Provided by:
rxvt-unicode-ml_7.0-1_i386 
NAME
RXVT REFERENCE - FAQ, command sequences and other background
information
SYNOPSIS
# set a new font set
printf ’\33]50;%s\007’ 9x15,xft:Kochi" Mincho"
# change the locale and tell rxvt-unicode about it
export LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.EUC-JP; printf "\33]701;$LC_CTYPE\007"
# set window title
printf ’\33]2;%s\007’ "new window title"
DESCRIPTION
This document contains the FAQ, the RXVT TECHNICAL REFERENCE
documenting all escape sequences, and other background information.
The newest version of this document is also available on the World Wide
Web at
<http://cvs.schmorp.de/browse/*checkout*/rxvt-unicode/doc/rxvt.7.html>.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The new selection selects pieces that are too big, how can I select
single words?
Yes. For example, if you want to select alphanumeric words, you can
use the following resource:
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 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
Isn’t rxvt 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 being compiled in), but it actually uses less memory
(RSS) after startup. Even with "--disable-everything", this
comparison is a bit unfair, as many features unique to urxvt
(locale, encoding conversion, iso14755 etc.) are already in use in
this mode.
text data bss drs rss filename
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 and full locale/XIM support which are quite bloaty inside
libX11 and my libc), the two diverge, but not unreasnobaly so.
text data bss drs rss filename
163431 2152 24 20123 2060 rxvt --enable-everything
1035683 49680 66648 29096 3680 urxvt --enable-everything
The very large size of the text section is explained by the east-
asian encoding tables, which, if unused, take up disk space but
nothing else and can be compiled out unless you rely on X11 core
fonts that use those encodings. The BSS size comes from the 64k
emergency buffer that my c++ compiler allocates (but of course
doesn’t use unless you are out of memory). Also, using an xft font
instead of a core font immediately adds a few megabytes of RSS. Xft
indeed is responsible for a lot of RSS even when not used.
Of course, due to every character using two or four bytes instead
of one, a large scrollback buffer will ultimately make rxvt-unicode
use more memory.
Compared to e.g. Eterm (5112k), aterm (3132k) and xterm (4680k),
this still fares rather well. And compared to some monsters like
gnome-terminal (21152k + extra 4204k in separate processes) or
konsole (22200k + extra 43180k in daemons that stay around after
exit, plus half 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?
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 even shorter: It simply wouldn’t exist without C++.
My personal stance on this is that C++ is less portable than C, but
in the case of rxvt-unicode this hardly matters, as its portability
limits are defined by things like X11, pseudo terminals, locale
support and unix domain sockets, which are all less portable than
C++ itself.
Regarding the bloat, see the above question: It’s easy to write
programs in C that use gobs of memory, an certainly possible to
write programs in C++ that don’t. C++ also often comes with large
libraries, but this is not necessarily the case with GCC. Here is
what rxvt links against on my system with a minimal config:
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00002aaaaabc3000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002aaaaadde000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002aaaab01d000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002aaaaaaab000)
And here is rxvt-unicode:
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)
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?
rxvt-unicode does not directly support tabs. It will 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.
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.
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. 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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
I need to make it setuid/setgid to support utmp/ptys on my OS, is this
safe?
Likely not. While I honestly try to make it secure, and am probably
not bad at it, I think it is simply unreasonable to expect all of
freetype + fontconfig + xft + xlib + perl + ... + rxvt-unicode
itself to all be secure. Also, rxvt-unicode disables some options
when it detects that it runs setuid or setgid, which is not nice.
Besides, with the embedded perl interpreter the possibility for
security problems easily multiplies.
Elevated privileges are only required for utmp and pty operations
on some systems (for example, GNU/Linux doesn’t need any extra
privileges for ptys, but some need it for utmp support). It is
planned to mvoe this into a forked handler process, but this is not
yet done.
So, while setuid/setgid operation is supported and not a problem on
your typical single-user-no-other-logins unix desktop, always
remember that its an awful lot of code, most of which isn’t checked
for security issues regularly.
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 like this (with ncurses’ infocmp):
REMOTE=remotesystem.domain
infocmp rxvt-unicode │ ssh $REMOTE "cat >/tmp/ti && tic /tmp/ti"
... or by installing rxvt-unicode normally on the remote system,
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.
"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.
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 resonable 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 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:
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?
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" and the appropriate
terminfo file is installed. On Debian GNU/Linux, see
README.Debian.gz for further details. Also see the question When I
log-in to another system it tells me about missing terminfo data?
on how to do this).
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.
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.
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.
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 ’\e]701;%s\007’ "$LC_CTYPE"
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 :(
Why do some characters look so much different than others?
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 display.
rxvt-unicode makes a best-effort try at finding a replacement font.
Often the result is fine, but sometimes the chosen font looks
bad/ugly/wrong. Some fonts have totally strange characters that
don’t resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the
artificial intelligence to detect that a specific glyph is wrong:
it has to believe the font that the characters it claims to contain
indeed look correct.
In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font
list, e.g.:
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 font, and so on. Specifying your own fonts will also
speed up this search and use less resources within rxvt-unicode and
the X-server.
The only limitation is that none of the fonts may be larger than
the 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?
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 japanese/chinese character, it might choose a
japanese font for display. Subsequent japanese characters will use
that font. Now, many chinese characters aren’t represented in
japanese fonts, so when the first non-japanese character comes up,
rxvt-unicode will look for a chinese font -- unfortunately at this
point, it will still use the japanese font for chinese characters
that are also in the japanese font.
The workaround is easy: just tag a chinese font at the end of your
font list (see the previous question). The key is to view the font
list as a preference list: If you expect more japanese, list a
japanese font first. If you expect more chinese, put a chinese font
first.
In the future it might be possible to switch language preferences
at runtime (the internal data structure has no problem with using
different fonts for the same character at the same time, but no
interface for this has been designed yet).
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.
