urxvt(1) RXVT-UNICODE urxvt(1)

NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

rxvt-unicode, version 9.31, 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.

This document is also available on the World-Wide-Web at
<http://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/rxvt-unicode/doc/rxvt.1.pod>.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

See urxvt(7) (try "man 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://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/rxvt-unicode/doc/rxvt.7.pod>.

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 devanagari. 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 right-to-left scripts, such as hebrew: rxvt-unicode adopts the
view that bidirectional algorithms belong in 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 "mlterm", which is a very user friendly, 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 its 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 its predecessor, supports things such as XFT and ISO 14755 that
are handy in i18n-environments, is faster, and has a lot bugs less
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 its 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) more accessible: see urxvt(7) for technical
reference documentation (escape sequences etc.).

OPTIONS

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 (the older form
-d is still respected. but deprecated). In the absence of this
option, the display specified by the DISPLAY environment variable
is used.

-depth bitdepth
Compile frills: Attempt to find a visual with the given bit
depth; resource depth.

[Please note that many X servers (and libXft) are buggy with
respect to "-depth 32" and/or alpha channels, and will cause all
sorts of graphical corruption. This is harmless, but we can't do
anything about this, so watch out]

-visual visualID
Compile frills: Use the given visual (see e.g. "xdpyinfo" for
possible visual ids) instead of the default, and also allocate a
private colormap. All visual types except for DirectColor are
supported.

-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 (allow multiple lines per refresh);
resource jumpScroll.

-ss|+ss
Turn on/off skip scrolling (allow multiple screens per refresh);
resource skipScroll.

-fps number
Compile frills: Set the refresh interval (in frames per second or
negative seconds); resource refreshRate.

-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 opaque black. resource fadeColor.

-icon file
Compile pixbuf: Use the specified image as application icon. This
is used by many window managers, taskbars and pagers to represent
the application window; resource iconFile.

-bg colour
Window background colour; resource background.

-fg colour
Window foreground colour; resource foreground.

-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 its name or
prefix it with "x:". To specify an XFT-font, you need to prefix
it with "xft:", 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 bold
italic characters are to be printed. See resource boldItalicFont
for details.

-is|+is
Compile font-styles: Bold/Blink 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.

-mc milliseconds
Specify the maximum time between multi-click selections.

-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.

-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.

-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.

-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.

-uc|+uc
Make the cursor underlined; resource cursorUnderline.

-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. If the window
manager does not support MWM hints (e.g. kwin), enables override-
redirect mode.

-override-redirect
Compile frills: Sets override-redirect on the window; resource
override-redirect.

-dockapp
Sets the initial state of the window to WithdrawnState, which
makes window managers that support this extension treat it as a
dockapp.

-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.

-letsp number
Compile frills: Amount to adjust the computed character width by
to control overall letter spacing. Negative values will tighten
up the letter spacing, positive values will space letters out
more. Useful to work around odd font metrics; resource
letterSpace.

-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.

If the perl extension "xim-onthespot" is used (which is the
default), then additionally the "OnTheSpot" preedit type is
available.

-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. 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. Only effective when the original (non-perl) selection
code is in-use. Instead of selecting a full line it will extend
the selection to the end of the logical line only. resource
tripleclickwords.

-dpb|+dpb
Compile frills: Disable (or enable) emitting bracketed paste mode
sequences (default enabled). Bracketed paste mode allows programs
to detect when something is pasted. Since more and more programs
abuse this, these sequences can be disabled. The command
sequences to enable and query paste mode will still work, but the
actual bracket sequences will no longer be emitted. You can also
toggle this from the ctrl-middle-mouse-button menu; resource
disablePasteBrackets.

-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.

-rm mode
Compile frills: Sets long line rewrapping behaviour on window
resizes to one of auto (the default), always or never. The latter
two modes do the obvious, auto rewraps (acts like always) if
scrollback is non-empty, and wings lines (acts like never)
otherwise; resource rewrapMode.

-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.

-cd path
Sets the working directory for the shell (or the command
specified via -e). The path must be an absolute path and it must
exist for urxvt to start; resource chdir.

-xrm string
Works like the X Toolkit option of the same name, by adding the
string as if it were specified in a resource file. Resource
values specified this way take precedence over all other resource
specifications.

Note that you need to use the same syntax as in the .Xdefaults
file, e.g. "*.background: black". Also note that all
urxvt-specific options can be specified as long-options on the
commandline, so use of -xrm is mostly limited to cases where you
want to specify other resources (e.g. for input methods) or for
compatibility with other programs.

-keysym.sym string
Remap a key symbol. See resource keysym.

-embed windowid
Tells urxvt to embed its 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 whether the
"-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 file descriptor 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 "-1" will completely
suppress pty/tty operations, which is probably only useful in
conjunction with some perl extension that manages the terminal.

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" }

Note that, despite what the name might imply, the file descriptor
does not need to be a pty, it can be a bi-directional pipe as
well (e.g. a unix domain or tcp socket). While tty operations
cannot be done in this case, urxvt can still be remote controlled
with it:

use Socket;
use Fcntl;

socketpair my $URXVT, my $slave, Socket::AF_UNIX, Socket::SOCK_STREAM, Socket::PF_UNSPEC;
fcntl $slave, Fcntl::F_SETFD, 0;
system "exec urxvt -pty-fd " . (fileno $slave) . " &";
close $slave;

syswrite $URXVT, "Type a secret password: ";
my $secret = do { local $/ = "\r"; <$URXVT> };
print "Not so secret anymore: $secret\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.

