NAME

rxvt-unicode (ouR XVT, unicode) - (a VT102 emulator for the X window system)

SYNOPSIS

rxvt [options] [-e command [ args ]]

DESCRIPTION

rxvt-unicode, version 3.8, is a colour vt102 terminal emulator intended as an xterm(1) replacement for users who do not require features such as Tektronix 4014 emulation and toolkit-style configurability. As a result, rxvt-unicode uses much less swap space -- a significant advantage on a machine serving many X sessions.

RXVT-UNICODE VS. RXVT

Unlike the original rxvt, rxvt-unicode stores all text in Unicode internally. That means it can store and display most scripts in the world. Being a terminal emulator, however, some things are very difficult, especially cursive scripts such as arabic, vertically written scripts like mongolian or scripts requiring extremely complex combining rules, like tibetan or devenagari. Don't expect pretty output when using these scripts. Most other scripts, latin, cyrillic, kanji, thai etc. should work fine, though. A somewhat difficult case are left-to-right scripts, such as hebrew: rxvt-unicode adopts the view that bidirectional algorithms belong into the application, not the terminal emulator (too many things -- such as cursor-movement while editing -- break othwerwise), but that might change.

If you are looking for a terminal that supports more exotic scripts, let me recommend mlterm, which is a very userfriendly, lean and clean terminal emulator. In fact, the reason rxvt-unicode was born was solely because the author couldn't get mlterm to use one font for latin1 and another for japanese.

Therefore another design rationale was the use of multiple fonts to display characters: The idea of a single unicode font which many other programs force onto it's users never made sense to me: You should be able to choose any font for any script freely.

Apart from that, rxvt-unicode is also much better internationalised than it's predecessor, supports things such as XFT and ISO 14755 that are handy in i18n-environments, is faster, and has a lot less bugs than the original rxvt. This all in addition to dozens of other small improvements.

It is still faithfully following the original rxvt idea of being lean and nice on resources: for example, you can still configure rxvt-unicode without most of it's features to get a lean binary. It also comes with a client/daemon pair that lets you open any number of terminal windows from within a single process, which makes startup time very fast and drastically reduces memory usage. See rxvtd(1) (daemon) and rxvtc(1) (client).

It also makes technical information about escape sequences (which have been extended) easier accessible: see rxvt(7) for technical reference documentation (escape sequences etc.) and the FAQ section at the end of this document.

OPTIONS

The rxvt options (mostly a subset of xterm's) are listed below. In keeping with the smaller-is-better philosophy, options may be eliminated or default values chosen at compile-time, so options and defaults listed may not accurately reflect the version installed on your system. `rxvt -h' gives a list of major compile-time options on the Options line. Option descriptions may be prefixed with which compile option each is dependent upon. e.g. `Compile XIM:' requires XIM on the Options line. Note: `rxvt -help' gives a list of all command-line options compiled into your version.

Note that rxvt permits the resource name to be used as a long-option (--/++ option) so the potential command-line options are far greater than those listed. For example: `rxvt --loginShell --color1 Orange'.

The following options are available:

-help, --help
Print out a message describing available options.

-display displayname
Attempt to open a window on the named X display (-d still respected). In the absence of this option, the display specified by the DISPLAY environment variable is used.

-geometry geom
Window geometry (-g still respected); resource geometry.

-rv|+rv
Turn on/off simulated reverse video; resource reverseVideo.

-j|+j
Turn on/off jump scrolling; resource jumpScroll.

-ip|+ip
Turn on/off inheriting parent window's pixmap. Alternative form is -tr; resource inheritPixmap.

-fade number
Fade the text by the given percentage when focus is lost.

-tint colour
Tint the transparent background pixmap with the given colour when transparency is enabled with -tr or -ip. See also the -sh option that can be used to brighten or darken the image in addition to tinting it.

-sh
number Darken (0 .. 100) or lighten (-1 .. -100) the transparent background image in addition to tinting it (i.e. -tint must be specified, too).

-bg colour
Window background colour; resource background.

-fg colour
Window foreground colour; resource foreground.

-pixmap file[;geom]
Compile XPM: Specify XPM file for the background and also optionally specify its scaling with a geometry string. Note you may need to add quotes to avoid special shell interpretation of the `;' in the command-line; resource backgroundPixmap.

-cr colour
The cursor colour; resource cursorColor.

-pr colour
The mouse pointer foreground colour; resource pointerColor.