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).
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.
All of this is not a problem when using X11 core fonts, as their
bounding box data is correct.
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:
#define wcwidth(x) wcwidth(x) > 1 ? 1 : wcwidth(x)
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 method (e.g. the default input method
handling Compose keys) does not support this (for instance because
it is not visual), then rxvt-unicode will continue without an input
method.
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
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:
URxvt.colorBD: white
URxvt.colorIT: green
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"__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.
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).
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 encoding, ignores country or language-specific settings, i.e.
"de_DE.UTF-8" and "ja_JP.UTF-8" are the normally same to
rxvt-unicode.
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?
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
See also the previous answer.
Sometimes this capability is rather handy when you want to work in
one locale (e.g. "de_DE.UTF-8") but some programs don’t support it
(e.g. 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
xjdic -js
printf ’\e]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:
printf ’\e]50;%s\007’ "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"
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.
You can think of this as a kind of manual ISO-2022 switching.
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:
URxvt.italicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:italic:autohint=true
URxvt.boldItalicFont: xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:bold:italic:autohint=true
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.
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 exit time. kinput2 (and derived input methods)
generally succeeds, while SCIM (or similar input methods) fails. In
the end, however, crashes cannot be completely avoided even if both
sides cooperate.
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 urxvtd in a race-free way?
Try "urxvtd -f -o", which tells urxvtd 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
$ urxvt
# use Backspace = ^?
$ stty erase ^?
$ urxvt
Toggle with "ESC [ 36 h" / "ESC [ 36 l".
For an existing rxvt-unicode:
# 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 = "^H", make sure that the
termcap/terminfo value properly reflects that.
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.
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.
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.
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 mappings that rxvt-unicode doesn’t recognize.
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.
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 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.
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
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".
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 :).
RXVT TECHNICAL REFERENCE
DESCRIPTION
The rest of this document describes various technical aspects of rxvt-
unicode. First the description of supported command sequences, followed
by menu and pixmap support and last by a description of all features
selectable at "configure" time.
Definitions
"c" The literal character c.
"C" A single (required) character.
"Ps"
A single (usually optional) numeric parameter, composed of one or
more digits.
"Pm"
A multiple numeric parameter composed of any number of single
numeric parameters, separated by ";" character(s).
"Pt"
A text parameter composed of printable characters.
Values
"ENQ"
Enquiry (Ctrl-E) = Send Device Attributes (DA) request attributes
from terminal. See "ESC [ Ps c".
"BEL"
Bell (Ctrl-G)
"BS"
Backspace (Ctrl-H)
"TAB"
Horizontal Tab (HT) (Ctrl-I)
"LF"
Line Feed or New Line (NL) (Ctrl-J)
"VT"
Vertical Tab (Ctrl-K) same as "LF"
"FF"
Form Feed or New Page (NP) (Ctrl-L) same as "LF"
"CR"
Carriage Return (Ctrl-M)
"SO"
Shift Out (Ctrl-N), invokes the G1 character set. Switch to
Alternate Character Set
"SI"
Shift In (Ctrl-O), invokes the G0 character set (the default).
Switch to Standard Character Set
"SPC"
Space Character
Escape Sequences
"ESC # 8"
DEC Screen Alignment Test (DECALN)
"ESC 7"
Save Cursor (SC)
"ESC 8"
Restore Cursor
"ESC ="
Application Keypad (SMKX). See also next sequence.
"ESC"
Normal Keypad (RMKX)
Note: If the numeric keypad is activated, eg, Num_Lock has been
pressed, numbers or control functions are generated by the numeric
keypad (see Key Codes).
"ESC D"
Index (IND)
"ESC E"
Next Line (NEL)
"ESC H"
Tab Set (HTS)
"ESC M"
Reverse Index (RI)
"ESC N"
Single Shift Select of G2 Character Set (SS2): affects next
character only unimplemented
"ESC O"
Single Shift Select of G3 Character Set (SS3): affects next
character only unimplemented
"ESC Z"
Obsolete form of returns: "ESC [ ? 1 ; 2 C" rxvt-unicode compile-
time option
"ESC c"
Full reset (RIS)
"ESC n"
Invoke the G2 Character Set (LS2)
"ESC o"
Invoke the G3 Character Set (LS3)
"ESC ( C"
Designate G0 Character Set (ISO 2022), see below for values of "C".
"ESC ) C"
Designate G1 Character Set (ISO 2022), see below for values of "C".
"ESC * C"
Designate G2 Character Set (ISO 2022), see below for values of "C".
"ESC + C"
Designate G3 Character Set (ISO 2022), see below for values of "C".
"ESC $ C"
Designate Kanji Character Set
Where "C" is one of:
C = 0 DEC Special Character and Line Drawing Set
C = A United Kingdom (UK)
C = B United States (USASCII)
C = < Multinational character set unimplemented
C = 5 Finnish character set unimplemented
C = C Finnish character set unimplemented
C = K German character set unimplemented
CSI (Command Sequence Introducer) Sequences
"ESC [ Ps @"
Insert "Ps" (Blank) Character(s) [default: 1] (ICH)
"ESC [ Ps A"
Cursor Up "Ps" Times [default: 1] (CUU)
"ESC [ Ps B"
Cursor Down "Ps" Times [default: 1] (CUD)
"ESC [ Ps C"
Cursor Forward "Ps" Times [default: 1] (CUF)
"ESC [ Ps D"
Cursor Backward "Ps" Times [default: 1] (CUB)
"ESC [ Ps E"
Cursor Down "Ps" Times [default: 1] and to first column
"ESC [ Ps F"
Cursor Up "Ps" Times [default: 1] and to first column
"ESC [ Ps G"
Cursor to Column "Ps" (HPA)
"ESC [ Ps;Ps H"
Cursor Position [row;column] [default: 1;1] (CUP)
"ESC [ Ps I"
Move forward "Ps" tab stops [default: 1]
"ESC [ Ps J"
Erase in Display (ED)
Ps = 0 Clear Below (default)
Ps = 1 Clear Above
Ps = 2 Clear All
"ESC [ Ps K"
Erase in Line (EL)
Ps = 0 Clear to Right (default)
Ps = 1 Clear to Left
Ps = 2 Clear All
"ESC [ Ps L"
Insert "Ps" Line(s) [default: 1] (IL)
"ESC [ Ps M"
Delete "Ps" Line(s) [default: 1] (DL)
"ESC [ Ps P"
Delete "Ps" Character(s) [default: 1] (DCH)
"ESC [ Ps;Ps;Ps;Ps;Ps T"
Initiate . unimplemented Parameters are
[func;startx;starty;firstrow;lastrow].
