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

urxvt [options] [-e command [ args ]]

rxvt-unicode, version 7.0, 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.

See urxvt(7) (try CWman 7 urxvt) for a list of frequently asked questions and answer to them and some common problems. That document is also accessible on the World-Wide-Web at <http://cvs.schmorp.de/browse/*checkout*/rxvt-unicode/doc/rxvt.7.html>.

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 otherwise), but that might change.

If you are looking for a terminal that supports more exotic scripts, let me recommend CWmlterm, 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 CWmlterm 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 urxvtd(1) (daemon) and urxvtc(1) (client).

It also makes technical information about escape sequences (which have been extended) easier accessible: see urxvt(7) for technical reference documentation (escape sequences etc.).

The urxvt 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. `urxvt -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: `urxvt -help' gives a list of all command-line options compiled into your version.

Note that urxvt 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: `urxvt --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 | -tr|+tr

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. Small values fade a little only, 100 completely replaces all colours by the fade colour; resource fading.

-fadecolor colour

Fade to this colour when fading is used (see -fade). The default colour is black. resource fadeColor.

-tint colour

Tint the transparent background pixmap with the given colour when transparency is enabled with -tr or -ip. This only works for non-tiled backgrounds, currently. See also the -sh option that can be used to brighten or darken the image in addition to tinting it; resource tintColor. Example:

   urxvt -tr -tint blue -sh 40

-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, e.g. CW-tint white).

-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 CW; 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 checked in order when trying to find glyphs for characters. The first font defines the cell size for characters; other fonts might be smaller, but not (in general) larger. A (hopefully) reasonable default font list is always appended to it. See resource font for more details. In short, to specify an X11 core font, just specify it's name or prefix it with CWx:. To specify an XFT-font, you need to prefix it with CWxft:, e.g.:

   urxvt -fn "xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:pixelsize=15"
   urxvt -fn "9x15bold,xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono"

See also the question How does rxvt-unicode choose fonts? in the FAQ section of urxvt(7).

-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 italic characters are to be printed. See resource italicFont for details.

-fbi fontlist

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

-is|+is

Compile font-styles: Bold/Italic font styles imply high intensity foreground/background (default). See resource intensityStyles 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 rxvt (non XTerm/NeXT) scrollbar without/with a trough; resource scrollBar_floating.

-ptab|+ptab

If enabled (default), Horizontal Tab characters are being stored as actual wide characters in the screen buffer, which makes it possible to select and paste them. Since a horizontal tab is a cursor movement and not an actual glyph, this can sometimes be visually annoying as the cursor on a tab character is displayed as a wide cursor; resource pastableTabs.

-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.

-sbg

Compile frills: Disable the usage of the built-in block graphics/line drawing characters and just rely on what the specified fonts provide. Use this if you have a good font and want to use its block graphic glyphs; resource skipBuiltinGlyphs.

-lsp number

Compile frills: Lines (pixel height) to insert between each row of the display. Useful to work around font rendering problems; 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 urxvt 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). Please note that you must specify a program with arguments. If you want to run shell commands, you have to specify the shell, like this:

  urxvt -e sh -c "shell commands"

-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 CWLC_CTYPE of e.g. CWde_DE.UTF-8 for normal text processing but CWja_JP.EUC-JP for the input extension to be able to input japanese characters while staying in another locale. resource imLocale.

-imfont fontset

Set the font set to use for the X Input Method, see resource imFont for more info.

-tcw

Change the meaning of triple-click selection with the left mouse button. Instead of selecting a full line it will extend the selection the end of the logical line only. resource tripleclickwords.

-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.

-hold|+hold

Turn on/off hold window after exit support. If enabled, urxvt will not immediately destroy its window when the program executed within it exits. Instead, it will wait till it is being killed or closed by the user; resource hold.

-keysym.sym string

Remap a key symbol. See resource keysym.