-pr2 colour
The mouse pointer background colour; resource pointerColor2.

-bd colour
The colour of the border around the text area and between the scrollbar and the text; resource borderColor.

-fn fontlist
Select the fonts to be used. This is a comma separated list of font names that are used in turn when trying to display Unicode characters. The first font defines the cell size for characters; other fonts might be smaller, but not (in general) larger. A reasonable default font list is always appended to it. See resource font for details.

See also the question ``How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts?'' in the FAQ section.

-fb fontlist
Compile font-styles: The bold font list to use when bold characters are to be printed. See resource boldFont for details.

-fi fontlist
Compile font-styles: The italic font list to use when bold characters are to be printed. See resource italicFont for details.

-fbi fontlist
Compile font-styles: The bold italic font list to use when bold characters are to be printed. See resource boldItalicFont for details.

-name name
Specify the application name under which resources are to be obtained, rather than the default executable file name. Name should not contain `.' or `*' characters. Also sets the icon and title name.

-ls|+ls
Start as a login-shell/sub-shell; resource loginShell.

-ut|+ut
Compile utmp: Inhibit/enable writing a utmp entry; resource utmpInhibit.

-vb|+vb
Turn on/off visual bell on receipt of a bell character; resource visualBell.

-sb|+sb
Turn on/off scrollbar; resource scrollBar.

-si|+si
Turn on/off scroll-to-bottom on TTY output inhibit; resource scrollTtyOutput has opposite effect.

-sk|+sk
Turn on/off scroll-to-bottom on keypress; resource scrollTtyKeypress.

-sw|+sw
Turn on/off scrolling with the scrollback buffer as new lines appear. This only takes effect if -si is also given; resource scrollWithBuffer.

-sr|+sr
Put scrollbar on right/left; resource scrollBar_right.

-st|+st
Display normal (non XTerm/NeXT) scrollbar without/with a trough; resource scrollBar_floating.

-bc|+bc
Blink the cursor; resource cursorBlink.

-iconic
Start iconified, if the window manager supports that option. Alternative form is -ic.

-sl number
Save number lines in the scrollback buffer. See resource entry for limits; resource saveLines.

-b number
Compile frills: Internal border of number pixels. See resource entry for limits; resource internalBorder.

-w number
Compile frills: External border of number pixels. Also, -bw and -borderwidth. See resource entry for limits; resource externalBorder.

-bl
Compile frills: Set MWM hints to request a borderless window, i.e. if honoured by the WM, the rxvt-unicode window will not have window decorations; resource borderLess.

-lsp number
Compile linespace: Lines (pixel height) to insert between each row of the display; resource linespace.

-tn termname
This option specifies the name of the terminal type to be set in the TERM environment variable. This terminal type must exist in the termcap(5) database and should have li# and co# entries; resource termName.

-e command [arguments]
Run the command with its command-line arguments in the rxvt window; also sets the window title and icon name to be the basename of the program being executed if neither -title (-T) nor -n are given on the command line. If this option is used, it must be the last on the command-line. If there is no -e option then the default is to run the program specified by the SHELL environment variable or, failing that, sh(1).

-title text
Window title (-T still respected); the default title is the basename of the program specified after the -e option, if any, otherwise the application name; resource title.

-n text
Icon name; the default name is the basename of the program specified after the -e option, if any, otherwise the application name; resource iconName.

-C
Capture system console messages.

-pt style
Compile XIM: input style for input method; OverTheSpot, OffTheSpot, Root; resource preeditType.

-im text
Compile XIM: input method name. resource inputMethod.

-imlocale string
The locale to use for opening the IM. You can use an LC_CTYPE of e.g. de_DE.UTF-8 for normal text processing but ja_JP.EUC-JP for the input extension to be able to input japanese characters while staying in another locale.

-insecure
Enable ``insecure'' mode, which currently enables most of the escape sequences that echo strings. See the resource insecure for more info.

-mod modifier
Override detection of Meta modifier with specified key: alt, meta, hyper, super, mod1, mod2, mod3, mod4, mod5; resource modifier.

-ssc|+ssc
Turn on/off secondary screen (default enabled); resource secondaryScreen.

-ssr|+ssr
Turn on/off secondary screen scroll (default enabled); resource secondaryScroll.

-xrm resourcestring
No effect on rxvt-unicode. Simply passes through an argument to be made available in the instance's argument list. Appears in WM_COMMAND in some window managers.