"ESC [ Ps W"
Tabulator functions
Ps = 0 Tab Set (HTS)
Ps = 2 Tab Clear (TBC), Clear Current Column (default)
Ps = 5 Tab Clear (TBC), Clear All
"ESC [ Ps X"
Erase "Ps" Character(s) [default: 1] (ECH)
"ESC [ Ps Z"
Move backward "Ps" [default: 1] tab stops
"ESC [ Ps â€â€™"
See "ESC [ Ps G"
"ESC [ Ps a"
See "ESC [ Ps C"
"ESC [ Ps c"
Send Device Attributes (DA) "Ps = 0" (or omitted): request
attributes from terminal returns: "ESC [ ? 1 ; 2 c" (‘‘I am a VT100
with Advanced Video Option’’)
"ESC [ Ps d"
Cursor to Line "Ps" (VPA)
"ESC [ Ps e"
See "ESC [ Ps A"
"ESC [ Ps;Ps f"
Horizontal and Vertical Position [row;column] (HVP) [default: 1;1]
"ESC [ Ps g"
Tab Clear (TBC)
Ps = 0 Clear Current Column (default)
Ps = 3 Clear All (TBC)
"ESC [ Pm h"
Set Mode (SM). See "ESC [ Pm l" sequence for description of "Pm".
"ESC [ Ps i"
Printing. See also the "print-pipe" resource.
Ps = 0 print screen (MC0)
Ps = 4 disable transparent print mode (MC4)
Ps = 5 enable transparent print mode (MC5)
"ESC [ Pm l"
Reset Mode (RM)
"Ps = 4"
h Insert Mode (SMIR)
l Replace Mode (RMIR)
"Ps = 20" (partially implemented)
h Automatic Newline (LNM)
l Normal Linefeed (LNM)
"ESC [ Pm m"
Character Attributes (SGR)
Ps = 0 Normal (default)
Ps = 1 / 21 On / Off Bold (bright fg)
Ps = 3 / 23 On / Off Italic
Ps = 4 / 24 On / Off Underline
Ps = 5 / 25 On / Off Slow Blink (bright bg)
Ps = 6 / 26 On / Off Rapid Blink (bright bg)
Ps = 7 / 27 On / Off Inverse
Ps = 8 / 27 On / Off Invisible (NYI)
Ps = 30 / 40 fg/bg Black
Ps = 31 / 41 fg/bg Red
Ps = 32 / 42 fg/bg Green
Ps = 33 / 43 fg/bg Yellow
Ps = 34 / 44 fg/bg Blue
Ps = 35 / 45 fg/bg Magenta
Ps = 36 / 46 fg/bg Cyan
Ps = 38;5 / 48;5 set fg/bg to color #m (ISO 8613-6)
Ps = 37 / 47 fg/bg White
Ps = 39 / 49 fg/bg Default
Ps = 90 / 100 fg/bg Bright Black
Ps = 91 / 101 fg/bg Bright Red
Ps = 92 / 102 fg/bg Bright Green
Ps = 93 / 103 fg/bg Bright Yellow
Ps = 94 / 104 fg/bg Bright Blue
Ps = 95 / 105 fg/bg Bright Magenta
Ps = 96 / 106 fg/bg Bright Cyan
Ps = 97 / 107 fg/bg Bright White
Ps = 99 / 109 fg/bg Bright Default
"ESC [ Ps n"
Device Status Report (DSR)
Ps = 5 Status Report ESC [ 0 n (‘‘OK’’)
Ps = 6 Report Cursor Position (CPR) [row;column] as ESC [ r ; c R
Ps = 7 Request Display Name
Ps = 8 Request Version Number (place in window title)
"ESC [ Ps;Ps r"
Set Scrolling Region [top;bottom] [default: full size of window]
(CSR)
"ESC [ s"
Save Cursor (SC)
"ESC [ Ps;Pt t"
Window Operations
Ps = 1 Deiconify (map) window
Ps = 2 Iconify window
Ps = 3 ESC [ 3 ; X ; Y t Move window to (X│Y)
Ps = 4 ESC [ 4 ; H ; W t Resize to WxH pixels
Ps = 5 Raise window
Ps = 6 Lower window
Ps = 7 Refresh screen once
Ps = 8 ESC [ 8 ; R ; C t Resize to R rows and C columns
Ps = 11 Report window state (responds with Ps = 1 or Ps = 2)
Ps = 13 Report window position (responds with Ps = 3)
Ps = 14 Report window pixel size (responds with Ps = 4)
Ps = 18 Report window text size (responds with Ps = 7)
Ps = 19 Currently the same as Ps = 18, but responds with Ps = 9
Ps = 20 Reports icon label (ESC ] L NAME 234)
Ps = 21 Reports window title (ESC ] l NAME 234)
Ps = 24.. Set window height to Ps rows
"ESC [ u"
Restore Cursor
"ESC [ Ps x"
Request Terminal Parameters (DECREQTPARM)
DEC Private Modes
"ESC [ ? Pm h"
DEC Private Mode Set (DECSET)
"ESC [ ? Pm l"
DEC Private Mode Reset (DECRST)
"ESC [ ? Pm r"
Restore previously saved DEC Private Mode Values.