-embed windowid

Tells urxvt to embed it's windows into an already-existing window, which enables applications to easily embed a terminal. Right now, urxvt will first unmap/map the specified window, so it shouldn't be a top-level window. urxvt will also reconfigure it quite a bit, so don't expect it to keep some specific state. It's best to create an extra subwindow for urxvt and leave it alone. The window will not be destroyed when urxvt exits. It might be useful to know that urxvt will not close file descriptors passed to it (except for stdin/out/err, of course), so you can use file descriptors to communicate with the programs within the terminal. This works regardless of wether the CW-embed option was used or not. Here is a short Gtk2-perl snippet that illustrates how this option can be used (a longer example is in doc/embed):

   my $rxvt = new Gtk2::Socket;
   $rxvt->signal_connect_after (realize => sub {
      my $xid = $_[0]->window->get_xid;
      system "urxvt -embed $xid &";
   });

-pty-fd file descriptor

Tells urxvt NOT to execute any commands or create a new pty/tty pair but instead use the given filehandle as the tty master. This is useful if you want to drive urxvt as a generic terminal emulator without having to run a program within it. If this switch is given, urxvt will not create any utmp/wtmp entries and will not tinker with pty/tty permissions - you have to do that yourself if you want that. As an extremely special case, specifying CW-1 will completely suppress pty/tty operations. Here is a example in perl that illustrates how this option can be used (a longer example is in doc/pty-fd):

   use IO::Pty;
   use Fcntl;

   my $pty = new IO::Pty;
   fcntl $pty, F_SETFD, 0; # clear close-on-exec
   system "urxvt -pty-fd " . (fileno $pty) . "&";
   close $pty;

   # now communicate with rxvt
   my $slave = $pty->slave;
   while (<$slave>) { print $slave "got <$_>\n" }

-pe string

Comma-separated list of perl extension scripts to use (or not to use) in this terminal instance. See resource perl-ext for details.

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

You can set and change the resources using X11 tools like xrdb. Many distribution do also load settings from the ~/.Xresources file when X starts. urxvt will consult the following files/resources in order, with later settings overwriting earlier ones:

  1. system-wide app-defaults file, either locale-dependent OR global
  2. app-defaults file in $XAPPLRESDIR
  3. RESOURCE_MANAGER property on root-window OR $HOME/.Xdefaults
  4. SCREEN_RESOURCES for the current screen
  5. $XENVIRONMENT file OR $HOME/.Xdefaults-<nodename>

Note that when reading X resources, urxvt recognizes two class names: Rxvt and URxvt. The class name Rxvt allows resources common to both urxvt and the original rxvt to be easily configured, while the class name URxvt allows resources unique to urxvt, to be shared between different urxvt 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 supported (you might want to check the urxvtperl(3) manpage for additional settings by perl extensions not documented here):

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 urxvt(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.

underlineColor: colour

If set, use the specified colour as the colour for the underline itself. If unset, use the foreground colour.

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; option -fade.

fadeColor: colour

Fade to this colour, when fading is used (see fading:). The default colour is black; option -fadecolor.

tintColor: colour

Tint the transparent background pixmap with the given colour; option -tint.

shading: number

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

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 rxvt (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 checked in order when trying to find glyphs for characters. The first font defines the cell size for characters; other fonts might be smaller, but not (in general) larger. A (hopefully) 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 CWx: or a Xft font (Compile xft), prefixed with CWxft:. In addition, each font can be prefixed with additional hints and specifications enclosed in square brackets (CW[]). The only available hint currently is CWcodeset=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 CW9x15bold (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 BIbold 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.

intensityStyles: boolean

When font styles are not enabled, or this option is enabled (True, option -is, the default), bold and italic font styles imply high intensity foreground/backround colours. Disabling this option (False, option +is) disables this behaviour, the high intensity colours are not reachable.

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. The string will be interpreted as if typed into the shell as-is. Example:

   URxvt*print-pipe: cat > $(TMPDIR=$HOME mktemp urxvt.XXXXXX)

This creates a new file in your home directory with the screen contents everytime you hit CWPrint.

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 receives 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.

skipBuiltinGlyphs: boolean

Compile frills: Disable the usage of the built-in block graphics/line drawing characters and just rely on what the specified fonts provide. Use this if you have a good font and want to use its block graphic glyphs; option -sbg.