RESOURCES (available also as long-options)

Note: `rxvt --help' gives a list of all resources (long options) compiled into your version.

There are two different methods that rxvt can use to get the Xresource data: using the X libraries (Xrm*-functions) or internal Xresources reader (~/.Xdefaults). For the first method (ie. rxvt -h lists XGetDefaults), you can set and change the resources using X11 tools like xset. Many distribution do also load settings from the ~/.Xresources file when X starts.

If compiled with internal Xresources support (i.e. rxvt -h lists .Xdefaults) then rxvt accepts application defaults set in XAPPLOADDIR/URxvt (compile-time defined: usually /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/URxvt) and resources set in ~/.Xdefaults, or ~/.Xresources if ~/.Xdefaults does not exist. Note that when reading X resources, rxvt recognizes two class names: XTerm and URxvt. The class name Rxvt allows resources common to both rxvt and the original rxvt to be easily configured, while the class name URxvt allows resources unique to rxvt, notably colours and key-handling, to be shared between different rxvt configurations. If no resources are specified, suitable defaults will be used. Command-line arguments can be used to override resource settings. The following resources are allowed:

geometry: geom
Create the window with the specified X window geometry [default 80x24]; option -geometry.

background: colour
Use the specified colour as the window's background colour [default White]; option -bg.

foreground: colour
Use the specified colour as the window's foreground colour [default Black]; option -fg.

colorn: colour
Use the specified colour for the colour value n, where 0-7 corresponds to low-intensity (normal) colours and 8-15 corresponds to high-intensity (bold = bright foreground, blink = bright background) colours. The canonical names are as follows: 0=black, 1=red, 2=green, 3=yellow, 4=blue, 5=magenta, 6=cyan, 7=white, but the actual colour names used are listed in the COLORS AND GRAPHICS section.

Colours higher than 15 cannot be set using resources (yet), but can be changed using an escape command (see rxvt(7)).

Colours 16-79 form a standard 4x4x4 colour cube (the same as xterm with 88 colour support). Colours 80-87 are evenly spaces grey steps.

colorBD: colour
colorIT: colour
Use the specified colour to display bold or italic characters when the foreground colour is the default. If font styles are not available (Compile styles) and this option is unset, reverse video is used instead.

colorUL: colour
Use the specified colour to display underlined characters when the foreground colour is the default.

colorRV: colour
Use the specified colour as the background for reverse video characters.

cursorColor: colour
Use the specified colour for the cursor. The default is to use the foreground colour; option -cr.

cursorColor2: colour
Use the specified colour for the colour of the cursor text. For this to take effect, cursorColor must also be specified. The default is to use the background colour.

reverseVideo: boolean
True: simulate reverse video by foreground and background colours; option -rv. False: regular screen colours [default]; option +rv. See note in COLORS AND GRAPHICS section.

jumpScroll: boolean
True: specify that jump scrolling should be used. When scrolling quickly, fewer screen updates are performed [default]; option -j. False: specify that smooth scrolling should be used; option +j.

inheritPixmap: boolean
True: make the background inherit the parent windows' pixmap, giving artificial transparency. False: do not inherit the parent windows' pixmap.

fading: number
Fade the text by the given percentage when focus is lost.

tintColor: colour
Tint the transparent background pixmap with the given colour.

shading: number
Darken (0 .. 100) or lighten (-1 .. -100) the transparent background image in addition to tinting it.

fading: number
Scale the tint colour by the given percentage.

scrollColor: colour
Use the specified colour for the scrollbar [default #B2B2B2].

troughColor: colour
Use the specified colour for the scrollbar's trough area [default #969696]. Only relevant for normal (non XTerm/NeXT) scrollbar.

borderColor: colour
The colour of the border around the text area and between the scrollbar and the text.

backgroundPixmap: file[;geom]
Use the specified XPM file (note the `.xpm' extension is optional) for the background and also optionally specify its scaling with a geometry string WxH+X+Y, in which ``W'' / ``H'' specify the horizontal/vertical scale (percent) and ``X'' / ``Y'' locate the image centre (percent). A scale of 0 displays the image with tiling. A scale of 1 displays the image without any scaling. A scale of 2 to 9 specifies an integer number of images in that direction. No image will be magnified beyond 10 times its original size. The maximum permitted scale is 1000. [default 0x0+50+50]

menu: file[;tag]
Read in the specified menu file (note the `.menu' extension is optional) and also optionally specify a starting tag to find. See the reference documentation for details on the syntax for the menuBar.

path: path
Specify the colon-delimited search path for finding files (XPM and menus), in addition to the paths specified by the RXVTPATH and PATH environment variables.

font: fontlist
Select the fonts to be used. This is a comma separated list of font names that are used in turn when trying to display Unicode characters. The first font defines the cell size for characters; other fonts might be smaller, but not larger. A reasonable default font list is always appended to it. option -fn.