"ESC [ ? Pm s"
Save DEC Private Mode Values.
"ESC [ ? Pm t"
Toggle DEC Private Mode Values (rxvt extension). where
"Ps = 1" (DECCKM)
h Application Cursor Keys
l Normal Cursor Keys
"Ps = 2" (ANSI/VT52 mode)
h Enter VT52 mode
l Enter VT52 mode
"Ps = 3"
h 132 Column Mode (DECCOLM)
l 80 Column Mode (DECCOLM)
"Ps = 4"
h Smooth (Slow) Scroll (DECSCLM)
l Jump (Fast) Scroll (DECSCLM)
"Ps = 5"
h Reverse Video (DECSCNM)
l Normal Video (DECSCNM)
"Ps = 6"
h Origin Mode (DECOM)
l Normal Cursor Mode (DECOM)
"Ps = 7"
h Wraparound Mode (DECAWM)
l No Wraparound Mode (DECAWM)
"Ps = 8" unimplemented
h Auto-repeat Keys (DECARM)
l No Auto-repeat Keys (DECARM)
"Ps = 9" X10 XTerm
h Send Mouse X & Y on button press.
l No mouse reporting.
"Ps = 10" (rxvt)
h menuBar visible
l menuBar invisible
"Ps = 25"
h Visible cursor {cnorm/cvvis}
l Invisible cursor {civis}
"Ps = 30"
h scrollBar visisble
l scrollBar invisisble
"Ps = 35" (rxvt)
h Allow XTerm Shift+key sequences
l Disallow XTerm Shift+key sequences
"Ps = 38" unimplemented
Enter Tektronix Mode (DECTEK)
"Ps = 40"
h Allow 80/132 Mode
l Disallow 80/132 Mode
"Ps = 44" unimplemented
h Turn On Margin Bell
l Turn Off Margin Bell
"Ps = 45" unimplemented
h Reverse-wraparound Mode
l No Reverse-wraparound Mode
"Ps = 46" unimplemented
"Ps = 47"
h Use Alternate Screen Buffer
l Use Normal Screen Buffer
"Ps = 66"
h Application Keypad (DECPAM) == ESC =
l Normal Keypad (DECPNM) == ESC >
"Ps = 67"
h Backspace key sends BS (DECBKM)
l Backspace key sends DEL
"Ps = 1000" (X11 XTerm)
h Send Mouse X & Y on button press and release.
l No mouse reporting.
"Ps = 1001" (X11 XTerm) unimplemented
h Use Hilite Mouse Tracking.
l No mouse reporting.
"Ps = 1010" (rxvt)
h Don’t scroll to bottom on TTY output
l Scroll to bottom on TTY output
"Ps = 1011" (rxvt)
h Scroll to bottom when a key is pressed
l Don’t scroll to bottom when a key is pressed
"Ps = 1021" (rxvt)
h Bold/italic implies high intensity (see option -is)
l Font styles have no effect on intensity (Compile styles)
"Ps = 1047"
h Use Alternate Screen Buffer
l Use Normal Screen Buffer - clear Alternate Screen Buffer if returning from it
"Ps = 1048"
h Save cursor position
l Restore cursor position
"Ps = 1049"
h Use Alternate Screen Buffer - clear Alternate Screen Buffer if switching to it
l Use Normal Screen Buffer
XTerm Operating System Commands
"ESC ] Ps;Pt ST"
Set XTerm Parameters. 8-bit ST: 0x9c, 7-bit ST sequence: ESC \
(0x1b, 0x5c), backwards compatible terminator BEL (0x07) is also
accepted. any octet can be escaped by prefixing it with SYN (0x16,
^V).
Ps = 0 Change Icon Name and Window Title to Pt
Ps = 1 Change Icon Name to Pt
Ps = 2 Change Window Title to Pt
Ps = 3 If Pt starts with a ?, query the (STRING) property of the window and return it. If Pt contains a =, set the named property to the given value, else delete the specified property.
Ps = 4 Pt is a semi-colon separated sequence of one or more semi-colon separated number/name pairs, where number is an index to a colour and name is the name of a colour. Each pair causes the numbered colour to be changed to name. Numbers 0-7 corresponds to low-intensity (normal) colours and 8-15 corresponds to high-intensity colours. 0=black, 1=red, 2=green, 3=yellow, 4=blue, 5=magenta, 6=cyan, 7=white
Ps = 10 Change colour of text foreground to Pt (NB: may change in future)
Ps = 11 Change colour of text background to Pt (NB: may change in future)
Ps = 12 Change colour of text cursor foreground to Pt
Ps = 13 Change colour of mouse foreground to Pt
Ps = 17 Change colour of highlight characters to Pt
Ps = 18 Change colour of bold characters to Pt [deprecated, see 706]
Ps = 19 Change colour of underlined characters to Pt [deprecated, see 707]
Ps = 20 Change default background to Pt
Ps = 39 Change default foreground colour to Pt.
Ps = 46 Change Log File to Pt unimplemented
Ps = 49 Change default background colour to Pt.
Ps = 50 Set fontset to Pt, with the following special values of Pt (rxvt) #+n change up n #-n change down n if n is missing of 0, a value of 1 is used empty change to font0 n change to font n
Ps = 55 Log all scrollback buffer and all of screen to Pt
Ps = 701 Change current locale to Pt, or, if Pt is ?, return the current locale (Compile frills).
Ps = 703 Menubar command Pt (Compile menubar).
Ps = 704 Change colour of italic characters to Pt
Ps = 705 Change background pixmap tint colour to Pt (Compile transparency).
Ps = 706 Change colour of bold characters to Pt
Ps = 707 Change colour of underlined characters to Pt
Ps = 710 Set normal fontset to Pt. Same as Ps = 50.
Ps = 711 Set bold fontset to Pt. Similar to Ps = 50 (Compile styles).
