxvt.color13: #9e88f0
- URxvt.color6: #73f7ff
- URxvt.color14: #73f7ff
- URxvt.color7: #e1dddd
- URxvt.color15: #e1dddd
-
- How can I start rxvtd in a race-free way?
- Try "rxvtd -f -o", which tells rxvtd to open the display, create the
- listening socket and then fork.
-
- What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
- 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 "^?".
-
- Historically, either value is correct, but rxvt-unicode adopts the
- debian policy of using "^?" when unsure, because it's the one only only
- correct choice :).
-
- Rxvt-unicode tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the
- value of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt-unicode
- 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-unicode:
-
- # use Backspace = ^H
- $ stty erase ^H
- $ rxvt
-
- # use Backspace = ^?
- $ stty erase ^?
- $ rxvt
-
- Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l".
-
- For an existing rxvt-unicode:
+ Operating Systems / Package Maintaining
+ I am using Debian GNU/Linux and have a problem...
+ The Debian GNU/Linux package of rxvt-unicode in sarge contains large
+ patches that considerably change the behaviour of rxvt-unicode (but
+ unfortunately this notice has been removed). Before reporting a bug to
+ the original rxvt-unicode author please download and install the genuine
+ version (<http://software.schmorp.de#rxvt-unicode>) and try to reproduce
+ the problem. If you cannot, chances are that the problems are specific
+ to Debian GNU/Linux, in which case it should be reported via the Debian
+ Bug Tracking System (use "reportbug" to report the bug).
- # use Backspace = ^H
- $ stty erase ^H
- $ echo -n "^[[36h"
+ For other problems that also affect the Debian package, you can and
+ probably should use the Debian BTS, too, because, after all, it's also a
+ bug in the Debian version and it serves as a reminder for other users
+ that might encounter the same issue.
- # use Backspace = ^?
- $ stty erase ^?
- $ echo -n "^[[36l"
+ I am maintaining rxvt-unicode for distribution/OS XXX, any recommendation?
+ You should build one binary with the default options. configure now
+ enables most useful options, and the trend goes to making them
+ runtime-switchable, too, so there is usually no drawback to enabling
+ them, except higher disk and possibly memory usage. The perl interpreter
+ should be enabled, as important functionality (menus, selection, likely
+ more in the future) depends on it.
- This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur, but
- if you use Backspace = "^H", make sure that the termcap/terminfo value
- properly reflects that.
+ You should not overwrite the "perl-ext-common" snd "perl-ext" resources
+ system-wide (except maybe with "defaults"). This will result in useful
+ behaviour. If your distribution aims at low memory, add an empty
+ "perl-ext-common" resource to the app-defaults file. This will keep the
+ perl interpreter disabled until the user enables it.
- The Delete key 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.
+ If you can/want build more binaries, I recommend building a minimal one
+ with "--disable-everything" (very useful) and a maximal one with
+ "--enable-everything" (less useful, it will be very big due to a lot of
+ encodings built-in that increase download times and are rarely used).
- Some other Backspace problems:
+ I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this safe?
+ It should be, starting with release 7.1. You are encouraged to properly
+ install urxvt with privileges necessary for your OS now.
- some editors use termcap/terminfo, some editors (vim I'm told) expect
- Backspace = ^H, GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
+ When rxvt-unicode detects that it runs setuid or setgid, it will fork
+ into a helper process for privileged operations (pty handling on some
+ systems, utmp/wtmp/lastlog handling on others) and drop privileges
+ immediately. This is much safer than most other terminals that keep
+ privileges while running (but is more relevant to urxvt, as it contains
+ things as perl interpreters, which might be "helpful" to attackers).
- Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner.
+ This forking is done as the very first within main(), which is very
+ early and reduces possible bugs to initialisation code run before
+ main(), or things like the dynamic loader of your system, which should
+ result in very little risk.
- I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
- 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
- keysyms.
+ I am on FreeBSD and rxvt-unicode does not seem to work at all.
+ Rxvt-unicode requires the symbol "__STDC_ISO_10646__" to be defined in
+ your compile environment, or an implementation that implements it,
+ whether it defines the symbol or not. "__STDC_ISO_10646__" requires that
+ wchar_t is represented as unicode.
- Here's an example for a URxvt session started using "rxvt -name URxvt"
+ As you might have guessed, FreeBSD does neither define this symbol nor
+ does it support it. Instead, it uses its own internal representation of
+ wchar_t. This is, of course, completely fine with respect to standards.