Each font can either be a standard X11 core font (XLFD) name, with optional prefix x: or a Xft font (Compile xft), prefixed with xft:.

In addition, each font can be prefixed with additional hints and specifications enclosed in square brackets ([]). The only available hint currently is codeset=codeset-name, and this is only used for Xft fonts.

For example, this font resource

   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:antialias=false, \
               xft:Code2000:antialias=false

specifies five fonts to be used. The first one is 9x15bold (actually the iso8859-1 version of the second font), which is the base font (because it is named first) and thus defines the character cell grid to be 9 pixels wide and 15 pixels high.

the second font is just used to add additional unicode characters not in the base font, likewise the third, which is unfortunately non-bold, but the bold version of the font does contain less characters, so this is a useful supplement.

The third font is an Xft font with aliasing turned off, and the characters are limited to the JIS 0208 codeset (i.e. japanese kanji). The font contains other characters, but we are not interested in them.

The last font is a useful catch-all font that supplies most of the remaining unicode characters.

boldFont: fontlist
italicFont: fontlist
boldItalicFont: fontlist
The font list to use for displaying bold, italic or bold italic > characters, respectively.

If specified and non-empty, then the syntax is the same as for the font-resource, and the given font list will be used as is, which makes it possible to substitute completely different font styles for bold and italic.

If unset (the default), a suitable font list will be synthesized by ``morphing'' the normal text font list into the desired shape. If that is not possible, replacement fonts of the desired shape will be tried.

If set, but empty, then this specific style is disabled and the normal text font will being used for the given style.

selectstyle: mode
Set mouse selection style to old which is 2.20, oldword which is xterm style with 2.20 old word selection, or anything else which gives xterm style selection.

scrollstyle: mode
Set scrollbar style to rxvt, plain, next or xterm. plain is the author's favourite..

title: string
Set window title string, the default title is the command-line specified after the -e option, if any, otherwise the application name; option -title.

iconName: string
Set the name used to label the window's icon or displayed in an icon manager window, it also sets the window's title unless it is explicitly set; option -n.

mapAlert: boolean
True: de-iconify (map) on receipt of a bell character. False: no de-iconify (map) on receipt of a bell character [default].

visualBell: boolean
True: use visual bell on receipt of a bell character; option -vb. False: no visual bell [default]; option +vb.

loginShell: boolean
True: start as a login shell by prepending a `-' to argv[0] of the shell; option -ls. False: start as a normal sub-shell [default]; option +ls.

utmpInhibit: boolean
True: inhibit writing record into the system log file utmp; option -ut. False: write record into the system log file utmp [default]; option +ut.

print-pipe: string
Specify a command pipe for vt100 printer [default lpr(1)]. Use Print to initiate a screen dump to the printer and Ctrl-Print or Shift-Print to include the scrollback as well.

scrollBar: boolean
True: enable the scrollbar [default]; option -sb. False: disable the scrollbar; option +sb.

scrollBar_right: boolean
True: place the scrollbar on the right of the window; option -sr. False: place the scrollbar on the left of the window; option +sr.

scrollBar_floating: boolean
True: display an rxvt scrollbar without a trough; option -st. False: display an rxvt scrollbar with a trough; option +st.

scrollBar_align: mode
Align the top, bottom or centre [default] of the scrollbar thumb with the pointer on middle button press/drag.

scrollTtyOutput: boolean
True: scroll to bottom when tty receives output; option -si. False: do not scroll to bottom when tty receives output; option +si.

scrollWithBuffer: boolean
True: scroll with scrollback buffer when tty recieves new lines (and scrollTtyOutput is False); option +sw. False: do not scroll with scrollback buffer when tty recieves new lines; option -sw.

scrollTtyKeypress: boolean
True: scroll to bottom when a non-special key is pressed. Special keys are those which are intercepted by rxvt-unicode for special handling and are not passed onto the shell; option -sk. False: do not scroll to bottom when a non-special key is pressed; option +sk.