Ps = 712 Set italic fontset to Pt. Similar to Ps = 50 (Compile styles).
Ps = 713 Set bold-italic fontset to Pt. Similar to Ps = 50 (Compile styles).
Ps = 720 Move viewing window up by Pt lines, or clear scrollback buffer if Pt = 0 (Compile frills).
Ps = 721 Move viewing window down by Pt lines, or clear scrollback buffer if Pt = 0 (Compile frills).
Ps = 777 Call the perl extension with the given string, which should be of the form extension:parameters (Compile perl).
menuBar
The exact syntax used is almost solidified. In the menus, DONâ€â€™T try to
use menuBar commands that add or remove a menuBar.
Note that in all of the commands, the /path/ cannot be omitted: use ./
to specify a menu relative to the current menu.
Overview of menuBar operation
For the menuBar XTerm escape sequence "ESC ] 703 ; Pt ST", the syntax
of "Pt" can be used for a variety of tasks:
At the top level is the current menuBar which is a member of a circular
linked-list of other such menuBars.
The menuBar acts as a parent for the various drop-down menus, which in
turn, may have labels, separator lines, menuItems and subMenus.
The menuItems are the useful bits: you can use them to mimic keyboard
input or even to send text or escape sequences back to rxvt.
The menuBar syntax is intended to provide a simple yet robust method of
constructing and manipulating menus and navigating through the
menuBars.
The first step is to use the tag [menu:name] which creates the menuBar
called name and allows access. You may now or menus, subMenus, and
menuItems. Finally, use the tag [done] to set the menuBar access as
readonly to prevent accidental corruption of the menus. To re-access
the current menuBar for alterations, use the tag [menu], make the
alterations and then use [done]
Commands
[menu:+name]
access the named menuBar for creation or alteration. If a new
menuBar is created, it is called name (max of 15 chars) and the
current menuBar is pushed onto the stack
[menu]
access the current menuBar for alteration
[title:+string]
set the current menuBar’s title to string, which may contain the
following format specifiers:
B<%n> rxvt name (as per the B<-name> command-line option)
B<%v> rxvt version
B<%%> literal B<%> character
[done]
set menuBar access as readonly. End-of-file tag for [read:+file]
operations.
[read:+file]
read menu commands directly from file (extension ".menu" will be
appended if required.) Start reading at a line with [menu] or
[menu:+name and continuing until [done] is encountered.
Blank and comment lines (starting with #) are ignored. Actually,
since any invalid menu commands are also ignored, almost anything
could be construed as a comment line, but this may be tightened up
in the future ... so don’t count on it!.
[read:+file;+name]
The same as [read:+file], but start reading at a line with
[menu:+name] and continuing until [done:+name] or [done] is
encountered.
[dump]
dump all menuBars to the file /tmp/rxvt-PID in a format suitable
for later rereading.
[rm:name]
remove the named menuBar
[rm] [rm:]
remove the current menuBar
[rm*] [rm:*]
remove all menuBars
[swap]
swap the top two menuBars
[prev]
access the previous menuBar
[next]
access the next menuBar
[show]
Enable display of the menuBar
[hide]
Disable display of the menuBar
[pixmap:+name]
[pixmap:+name;scaling]
(set the background pixmap globally
A Future implementation may make this local to the menubar)
[:+command:]
ignore the menu readonly status and issue a command to or a menu or
menuitem or change the ; a useful shortcut for setting the quick
arrows from a menuBar.
Adding and accessing menus
The following commands may also be + prefixed.
/+ access menuBar top level
./+ access current menu level
../+
access parent menu (1 level up)
../../
access parent menu (multiple levels up)
/path/menu
add/access menu
/path/menu/*
add/access menu and clear it if it exists
/path/{-}
add separator
/path/{item}
add item as a label
/path/{item} action
add/alter menuitem with an associated action
/path/{item}{right-text}
add/alter menuitem with right-text as the right-justified text and
as the associated action
/path/{item}{rtext} action
add/alter menuitem with an associated action and with rtext as the
right-justified text.
Special characters in action must be backslash-escaped:
\a \b \E \e \n \r \t \octal
or in control-character notation:
^@, ^A .. ^Z .. ^_, ^?
To send a string starting with a NUL (^@) character to the program,
start action with a pair of NUL characters (^@^@), the first of which
will be stripped off and the balance directed to the program. Otherwise
if action begins with NUL followed by non-+NUL characters, the leading
NUL is stripped off and the balance is sent back to rxvt.
As a convenience for the many Emacs-type editors, action may start with
M- (eg, M-$ is equivalent to \E$) and a CR will be appended if missed
from M-x commands.
As a convenience for issuing XTerm ESC ] sequences from a menubar (or
quick arrow), a BEL (^G) will be appended if needed.
For example,
M-xapropos is equivalent to \Exapropos\r
and \E]703;mona;100 is equivalent to \E]703;mona;100\a
The option {right-rtext} will be right-justified. In the absence of a
specified action, this text will be used as the action as well.
For example,
/File/{Open}{^X^F} is equivalent to /File/{Open}{^X^F} ^X^F
The left label is necessary, since it’s used for matching, but
implicitly hiding the left label (by using same name for both left and
right labels), or explicitly hiding the left label (by preceeding it
with a dot), makes it possible to have right-justified text only.