- URxvt.keysym.Home: \033[1~
- URxvt.keysym.End: \033[4~
- URxvt.keysym.C-apostrophe: \033<C-'>
- URxvt.keysym.C-slash: \033<C-/>
- URxvt.keysym.C-semicolon: \033<C-;>
- URxvt.keysym.C-grave: \033<C-`>
- URxvt.keysym.C-comma: \033<C-,>
- URxvt.keysym.C-period: \033<C-.>
- URxvt.keysym.C-0x60: \033<C-`>
- URxvt.keysym.C-Tab: \033<C-Tab>
- URxvt.keysym.C-Return: \033<C-Return>
- URxvt.keysym.S-Return: \033<S-Return>
- URxvt.keysym.S-space: \033<S-Space>
- URxvt.keysym.M-Up: \033<M-Up>
- URxvt.keysym.M-Down: \033<M-Down>
- URxvt.keysym.M-Left: \033<M-Left>
- URxvt.keysym.M-Right: \033<M-Right>
- URxvt.keysym.M-C-0: list \033<M-C- 0123456789 >
- URxvt.keysym.M-C-a: list \033<M-C- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz >
- URxvt.keysym.F12: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007
+ However, that means rxvt-unicode only works in "POSIX", "ISO-8859-1" and
+ "UTF-8" locales under FreeBSD (which all use Unicode as wchar_t).
- See some more examples in the documentation for the keysym resource.
+ "__STDC_ISO_10646__" is the only sane way to support multi-language apps
+ in an OS, as using a locale-dependent (and non-standardized)
+ representation of wchar_t makes it impossible to convert between wchar_t
+ (as used by X11 and your applications) and any other encoding without
+ implementing OS-specific-wrappers for each and every locale. There
+ simply are no APIs to convert wchar_t into anything except the current
+ locale encoding.
- 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-unicode doesn't recognize.
- KP_Insert == Insert
- F22 == Print
- F27 == Home
- F29 == Prior
- F33 == End
- F35 == Next
+ Some applications (such as the formidable mlterm) work around this by
+ carrying their own replacement functions for character set handling with
+ them, and either implementing OS-dependent hacks or doing multiple
+ conversions (which is slow and unreliable in case the OS implements
+ encodings slightly different than the terminal emulator).
- Rather than have rxvt-unicode try to accommodate all the various
- possible keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
- keys as required for your particular machine.
+ The rxvt-unicode author insists that the right way to fix this is in the
+ system libraries once and for all, instead of forcing every app to carry
+ complete replacements for them :)
- How do I distinguish wether I'm running rxvt-unicode or a regular xterm?
-I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
- rxvt and rxvt-unicode always export 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.
+ How can I use rxvt-unicode under cygwin?
+ rxvt-unicode should compile and run out of the box on cygwin, using the
+ X11 libraries that come with cygwin. libW11 emulation is no longer
+ supported (and makes no sense, either, as it only supported a single
+ font). I recommend starting the X-server in "-multiwindow" or
+ "-rootless" mode instead, which will result in similar look&feel as the
+ old libW11 emulation.
- How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
- If you've compiled rxvt-unicode with DISPLAY_IS_IP and have enabled
- insecure mode then it is possible to use the following shell script
- snippets to correctly set the display. If your version of rxvt-unicode
- wasn't also compiled with ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets)
- then the COLORTERM variable can be used to distinguish rxvt-unicode from
- a regular xterm.
+ At the time of this writing, cygwin didn't seem to support any
+ multi-byte encodings (you might try "LC_CTYPE=C-UTF-8"), so you are
+ likely limited to 8-bit encodings.
- Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell script
- snippets:
+ Character widths are not correct.
+ urxvt uses the system wcwidth function to know the information about the
+ width of characters, so on systems with incorrect locale data you will
+ likely get bad results. Two notorious examples are Solaris 9, where
+ single-width characters like U+2514 are reported as double-width, and
+ Darwin 8, where combining chars are reported having width 1.
- # 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
+ The solution is to upgrade your system or switch to a better one. A
+ possibly working workaround is to use a wcwidth implementation like
- How do I compile the manual pages for myself?
- You need to have a recent version of perl installed as /usr/bin/perl,
- one that comes with pod2man, pod2text and pod2html. Then go to the doc
- subdirectory and enter "make alldoc".
+ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
- My question isn't answered here, can I ask a human?
- Before sending me mail, you could go to IRC: "irc.freenode.net", channel
- "#rxvt-unicode" has some rxvt-unicode enthusiasts that might be
- interested in learning about new and exciting problems (but not FAQs :).
+ I want 256 colors
+ Are you sure you need 256 colors? 88 colors should be enough for most
+ purposes. If you really need more, there is an unsupported patch for it
+ in the doc directory, but please do not ask for it to be applied.
projects / dana / urxvt.git / blobdiff