---------------------------------------------------------------------------
- FAQ
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
------
-
- Q: How do I know which rxvt version I'm using?
-
- A: The version number is displayed with the usage (-h).
- For rxvt version 2.14 and later, the escape sequence `ESC[8n'
- sets the window title to the version number.
-
------
-
- Q: Mouse cut/paste suddenly no longer works.
-
- A: Make sure that mouse reporting is actually turned off since
- killing some editors prematurely may leave the mouse in mouse
- report mode. I've heard that tcsh may use mouse reporting
- unless it otherwise specified. A quick check is to see if
- cut/paste works when the Alt or Shift keys are depressed. See
- doc/refer.txt
-
------
-
- Q: What's with this bold/blink stuff? I can never get blinking text!
-
- A: It is not possible, and likely will never be, for rxvt to have
- actual blinking text. Instead (if rxvt was compiled without
- NO_BOLDCOLOR), bold/blink attributes are used to set high-intensity
- foreground/background colors ... like what you'd see on a PC video
- adapter. There are programs, notably John Davis' SLang-based ones
- <ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/davis>, that use bold/blink attributes to
- permit 16 colors.
-
- color0-7 are the low-intensity colors.
- color8-15 are the corresponding high-intensity colors.
-
- A side issue of this bold/blink stuff is the question of how the
- normal default foreground/background colors are to be treated. If
- the default foreground/background match one of the low-intensity
- colors (color0-7), the bold/blink attribute will invoke the
- appropriate high-intensity color (color8-15).
-
- In the case that the default foreground doesn't match one of the
- low-intensity colors, the bold attribute will use an `overstrike'
- to simulate a bold font. But note this leaves pixel-droppings and
- so, rather than wasting an inordinate amounts of energy to fix it,
- its use is simply deprecated.
-
- In the case that the default background doesn't match one of the
- low-intensity colors, the blink attribute is simply ignored
- (rather than representing it as bold as xterm does).
-
------
-
- Q: I don't like the screen colors. How do I change them?
-
- A: You can change the screen colors at run-time using ~/.Xdefaults
- resources (or as long-options) ... see the man-page.
-
- Here are values that are supposed to resemble a VGA screen,
- including the murky brown that passes for low-intensity yellow:
-
- Rxvt*color0: #000000
- Rxvt*color1: #A80000
- Rxvt*color2: #00A800
- Rxvt*color3: #A8A800
- Rxvt*color4: #0000A8
- Rxvt*color5: #A800A8
- Rxvt*color6: #00A8A8
- Rxvt*color7: #A8A8A8
-
- Rxvt*color8: #000054
- Rxvt*color9: #FF0054
- Rxvt*color10: #00FF54
- Rxvt*color11: #FFFF54
- Rxvt*color12: #0000FF
- Rxvt*color13: #FF00FF
- Rxvt*color14: #00FFFF
- Rxvt*color15: #FFFFFF
-
------
-
- Q: What's with the strange Backspace/Delete key behaviour?
-
- A: Assuming that the physical Backspace key corresponds to the
- BackSpace keysym (not likely for Linux ... see the following
- question) there are two standard values that can be used for
- Backspace: ^H and ^?.
-
- Rxvt tries to inherit the current stty settings and uses the value
- of `erase' to guess the value for backspace. If rxvt wasn't started
- from a terminal (say, from a menu or by remote shell), then the
- system value of `erase', which corresponds to CERASE in <termios.h>,
- will be used (which may not be the same as your stty setting).
-
- For starting a new rxvt:
-
- use Backspace = ^H
- $ stty erase ^H
- $ rxvt
-
- use Backspace = ^?
- $ stty erase ^?
- $ rxvt
-
- NB: generate either value with BackSpace and Ctrl/Shift-BackSpace.
- Toggle with "ESC[36h" / "ESC[36l" as documented in "doc/refer.txt"
-
- For an existing rxvt:
- use Backspace = ^H
- $ stty erase ^H
- $ echo -n "^[[36h"
-
- use Backspace = ^?
- $ stty erase ^?
- $ echo -n "^[[36l"
-
- This helps satisfy some of the Backspace discrepancies that occur,
- but if you use Backspace = ^?, make sure that the termcap/terminfo
- value properly reflects that.
-
- The Delete key (which one would expect to emit ^?) is a another
- casualty of the ill-defined Backspace problem. To avoid confusion
- between the Backspace and Delete keys, the Delete key has been
- assigned an escape sequence to match the vt100 for Execute (ESC[3~)
- and is in the supplied termcap/terminfo.
-
- Some other Backspace problems:
- some editors use termcap/terminfo,
- some editors (vim I'm told) expect Backspace = ^H,
- GNU Emacs (and Emacs-like editors) use ^H for help.
-
- Perhaps someday this will all be resolved in a consistent manner
- ... and maybe xterm will have Home/End values too!
-
------
-
- Q: Why doesn't the Backspace key work on my Linux machine?
-
- A: The XFree86 server has a notorious problem of mapping the Backspace
- key as Delete in order to match the Linux console.
-
- The correct way to fix this:
-
- 0 - Complain to your Linux distributer and the XFree86 team, maybe
- they'll fix it.
-
- 1 - Use xmodmap to correct the Backspace mapping
-
- ! ~/.Xmodmap
-
- ! a correctly-mapped BackSpace
- keycode 22 = BackSpace
-
- *** Make sure the keycode above matches the physical
- Backspace key on your machine!! (use xev) ***
-
- This will also fix the BackSpace problem with Motif applications,
- such as ``why doesn't Backspace work for Netscape?''