For example,
/File/{Open}{Open} Open-File-Action
or hiding it
/File/{.anylabel}{Open} Open-File-Action
Removing menus
-/*+
remove all menus from the menuBar, the same as [clear]
-+/pathmenu+
remove menu
-+/path{item}+
remove item
-+/path{-}
remove separator)
-/path/menu/*
remove all items, separators and submenus from menu
Quick Arrows
The menus also provide a hook for quick arrows to provide easier user
access. If nothing has been explicitly set, the default is to emulate
the curror keys. The syntax permits each arrow to be altered
individually or all four at once without re-entering their common
beginning/end text. For example, to explicitly associate cursor actions
with the arrows, any of the following forms could be used:
<r>+Right
<l>+Left
<u>+Up
<d>+Down
Define actions for the respective arrow buttons
<b>+Begin
<e>+End
Define common beginning/end parts for quick arrows which used in
conjunction with the above <r> <l> <u> <d> constructs
For example, define arrows individually,
<u>\E[A
<d>\E[B
<r>\E[C
<l>\E[D
or all at once
<u>\E[AZ<><d>\E[BZ<><r>\E[CZ<><l>\E[D
or more compactly (factoring out common parts)
<b>\E[<u>AZ<><d>BZ<><r>CZ<><l>D
Command Summary
A short summary of the most common commands:
[menu:name]
use an existing named menuBar or start a new one
[menu]
use the current menuBar
[title:string]
set menuBar title
[done]
set menu access to readonly and, if reading from a file, signal EOF
[done:name]
if reading from a file using [read:file;name] signal EOF
[rm:name]
remove named menuBar(s)
[rm] [rm:]
remove current menuBar
[rm*] [rm:*]
remove all menuBar(s)
[swap]
swap top two menuBars
[prev]
access the previous menuBar
[next]
access the next menuBar
[show]
map menuBar
[hide]
unmap menuBar
[pixmap;file]
[pixmap;file;scaling]
set a background pixmap
[read:file]
[read:file;name]
read in a menu from a file
[dump]
dump out all menuBars to /tmp/rxvt-PID
/ access menuBar top level
./
../
../../
access current or parent menu level
/path/menu
add/access menu
/path/{-}
add separator
/path/{item}{rtext} action
add/alter menu item
-/* remove all menus from the menuBar
-/path/menu
remove menu items, separators and submenus from menu
-/path/menu
remove menu
-/path/{item}
remove item
-/path/{-}
remove separator
<b>Begin<r>Right<l>Left<u>Up<d>Down<e>End
menu quick arrows
XPM
For the XPM XTerm escape sequence "ESC ] 20 ; Pt ST" then value of "Pt"
can be the name of the background pixmap followed by a sequence of
scaling/positioning commands separated by semi-colons. The
scaling/positioning commands are as follows:
query scale/position
?
change scale and position
WxH+X+Y
WxH+X (== WxH+X+X)
WxH (same as WxH+50+50)
W+X+Y (same as WxW+X+Y)
W+X (same as WxW+X+X)
W (same as WxW+50+50)
change position (absolute)
=+X+Y
=+X (same as =+X+Y)
change position (relative)
+X+Y
+X (same as +X+Y)
rescale (relative)
Wx0 -> W *= (W/100)
0xH -> H *= (H/100)
For example:
\E]20;funky\a
load funky.xpm as a tiled image
\E]20;mona;100\a
load mona.xpm with a scaling of 100%
\E]20;;200;?\a
rescale the current pixmap to 200% and display the image geometry
in the title
Mouse Reporting
"ESC [ M <b> <x> <y>"
report mouse position
The lower 2 bits of "<b>" indicate the button:
Button = "(<b> - SPACE) & 3"
0 Button1 pressed
1 Button2 pressed
2 Button3 pressed
3 button released (X11 mouse report)
The upper bits of "<b>" indicate the modifiers when the button was
pressed and are added together (X11 mouse report only):
State = "(<b> - SPACE) & 60"
4 Shift
8 Meta
16 Control
32 Double Click (Rxvt extension)
Col = "<x> - SPACE"
Row = "<y> - SPACE"
Key Codes
Note: Shift + F1-F10 generates F11-F20
For the keypad, use Shift to temporarily override Application-Keypad
setting use Num_Lock to toggle Application-Keypad setting if Num_Lock
is off, toggle Application-Keypad setting. Also note that values of
Home, End, Delete may have been compiled differently on your system.
Normal Shift Control Ctrl+Shift
Tab ^I ESC [ Z ^I ESC [ Z
BackSpace ^H ^? ^? ^?
Find ESC [ 1 ~ ESC [ 1 $ ESC [ 1 ^ ESC [ 1 @
Insert ESC [ 2 ~ paste ESC [ 2 ^ ESC [ 2 @
Execute ESC [ 3 ~ ESC [ 3 $ ESC [ 3 ^ ESC [ 3 @
Select ESC [ 4 ~ ESC [ 4 $ ESC [ 4 ^ ESC [ 4 @
Prior ESC [ 5 ~ scroll-up ESC [ 5 ^ ESC [ 5 @
Next ESC [ 6 ~ scroll-down ESC [ 6 ^ ESC [ 6 @
Home ESC [ 7 ~ ESC [ 7 $ ESC [ 7 ^ ESC [ 7 @
End ESC [ 8 ~ ESC [ 8 $ ESC [ 8 ^ ESC [ 8 @
Delete ESC [ 3 ~ ESC [ 3 $ ESC [ 3 ^ ESC [ 3 @
F1 ESC [ 11 ~ ESC [ 23 ~ ESC [ 11 ^ ESC [ 23 ^
F2 ESC [ 12 ~ ESC [ 24 ~ ESC [ 12 ^ ESC [ 24 ^
F3 ESC [ 13 ~ ESC [ 25 ~ ESC [ 13 ^ ESC [ 25 ^
F4 ESC [ 14 ~ ESC [ 26 ~ ESC [ 14 ^ ESC [ 26 ^
F5 ESC [ 15 ~ ESC [ 28 ~ ESC [ 15 ^ ESC [ 28 ^
F6 ESC [ 17 ~ ESC [ 29 ~ ESC [ 17 ^ ESC [ 29 ^
F7 ESC [ 18 ~ ESC [ 31 ~ ESC [ 18 ^ ESC [ 31 ^
F8 ESC [ 19 ~ ESC [ 32 ~ ESC [ 19 ^ ESC [ 32 ^
F9 ESC [ 20 ~ ESC [ 33 ~ ESC [ 20 ^ ESC [ 33 ^
F10 ESC [ 21 ~ ESC [ 34 ~ ESC [ 21 ^ ESC [ 34 ^
F11 ESC [ 23 ~ ESC [ 23 $ ESC [ 23 ^ ESC [ 23 @
F12 ESC [ 24 ~ ESC [ 24 $ ESC [ 24 ^ ESC [ 24 @
F13 ESC [ 25 ~ ESC [ 25 $ ESC [ 25 ^ ESC [ 25 @