saveLines: number
Save number lines in the scrollback buffer [default 64]. This resource is limited on most machines to 65535; option -sl.

internalBorder: number
Internal border of number pixels. This resource is limited to 100; option -b.

externalBorder: number
External border of number pixels. This resource is limited to 100; option -w, -bw, -borderwidth.

borderLess: boolean
Set MWM hints to request a borderless window, i.e. if honoured by the WM, the rxvt-unicode window will not have window decorations; option -bl.

termName: termname
Specifies the terminal type name to be set in the TERM environment variable; option -tn.

linespace: number
Specifies number of lines (pixel height) to insert between each row of the display [default 0]; option -lsp.

meta8: boolean
True: handle Meta (Alt) + keypress to set the 8th bit. False: handle Meta (Alt) + keypress as an escape prefix [default].

mouseWheelScrollPage: boolean
True: the mouse wheel scrolls a page full. False: the mouse wheel scrolls five lines [default].

cursorBlink: boolean
True: blink the cursor. False: do not blink the cursor [default]; option -bc.

pointerBlank: boolean
True: blank the pointer when a key is pressed or after a set number of seconds of inactivity. False: the pointer is always visible [default].

pointerColor: colour
Mouse pointer foreground colour.

pointerColor2: colour
Mouse pointer background colour.

pointerBlankDelay: number
Specifies number of seconds before blanking the pointer [default 2].

backspacekey: string
The string to send when the backspace key is pressed. If set to DEC or unset it will send Delete (code 127) or, if shifted, Backspace (code 8) - which can be reversed with the appropriate DEC private mode escape sequence.

deletekey: string
The string to send when the delete key (not the keypad delete key) is pressed. If unset it will send the sequence traditionally associated with the Execute key.

cutchars: string
The characters used as delimiters for double-click word selection. The built-in default:

BACKSLASH ```'&()*,;<=?@[]{|} >>

preeditType: style
OverTheSpot, OffTheSpot, Root; option -pt.

inputMethod: name
name of inputMethod to use; option -im.

imLocale: name
The locale to use for opening the IM. You can use an LC_CTYPE of e.g. de_DE.UTF-8 for normal text processing but ja_JP.EUC-JP for the input extension to be able to input japanese characters while staying in another locale. option -imlocale.

insecure: boolean
Enables ``insecure'' mode. Rxvt-unicode offers some escape sequences that echo arbitrary strings like the icon name or the locale. This could be abused if somebody gets 8-bit-clean access to your display, wether throuh a mail client displaying mail bodies unfiltered or though write(1). Therefore, these sequences are disabled by default. (Note that other terminals, including xterm, have these sequences enabled by default). You can enable them by setting this boolean resource or specifying -insecure as an option. At the moment, this enabled display-answer, locale, findfont, icon label and window title requests as well as dynamic menubar dispatch.

modifier: modifier
Set the key to be interpreted as the Meta key to: alt, meta, hyper, super, mod1, mod2, mod3, mod4, mod5; option -mod.

answerbackString: string
Specify the reply rxvt-unicode sends to the shell when an ENQ (control-E) character is passed through. It may contain escape values as described in the entry on keysym following.

secondaryScreen: bool
Turn on/off secondary screen (default enabled).

secondaryScroll: bool
Turn on/off secondary screen scroll (default enabled). If the this option is enabled, scrolls on the secondary screen will change the scrollback buffer and switching to/from the secondary screen will instead scroll the screen up.

keysym.sym: string
Associate string with keysym sym (0xFF00 - 0xFFFF). It may contain escape values (\a: bell, \b: backspace, \e, \E: escape, \n: newline, \r: return, \t: tab, \000: octal number) or control characters (^?: delete, ^@: null, ^A ...) and may enclosed with double quotes so that it can start or end with whitespace. The intervening resource name keysym. cannot be omitted. This resource is only available when compiled with KEYSYM_RESOURCE.

THE SCROLLBAR

Lines of text that scroll off the top of the rxvt window (resource: saveLines) and can be scrolled back using the scrollbar or by keystrokes. The normal rxvt scrollbar has arrows and its behaviour is fairly intuitive. The xterm-scrollbar is without arrows and its behaviour mimics that of xterm

Scroll down with Button1 (xterm-scrollbar) or Shift-Next. Scroll up with Button3 (xterm-scrollbar) or Shift-Prior. Continuous scroll with Button2.