-
- You now have a Backspace key that functions as described in the
- previous question.
-
- 1a - You may also want to fix the regular xterm if it doesn't
- generates the desired value for BackSpace
-
- xterm*vt100.translations: #override \
- <Key>BackSpace: string(\010) \n
- or
- xterm*vt100.translations: #override \
- <Key>BackSpace: string(\177) \n
-
- while you are at it, you may also want to have consistent
- values to Home/End/Delete
-
- xterm*vt100.translations: #override \
- <Key>Home: string("\033[7~") \n\
- <Key>End: string("\033[8~") \n\
- <Key>Delete: string("\033[3~") \n
-
- Finally, you can also remap the rxvt key-binding at run-time (next
- question) but you'll lose the ability to have Ctrl/Shift-Backspace
- work differently as well as losing the escape sequence toggling of
- Backspace.
-
------
-
- Q: I don't like the key-bindings. How do I change them?
-
- A: There are some compile-time selections available via configure.
- Unless you have run "configure" with the "--disable-resources"
- option you can use the `keysym' resource to alter the keystrings
- associated with keysym 0xFF00 - 0xFFFF (function, cursor keys, etc).
-
- Here's an example for a tn3270 session started using
- `rxvt -name tn3270'
-
- !# ----- special uses ------:
- ! tn3270 login, remap function and arrow keys.
- tn3270*font: *clean-bold-*-*--15-*
-
- ! keysym - used by rxvt only
- ! Delete - ^D
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFFF: \004
-
- ! Home - ^A
- tn3270*keysym.0xFF50: \001
- ! Left - ^B
- tn3270*keysym.0xFF51: \002
- ! Up - ^P
- tn3270*keysym.0xFF52: \020
- ! Right - ^F
- tn3270*keysym.0xFF53: \006
- ! Down - ^N
- tn3270*keysym.0xFF54: \016
- ! End - ^E
- tn3270*keysym.0xFF57: \005
-
- ! F1 - F12
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFBE: \e1
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFBF: \e2
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC0: \e3
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC1: \e4
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC2: \e5
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC3: \e6
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC4: \e7
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC5: \e8
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC6: \e9
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC7: \e0
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC8: \e-
- tn3270*keysym.0xFFC9: \e=
-
- ! map Prior/Next to F7/F8
- tn3270*keysym.0xFF55: \e7
- tn3270*keysym.0xFF56: \e8
-
------
-
- Q: I'm using keyboard model XXX that has extra Prior/Next/Insert keys.
- How do I make use of them? For example, the Sun Keyboard type 4
- has the following mappings that rxvt doesn't recognize.
-
- KP_Insert == Insert
- F22 == Print
- F27 == Home
- F29 == Prior
- F33 == End
- F35 == Next
-
- A: Rather than have rxvt try to accomodate all the various possible
- keyboard mappings, it is better to use `xmodmap' to remap the
- keys as required for your particular machine.
-
------
-
- Q: How do I distinguish if I'm running rxvt or a regular xterm?
- I need this to decide about setting colors etc.
-
- A: rxvt always exports the variable "COLORTERM", so you can check and
- see if that is set. Note that several programs, JED, slrn, Midnight
- Commander automatically check this variable to decide whether or not
- to use color.
-
------
-
- Q: How do I set the correct, full IP address for the DISPLAY variable?
-
- A: If you've compiled rxvt with DISPLAY_IS_IP then it is
- possible to use the following shell script snippets to correctly set
- the display. If your version of rxvt wasn't also compiled with
- ESCZ_ANSWER (as assumed in these snippets) then the COLORTERM
- variable can be used to distinguish rxvt from a regular xterm.
-
- Courtesy of Chuck Blake <cblake@BBN.COM> with the following shell
- script snippets:
-
- # Bourne/Korn/POSIX family of shells:
- [ ${TERM:-foo} = foo ] && TERM=xterm # assume an xterm if we don't know
- if [ ${TERM:-foo} = xterm ]; then
- stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
- echo -n '^[Z'
- read term_id
- stty icanon echo
- if [ ""${term_id} = '^[[?1;2C' -a ${DISPLAY:-foo} = foo ]; then
- echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we are in for the DISPLAY string
- read DISPLAY # set it in our local shell
- fi
- fi
-
- csh/tcsh family of shells:
-
- if ( !(${?TERM}) ) then # if term is unset, we are probably in an xterm
- TERM = xterm
- endif
- if ( ${TERM} =~ xterm ) then
- stty -icanon -echo min 0 time 15 # see if enhanced rxvt or not
- echo -n '^[Z'
- set term_id=$<
- stty icanon echo
- if ( ""${term_id} == "^[[?1;2C" && ${?DISPLAY} == 0 ) then
- echo -n '^[[7n' # query the rxvt we're in for the DISPLAY string
- setenv DISPLAY "$<" # set it in our local shell
- endif
- endif
-
------
-
- Q: How do I compile the manual pages for myself? Where do I obtain
- yodl from?
-
- A: You need to obtain yodl and compile it to make the manual pages
- from source. The source code for yodl can currently be obtained
- from http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien/yodl/index.html
---
-EOF
projects / dana / urxvt.git / commitdiff