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].

pastableTabs: boolean

True: store tabs as wide characters. False: interpret tabs as cursor movement only; option CW-ptab.

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]. Use a large number (e.g. CW987654321) to effectively disable the timeout.

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 CWLC_CTYPE of e.g. CWde_DE.UTF-8 for normal text processing but CWja_JP.EUC-JP for the input extension to be able to input japanese characters while staying in another locale; option -imlocale.

imFont: fontset

Specify the font-set used for XIM styles CWOverTheSpot or CWOffTheSpot. It must be a standard X font set (XLFD patterns separated by commas), i.e. it's not in the same format as the other font lists used in urxvt. The default will be set-up to chose *any* suitable found found, preferably one or two pixels differing in size to the base font. option -imfont.

tripleclickwords: boolean

Change the meaning of triple-click selection with the left mouse button. Instead of selecting a full line it will extend the selection to the end of the logical line only; option -tcw.

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, whether through a mail client displaying mail bodies unfiltered or through write(1) or any other means. Therefore, these sequences are disabled by default. (Note that many other terminals, including xterm, have these sequences enabled by default, which doesn't make it safer, though). You can enable them by setting this boolean resource or specifying -insecure as an option. At the moment, this enables 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.

hold: bool

Turn on/off hold window after exit support. If enabled, urxvt will not immediately destroy its window when the program executed within it exits. Instead, it will wait till it is being killed or closed by the user.

keysym.sym: string

Compile frills: Associate string with keysym sym. The intervening resource name keysym. cannot be omitted. The format of sym is "(modifiers-)key", where modifiers can be any combination of ISOLevel3, AppKeypad, Control, NumLock, Shift, Meta, Lock, Mod1, Mod2, Mod3, Mod4, Mod5, and the abbreviated I, K, C, N, S, M, A, L, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The NumLock, Meta and ISOLevel3 modifiers are usually aliased to whatever modifier the NumLock key, Meta/Alt keys or ISO Level3 Shift/AltGr keys are being mapped. AppKeypad is a synthetic modifier mapped to the current application keymap mode state. The spellings of key can be obtained by using xev(1) command or searching keysym macros from /usr/X11R6/include/X11/keysymdef.h and omitting the prefix XK_. Alternatively you can specify key by its hex keysym value (0x0000 - 0xFFFF). Note that the lookup of syms is not performed in an exact manner; however, the closest match is assured. string may contain escape values (CW\a: bell, CW\b: backspace, CW\e, CW\E: escape, CW\n: newline, CW\r: carriage return, CW\t: tab, CW\000: octal number) or verbatim control characters (CW^?: delete, CW^@: null, CW^A ...) and may be enclosed with double quotes so that it can start or end with whitespace. Please note that you need to double the CW\ in resource files, as Xlib itself does it's own de-escaping (you can use CW\033 instead of CW\e (and so on), which will work with both Xt and urxvt's own processing). You can define a range of keysyms in one shot by providing a string with pattern list/PREFIX/MIDDLE/SUFFIX, where the delimeter `/' should be a character not used by the strings. Its usage can be demonstrated by an example:

  URxvt.keysym.M-C-0x61:    list|\033<M-C-|abc|>

The above line is equivalent to the following three lines:

  URxvt.keysym.Meta-Control-0x61:    \033<M-C-a>
  URxvt.keysym.Meta-Control-0x62:    \033<M-C-b>
  URxvt.keysym.Meta-Control-0x63:    \033<M-C-c>

If string takes the form of CWcommand:STRING, the specified STRING is interpreted and executed as urxvt's control sequence. For example the following means "change the current locale to CWzh_CN.GBK when Control-Meta-c is being pressed":

  URxvt.keysym.M-C-c: command:\033]701;zh_CN.GBK\007

If string takes the form CWperl:STRING, then the specified STRING is passed to the CWon_keyboard_command perl handler. See the urxvtperl(3) manpage. For example, the selection extension (activated via CWurxvt -pe selection) listens for CWselection:rot13 events:

  URxvt.keysym.M-C-c: perl:selection:rot13

Due the the large number of modifier combinations, a defined key mapping will match if at at least the specified identifiers are being set, and no other key mappings with those and more bits are being defined. That means that defining a key map for CWa will automatically provide definitions for CWMeta-a, CWShift-a and so on, unless some of those are defined mappings themselves. Unfortunately, this will override built-in key mappings. For example if you overwrite the CWInsert key you will disable urxvt's CWShift-Insert mapping. To re-enable that, you can poke holes into the user-defined keymap using the CWbuiltin: replacement:

  URxvt.keysym.Insert: <my insert key sequence>
  URxvt.keysym.S-Insert: builtin:

The first line defines a mapping for CWInsert and any combination of modifiers. The second line re-establishes the default mapping for CWShift-Insert. The following example will map Control-Meta-1 and Control-Meta-2 to the fonts CWsuxuseuro and CW9x15bold, so you can have some limited font-switching at runtime:

  URxvt.keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]50;suxuseuro\007
  URxvt.keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]50;9x15bold\007

Other things are possible, e.g. resizing (see urxvt(7) for more info):

  URxvt.keysym.M-C-3: command:\033[8;25;80t
  URxvt.keysym.M-C-4: command:\033[8;48;110t

perl-ext-common: string

perl-ext: string

Comma-separated list(s) of perl extension scripts (default: CWdefault) to use in this terminal instance; option -pe. Extension names can be prefixed with a CW- sign to prohibit using them. This can be useful to selectively disable some extensions loaded by default, or specified via the CWperl-ext-common resource. For example, CWdefault,-selection will use all the default extension except CWselection. Extension names can also be followed by an argument in angle brackets (e.g. CWsearchable-scrollback<M-s>, which binds the hotkey for searchable scorllback to Alt/Meta-s). Mentioning the same extension multiple times with different arguments will pass multiple arguments to the extension. Each extension is looked up in the library directories, loaded if necessary, and bound to the current terminal instance. If both of these resources are the empty string, then the perl interpreter will not be initialized. The idea behind two options is that perl-ext-common will be used for extensions that should be available to all instances, while perl-ext is used for specific instances.

perl-eval: string

Perl code to be evaluated when all extensions have been registered. See the urxvtperl(3) manpage. Due to security reasons, this resource will be ignored when running setuid/setgid.

perl-lib: path

Colon-separated list of additional directories that hold extension scripts. When looking for extensions specified by the CWperl resource, urxvt will first look in these directories and then in /usr/lib/urxvt/perl/. Due to security reasons, this resource will be ignored when running setuid/setgid. See the urxvtperl(3) manpage.

selection.pattern-BIidx: perl-regex

Additional selection patterns, see the urxvtperl(3) manpage for details.

selection-autotransform.BIidx: perl-transform

Selection auto-transform patterns, see the urxvtperl(3) manpage for details.

searchable-scrollback: keysym

Sets the hotkey that starts the incremental scrollback buffer search (default: CWM-s).

urlLauncher: string

Specifies the program to be started with a URL argument. Used by the CWselection-popup and CWmark-urls perl extensions.

transient-for: windowid

Sets the WM_TRANSIENT_FOR property to the given window iw.

Lines of text that scroll off the top of the urxvt window (resource: saveLines) and can be scrolled back using the scrollbar or by keystrokes. The normal urxvt 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.

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.

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 logical line (which can span multiple screen lines), unless modified by resource tripleclickwords. Starting a selection while pressing the Meta key (or Meta+Ctrl keys) (Compile: frills) will create a rectangular selection instead of a normal one. In this mode, every selected row becomes its own line in the selection, and trailing whitespace is visually underlined and removed from the selection.

Insertion:

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

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]710;%s\007' "9x15bold,xft:Kochi Gothic"

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

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 CW--enable-frills, the rest is available when rxvt-unicode was compiled with CW--enable-iso14755.