F14 ESC [ 26 ~ ESC [ 26 $ ESC [ 26 ^ ESC [ 26 @
F15 (Help) ESC [ 28 ~ ESC [ 28 $ ESC [ 28 ^ ESC [ 28 @
F16 (Menu) ESC [ 29 ~ ESC [ 29 $ ESC [ 29 ^ ESC [ 29 @
F17 ESC [ 31 ~ ESC [ 31 $ ESC [ 31 ^ ESC [ 31 @
F18 ESC [ 32 ~ ESC [ 32 $ ESC [ 32 ^ ESC [ 32 @
F19 ESC [ 33 ~ ESC [ 33 $ ESC [ 33 ^ ESC [ 33 @
F20 ESC [ 34 ~ ESC [ 34 $ ESC [ 34 ^ ESC [ 34 @
Application
Up ESC [ A ESC [ a ESC O a ESC O A
Down ESC [ B ESC [ b ESC O b ESC O B
Right ESC [ C ESC [ c ESC O c ESC O C
Left ESC [ D ESC [ d ESC O d ESC O D
KP_Enter ^M ESC O M
KP_F1 ESC O P ESC O P
KP_F2 ESC O Q ESC O Q
KP_F3 ESC O R ESC O R
KP_F4 ESC O S ESC O S
XK_KP_Multiply * ESC O j
XK_KP_Add + ESC O k
XK_KP_Separator , ESC O l
XK_KP_Subtract - ESC O m
XK_KP_Decimal . ESC O n
XK_KP_Divide / ESC O o
XK_KP_0 0 ESC O p
XK_KP_1 1 ESC O q
XK_KP_2 2 ESC O r
XK_KP_3 3 ESC O s
XK_KP_4 4 ESC O t
XK_KP_5 5 ESC O u
XK_KP_6 6 ESC O v
XK_KP_7 7 ESC O w
XK_KP_8 8 ESC O x
XK_KP_9 9 ESC O y
CONFIGURE OPTIONS
General hint: if you get compile errors, then likely your configuration
hasn’t been tested well. Either try with "--enable-everything" or use
the ./reconf script as a base for experiments. ./reconf is used by
myself, so it should generally be a working config. Of course, you
should always report when a combination doesn’t work, so it can be
fixed. Marc Lehmann <rxvt@schmorp.de>.
All
--enable-everything
Add (or remove) support for all non-multichoice options listed in
"./configure --help".
You can specify this and then disable options you do not like by
following this with the appropriate "--disable-..." arguments, or
you can start with a minimal configuration by specifying
"--disable-everything" and than adding just the "--enable-..."
arguments you want.
--enable-xft (default: enabled)
Add support for Xft (anti-aliases, among others) fonts. Xft fonts
are slower and require lots of memory, but as long as you don’t use
them, you don’t pay for them.
--enable-font-styles (default: on)
Add support for bold, italic and bold italic font styles. The fonts
can be set manually or automatically.
--with-codesets=NAME,... (default: all)
Compile in support for additional codeset (encoding) groups ("eu",
"vn" are always compiled in, which includes most 8-bit character
sets). These codeset tables are used for driving X11 core fonts,
they are not required for Xft fonts, although having them compiled
in lets rxvt-unicode choose replacement fonts more intelligently.
Compiling them in will make your binary bigger (all of together
cost about 700kB), but it doesn’t increase memory usage unless you
use a font requiring one of these encodings.
all all available codeset groups
zh common chinese encodings
zh_ext rarely used but very big chinese encodigs
jp common japanese encodings
jp_ext rarely used but big japanese encodings
kr korean encodings
--enable-xim (default: on)
Add support for XIM (X Input Method) protocol. This allows using
alternative input methods (e.g. kinput2) and will also correctly
set up the input for people using dead keys or compose keys.
--enable-unicode3 (default: off)
Enable direct support for displaying unicode codepoints above 65535
(the basic multilingual page). This increases storage requirements
per character from 2 to 4 bytes. X11 fonts do not yet support these
extra characters, but Xft does.
Please note that rxvt-unicode can store unicode code points >65535
even without this flag, but the number of such characters is
limited to a view thousand (shared with combining characters, see
next switch), and right now rxvt-unicode cannot display them
(input/output and cut&paste still work, though).
--enable-combining (default: on)
Enable automatic composition of combining characters into composite
characters. This is required for proper viewing of text where
accents are encoded as seperate unicode characters. This is done by
using precomposited characters when available or creating new
pseudo-characters when no precomposed form exists.
Without --enable-unicode3, the number of additional precomposed
characters is rather limited (2048, if this is full, rxvt-unicode
will use the private use area, extending the number of combinations
to 8448). With --enable-unicode3, no practical limit exists.
This option will also enable storage (but not display) of
characters beyond plane 0 (>65535) when --enable-unicode3 was not
specified.
The combining table also contains entries for arabic presentation
forms, but these are not currently used. Bug me if you want these
to be used (and tell me how these are to be used...).
--enable-fallback(=CLASS) (default: Rxvt)
When reading resource settings, also read settings for class CLASS.
To disable resource fallback use --disable-fallback.
--with-res-name=NAME (default: urxvt)
Use the given name as default application name when reading
resources. Specify --with-res-name=rxvt to replace rxvt.
--with-res-class=CLASS /default: URxvt)
Use the given class as default application class when reading
resources. Specify --with-res-class=Rxvt to replace rxvt.