MOUSE REPORTING

To temporarily override mouse reporting, for either the scrollbar or the normal text selection/insertion, hold either the Shift or the Meta (Alt) key while performing the desired mouse action.

If mouse reporting mode is active, the normal scrollbar actions are disabled -- on the assumption that we are using a fullscreen application. Instead, pressing Button1 and Button3 sends ESC[6~ (Next) and ESC[5~ (Prior), respectively. Similarly, clicking on the up and down arrows sends ESC[A (Up) and ESC[B (Down), respectively.

TEXT SELECTION AND INSERTION

The behaviour of text selection and insertion mechanism is similar to xterm(1).

Selection:
Left click at the beginning of the region, drag to the end of the region and release; Right click to extend the marked region; Left double-click to select a word; Left triple-click to select the entire line.

Insertion:
Pressing and releasing the Middle mouse button (or Shift-Insert) in an rxvt window causes the current text selection to be inserted as if it had been typed on the keyboard.

CHANGING FONTS

Changing fonts (or font sizes, respectively) via the keypad is not yet supported in rxvt-unicode. Bug me if you need this.

You can, however, switch fonts at runtime using escape sequences (and therefore using the menubar), e.g.:

   printf '\e]701;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"

rxvt-unicode will automatically re-apply these fonts to the output so far.

ISO 14755 SUPPORT

ISO 14755 is a standard for entering and viewing unicode characters and character codes using the keyboard. It consists of 4 parts. The first part is available rxvt-unicode has been compiled with --enable-frills, the rest is available when rxvt-unicode was compiled with --enable-iso14755.

  1. 1: Basic method
    2. This allows you to enter unicode characters using their hexcode.

    Start by pressing and holding both Control and Shift, then enter hex-digits (between one and six). Releasing Control and Shift will commit the character as if it were typed directly. While holding down Control and Shift you can also enter multiple characters by pressing Space, which will commit the current character and lets you start a new one.

    As an example of use, imagine a business card with a japanese e-mail address, which you cannot type. Fortunately, the card has the e-mail address printed as hexcodes, e.g. 671d 65e5. You can enter this easily by pressing Control and Shift, followed by 6-7-1-D-SPACE-6-5-E-5, followed by releasing the modifier keys.

  2. 2: Keyboard symbols entry method
    3. This mode lets you input characters representing the keycap symbols of your keyboard, if representable in the current locale encoding.

    Start by pressing Control and Shift together, then releasing them. The next special key (cursor keys, home etc.) you enter will not invoke it's usual function but instead will insert the corresponding keycap symbol. The symbol will only be entered when the key has been released, otherwise pressing e.g. Shift would enter the symbol for ISO Level 2 Switch, although your intention might have beenm to enter a reverse tab (Shift-Tab).

  3. 3: Screen-selection entry method
    4. While this is implemented already (it's basically the selection mechanism), it could be extended by displaying a unicode character map.

  4. 4: Feedback method for identifying displayed characters for later input
    5. This method lets you display the unicode character code associated with characters already displayed.

    You enter this mode by holding down Control and Shift together, then pressing and holding the left mouse button and moving around. The unicode hex code(s) (it might be a combining character) of the character under the pointer is displayed until you release Control and Shift.

    In addition to the hex codes it will display the font used to draw this character - due to implementation reasons, characters combined with combining characters, line drawing characters and unknown characters will always be drawn using the built-in support font.

With respect to conformance, rxvt-unicode is supposed to be compliant to both scenario A and B of ISO 14755, including part 5.2.

LOGIN STAMP

rxvt tries to write an entry into the utmp(5) file so that it can be seen via the who(1) command, and can accept messages. To allow this feature, rxvt must be installed setuid root on some systems.

COLORS AND GRAPHICS

In addition to the default foreground and background colours, rxvt can display up to 16 colours (8 ANSI colours plus high-intensity bold/blink versions of the same). Here is a list of the colours with their rgb.txt names.

color0(black)= Black
color1(red)= Red3
color2(green)= Green3
color3(yellow)= Yellow3
color4(blue)= Blue3
color5(magenta)= Magenta3
color6(cyan)= Cyan3
color7(white)= AntiqueWhite
color8(bright black)= Grey25
color9(bright red)= Red
color10(bright green)= Green
color11(bright yellow)= Yellow
color12(bright blue)= Blue
color13(bright magenta)= Magenta
color14(bright cyan)= Cyan
color15(bright white)= White
foreground= Black
background= White

It is also possible to specify the colour values of foreground, background, cursorColor, cursorColor2, colorBD, colorUL as a number 0-15, as a convenient shorthand to reference the colour name of color0-color15.