* 5.1: Basic method

This allows you to enter unicode characters using their hexcode. Start by pressing and holding both CWControl and CWShift, then enter hex-digits (between one and six). Releasing CWControl and CWShift will commit the character as if it were typed directly. While holding down CWControl and CWShift you can also enter multiple characters by pressing CWSpace, 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. CW671d 65e5. You can enter this easily by pressing CWControl and CWShift, followed by CW6-7-1-D-SPACE-6-5-E-5, followed by releasing the modifier keys.

* 5.2: Keyboard symbols entry method

This mode lets you input characters representing the keycap symbols of your keyboard, if representable in the current locale encoding. Start by pressing CWControl and CWShift 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. CWShift would enter the symbol for CWISO Level 2 Switch, although your intention might have been to enter a reverse tab (Shift-Tab).

* 5.3: Screen-selection entry method

While this is implemented already (it's basically the selection mechanism), it could be extended by displaying a unicode character map.

* 5.4: Feedback method for identifying displayed characters for later input

This method lets you display the unicode character code associated with characters already displayed. You enter this mode by holding down CWControl and CWShift 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 CWControl and CWShift. 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.

urxvt 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, urxvt may need to be installed setuid root on some systems or setgid to root or to some other group on others.

In addition to the default foreground and background colours, urxvt 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. l l l . 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,

urxvt -fg Black -bg White -rv

would yield White on Black, while on xterm(1) it would yield Black on White.

urxvt sets and/or uses the following environment variables:

TERM

Normally set to CWrxvt-unicode, unless overwritten at configure time, via resources or on the commandline.

COLORTERM

Either CWrxvt, CWrxvt-xpm, depending on wether urxvt was compiled with XPM support, and optionally with the added extension CW-mono to indicate that rxvt-unicode runs on a monochrome screen.

COLORFGBG

Set to a string of the form CWfg;bg or CWfg;xpm;bg, where CWfg is the colour code used as default foreground/text colour (or the string CWdefault to indicate that the default-colour escape sequence is to be used), CWbg is the colour code used as default background colour (or the string CWdefault), and CWxpm is the string CWdefault if urxvt was compiled with XPM support. Libraries like CWncurses and CWslang can (and do) use this information to optimize screen output.

WINDOWID

Set to the (decimal) X Window ID of the urxvt window (the toplevel window, which usually has subwindows for the scrollbar, the terminal window and so on).

TERMINFO

Set to the terminfo directory iff urxvt was configured with CW--with-terminfo=PATH.

DISPLAY

Used by urxvt to connect to the display and set to the correct display in it's child processes.

SHELL

The shell to be used for command execution, defaults to CW/bin/sh.

RXVTPATH

The path where urxvt looks for support files such as menu and xpm files.

PATH

Used in the same way as CWRXVTPATH.

RXVT_SOCKET

The unix domain socket path used by urxvtc(1) and urxvtd(1). Default $HOME/.rxvt-unicode-<nodename.

HOME

Used to locate the default directory for the unix domain socket for daemon communications and to locate various resource files (such as CW.Xdefaults)

XAPPLRESDIR

Directory where various X resource files are being located.

XENVIRONMENT

If set and accessible, gives the name of a X resource file to be loaded by urxvt.

/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt

Color names.

urxvt(7), urxvtc(1), urxvtd(1), xterm(1), sh(1), resize(1), X(1), pty(4), tty(4), utmp(5)

Project Coordinator

Marc A. Lehmann <rxvt-unicode@schmorp.de> <http://software.schmorp.de/#rxvt-unicode>

John Bovey

University of Kent, 1992, wrote the original Xvt.

Rob Nation <nation@rocket.sanders.lockheed.com>

very heavily modified Xvt and came up with Rxvt

Angelo Haritsis <ah@doc.ic.ac.uk>

wrote the Greek Keyboard Input (no longer in code)

mj olesen <olesen@me.QueensU.CA>

Wrote the menu system. Project Coordinator (changes.txt 2.11 to 2.21)

Oezguer Kesim <kesim@math.fu-berlin.de>

Project Coordinator (changes.txt 2.21a to 2.4.5)

Geoff Wing <gcw@pobox.com>

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

Marc Alexander Lehmann <rxvt-unicode@schmorp.de>

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 -)