--enable-utmp (default: on)
Write user and tty to utmp file (used by programs like w) at start
of rxvt execution and delete information when rxvt exits.
--enable-wtmp (default: on)
Write user and tty to wtmp file (used by programs like last) at
start of rxvt execution and write logout when rxvt exits. This
option requires --enable-utmp to also be specified.
--enable-lastlog (default: on)
Write user and tty to lastlog file (used by programs like
lastlogin) at start of rxvt execution. This option requires
--enable-utmp to also be specified.
--enable-xpm-background (default: on)
Add support for XPM background pixmaps.
--enable-transparency (default: on)
Add support for inheriting parent backgrounds thus giving a fake
transparency to the term.
--enable-fading (default: on)
Add support for fading the text when focus is lost (requires
"--enable-transparency").
--enable-tinting (default: on)
Add support for tinting of transparent backgrounds (requires
"--enable-transparency").
--enable-menubar (default: off) [DEPRECATED]
Add support for our menu bar system (this interacts badly with
dynamic locale switching currently). This option is DEPRECATED and
will be removed in the future.
--enable-rxvt-scroll (default: on)
Add support for the original rxvt scrollbar.
--enable-next-scroll (default: on)
Add support for a NeXT-like scrollbar.
--enable-xterm-scroll (default: on)
Add support for an Xterm-like scrollbar.
--enable-plain-scroll (default: on)
Add support for a very unobtrusive, plain-looking scrollbar that is
the favourite of the rxvt-unicode author, having used it for many
years.
--enable-half-shadow (default: off)
Make shadows on the scrollbar only half the normal width & height.
only applicable to rxvt scrollbars.
--enable-ttygid (default: off)
Change tty device setting to group "tty" - only use this if your
system uses this type of security.
--disable-backspace-key
Removes any handling of the backspace key by us - let the X server
do it.
--disable-delete-key
Removes any handling of the delete key by us - let the X server do
it.
--disable-resources
Removes any support for resource checking.
--enable-strings (default: off)
Add support for our possibly faster memset() function and other
various routines, overriding your system’s versions which may have
been hand-crafted in assembly or may require extra libraries to
link in. (this breaks ANSI-C rules and has problems on many
GNU/Linux systems).
--disable-swapscreen
Remove support for secondary/swap screen.
--enable-frills (default: on)
Add support for many small features that are not essential but nice
to have. Normally you want this, but for very small binaries you
may want to disable this.
A non-exhaustive list of features enabled by "--enable-frills"
(possibly in combination with other switches) is:
MWM-hints
EWMH-hints (pid, utf8 names) and protocols (ping)
seperate underline colour (-underlineColor)
settable border widths and borderless switch (-w, -b, -bl)
settable extra linespacing /-lsp)
iso-14755-2 and -3, and visual feedback
backindex and forwardindex escape sequence
window op and some xterm/OSC escape sequences
tripleclickwords (-tcw)
settable insecure mode (-insecure)
keysym remapping support
cursor blinking and underline cursor (-cb, -uc)
XEmbed support (-embed)
user-pty (-pty-fd)
hold on exit (-hold)
skip builtin block graphics (-sbg)
sgr modes 90..97 and 100..107
--enable-iso14755 (default: on)
Enable extended ISO 14755 support (see urxvt(1), or
doc/rxvt.1.txt). Basic support (section 5.1) is enabled by
"--enable-frills", while support for 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4 is enabled
with this switch.
--enable-keepscrolling (default: on)
Add support for continual scrolling of the display when you hold
the mouse button down on a scrollbar arrow.
--enable-mousewheel (default: on)
Add support for scrolling via mouse wheel or buttons 4 & 5.
--enable-slipwheeling (default: on)
Add support for continual scrolling (using the mouse wheel as an
accelerator) while the control key is held down. This option
requires --enable-mousewheel to also be specified.
--disable-new-selection
Remove support for mouse selection style like that of xterm.
--enable-dmalloc (default: off)
Use Gray Watson’s malloc - which is good for debugging See
http://www.letters.com/dmalloc/ for details If you use either this
or the next option, you may need to edit src/Makefile after
compiling to point DINCLUDE and DLIB to the right places.
You can only use either this option and the following (should you
use either) .
--enable-dlmalloc (default: off)
Use Doug Lea’s malloc - which is good for a production version See
<http://g.oswego.edu/dl/html/malloc.html> for details.
--enable-smart-resize (default: on)
Add smart growth/shrink behaviour when changing font size via hot
keys. This should keep the window corner which is closest to a
corner of the screen in a fixed position.
--enable-pointer-blank (default: on)
Add support to have the pointer disappear when typing or inactive.
--enable-perl (default: off)
Enable an embedded perl interpreter. See the urxvtperl(3) manpage
(doc/rxvtperl.txt) for more info on this feature, or the files in
src/perl-ext/ for the extensions that are installed by default. The
perl interpreter that is used can be specified via the "PERL"
environment variable when running configure.
--with-name=NAME (default: urxvt)
Set the basename for the installed binaries, resulting in "urxvt",
"urxvtd" etc.). Specify "--with-name=rxvt" to replace with "rxvt".
--with-term=NAME (default: rxvt-unicode)
Change the environmental variable for the terminal to NAME.
--with-terminfo=PATH
Change the environmental variable for the path to the terminfo tree
to PATH.
--with-x
Use the X Window System (pretty much default, eh?).
--with-xpm-includes=DIR
Look for the XPM includes in DIR.
--with-xpm-library=DIR
Look for the XPM library in DIR.
--with-xpm
Not needed - define via --enable-xpm-background.
AUTHORS
Marc Lehmann <rxvt@schmorp.de> converted this document to pod and
reworked it from the original Rxvt documentation, which was done by
Geoff Wing <gcw@pobox.com>, who in turn used the XTerm documentation
and other sources.