Note that -rv (``reverseVideo: True'') simulates reverse video by always swapping the foreground/background colours. This is in contrast to xterm(1) where the colours are only swapped if they have not otherwise been specified. For example,

rxvt -fg Black -bg White -rv
would yield White on Black, while on xterm(1) it would yield Black on White.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)

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[8n sets the window title to the version number.

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:

   infocmp rxvt-unicode >rxvt.unicode.tic
   scp rxvt-unicode.tic remotesystem:
   ssh remotesystem tic rxvt-unicode.tic
 
... 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 you can either recompile rxvt-unicode with the desired TERM value or use a resource to set it:

   URxvt.termName: rxvt

How can I configure rxvt-unicode so that it looks similar to the original rxvt?
Felix von Leitner says that these two lines, in your .Xdefaults, will make rxvt-unicode behave similar to the original rxvt: 
   URxvt.font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
   URxvt.boldFont: -misc-fixed-bold-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1

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 sth. else, e.h. 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 comamnd which displays this. If it displays sth. 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 the characters look ugly?
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. Many fonts have totally strange characters that don't resemble the correct glyph at all, and rxvt-unicode lacks the artificial intelligence to detetc that a specific glyph is wrong: it has to believe the font that the characters it contains indeed look correct.

In that case, select a font of your taste and add it to the font list, e.g.:

   rxvt -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 all the fonts must not be larger than the base font, as the base font defines the principial 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 character, it might choose a japanese font for it. Subseqzuent japanese characters will take 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 japanese characters that are also chinese.

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 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).

How can I keep rxvt-unicode from using reverse video so much?
First of all, make sure you are running with the right terminfo (urxvt), 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 programs (i.e. irssi) 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 urxvt 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.

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.

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 same for 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 sth. like this, which sets rxvt-unicode's idea of LC_CTYPE. 
  printf '\e]701;%s\007' ja_JP.SJIS

See also the previous question.

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 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

Can I switch the fonts at runtime?
Yes, using an escape sequence. Try sth. 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 is 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 cna 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 uses gobs of memory, how can I reduce that?
Rxvt-unicode tries to obey the rule of not charging you for sth. 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 scorllback 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 :antialiasing=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 antialiaisng 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. See rxvt(7)

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:

   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

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[36h'' / ``ESC[36l'' as documented in rxvt(7).

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 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

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 accomodate 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 if 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 ahve 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.

ENVIRONMENT

rxvt sets the environment variables TERM, COLORTERM and COLORFGBG. The environment variable WINDOWID is set to the X window id number of the rxvt window and it also uses and sets the environment variable DISPLAY to specify which display terminal to use. rxvt uses the environment variables RXVTPATH and PATH to find XPM files.

FILES

/etc/utmp
System file for login records.

/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt
Color names.

SEE ALSO

rxvt(7), xterm(1), sh(1), resize(1), X(1), pty(4), tty(4), utmp(5)

BUGS

Check the BUGS file for an up-to-date list.

Cursor change support is not yet implemented.

Click-and-drag doesn't work with X11 mouse report overriding.

CURRENT PROJECT COORDINATOR

Project Coordinator
Marc A. Lehmann rxvt@schmorp.de

Web page maintainter
Marc A. Lehmann rxvt@schmorp.de

http://software.schmorp.de/

AUTHORS

John Bovey
University of Kent, 1992, wrote the original Xvt.

Rob Nation >
very heavily modified Xvt and came up with Rxvt

Angelo Haritsis >
wrote the Greek Keyboard Input (no longer in code)

mj olesen >
Wrote the menu system.

Project Coordinator (changes.txt 2.11 to 2.21)

Oezguer Kesim >
Project Coordinator (changes.txt 2.21a to 2.4.5)

Geoff Wing >
Rewrote screen display and text selection routines. Project Coordinator (changes.txt 2.4.6 - rxvt-unicode)

Marc Alexander Lehmann >
Forked rxvt-unicode, rewrote most of the display code and internal character handling to store text in unicode, improve xterm compatibility and apply numerous other bugfixes and extensions.

Project Coordinator (Changes 1.0 -)