RESOURCES

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

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. app-defaults file in $XAPPLRESDIR
2. $HOME/.Xdefaults
3. RESOURCE_MANAGER property on root-window of screen 0
4. SCREEN_RESOURCES property on root-window of the current screen
5. $XENVIRONMENT file OR $HOME/.Xdefaults-<nodename>
6. resources specified via -xrm on the commandline

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):

depth: bitdepth
Compile xft: Attempt to find a visual with the given bit depth;
option -depth.

buffered: boolean
Compile xft: Turn on/off double-buffering for xft (default
enabled). On some card/driver combination enabling it slightly
decreases performance, on most it greatly helps it. The slowdown
is small, so it should normally be enabled.

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
COLOURS 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.

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

highlightColor: colour
If set, use the specified colour as the background for
highlighted characters. If unset, use reverse video.

highlightTextColor: colour
If set and highlightColor is set, use the specified colour as the
foreground for highlighted 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 COLOURS AND GRAPHICS section.

jumpScroll: boolean
True: specify that jump scrolling should be used. When receiving
lots of lines, urxvt will only scroll once a whole screen height
of lines has been read, resulting in fewer updates while still
displaying every received line; option -j.

False: specify that smooth scrolling should be used. urxvt will
force a screen refresh on each new line it received; option +j.

skipScroll: boolean
True: (the default) specify that skip scrolling should be used.
When receiving lots of lines, urxvt will only scroll once in a
while (around 60 times per second), resulting in far fewer
updates. This can result in urxvt not ever displaying some of the
lines it receives; option -ss.

False: specify that everything is to be displayed, even if the
refresh is too fast for the human eye to read anything (or the
monitor to display anything); option +ss.

refreshRate: number
Compile frills: When positive, sets the maximum refreshes per
second (the default is 60). When zero or negative, sets the
minimum interval between refreshes, negated. That is, positive
numbers limit the number of refreshes per second to that number,
similar to a fps limiter in games. A negative number gets negated
and directly sets the minimum interval between refreshes, that
is, 10 and "-0.1" both specify the same refresh interval
(likewise 50 and 0.02). Finally, zero makes urxvt refresh as fast
as possible. Fractional values are supported; option -fps.

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.

iconFile: file
Set the application icon pixmap; option -icon.

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.

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 "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 fewer
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.

intensityStyles: boolean
When font styles are not enabled, or this option is enabled
(True, option -is, the default), bold/blink font styles imply
high intensity foreground/background colours. Disabling this
option (False, option +is) disables this behaviour, the high
intensity colours are not reachable.

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].

urgentOnBell: boolean
True: set the urgency hint for the wm on receipt of a bell
character. False: do not set the urgency hint [default].

urxvt resets the urgency hint on every focus change.

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.

multiClickTime: number
Specify the maximum time in milliseconds between multi-click
select events. The default is 500 milliseconds; option -mc.

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 every time you hit "Print".

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

thickness: number
Set the scrollbar width in pixels.

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
(i.e. try to show the same lines) and scrollTtyOutput is False;
option -sw. False: do not scroll with scrollback buffer when tty
receives 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 1000]; 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 "-ptab".

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

cursorUnderline: boolean
True: Make the cursor underlined. False: Make the cursor a box
[default]; option -uc.

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.

pointerShape: string
Compile frills: Specifies the name of the mouse pointer shape
[default xterm]. See the macros in the X11/cursorfont.h include
file for possible values (omit the "XC_" prefix).

pointerBlankDelay: number
Specifies number of seconds before blanking the pointer [default
2]. Use a large number (e.g. 987654321) 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, with control,
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
(whitespace delimiting is added automatically if resource is
given).

When the perl selection extension is in use (the default if
compiled in, see the urxvtperl(3) manpage), a suitable regex
using these characters will be created (if the resource exists,
otherwise, no regex will be created). In this mode, characters
outside ISO-8859-1 can be used.

When the selection extension is not used, only ISO-8859-1
characters can be used. If not specified, the built-in default is
used:

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

preeditType: style
OnTheSpot, 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.

imFont: fontset
Specify the font-set used for XIM styles "OverTheSpot" or
"OffTheSpot". 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.

disablePasteBrackets: boolean
Prevent emission of paste bracket sequences; option -dpb.

insecure: boolean
Enable "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.

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

rewrapMode: mode
Sets long line rewrap behaviour on window resize to one of auto
(default), always or never.

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

hold: boolean
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.

chdir: path
Sets the working directory for the shell (or the command
specified via -e). The path must be an absolute path and it must
exist for urxvt to start. If it isn't specified then the current
working directory will be used; option -cd.

keysym.sym: action
Compile frills: Associate action with keysym sym. The intervening
resource name keysym. cannot be omitted.

Using this resource, you can map key combinations such as
"Ctrl-Shift-BackSpace" to various actions, such as outputting a
different string than would normally result from that
combination, making the terminal scroll up or down the way you
want it, or any other thing an extension might provide.

The key combination that triggers the action, sym, has the
following format:

(modifiers-)key

Where modifiers can be any combination of the following full or
abbreviated modifier names:

ISOLevel3 I
AppKeypad K
Control C
NumLock N
Shift S
Meta M or A
Lock L
Mod1 1
Mod2 2
Mod3 3
Mod4 4
Mod5 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.

Due the the large number of modifier combinations, a key mapping
will match if 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 mapping for "a" will
automatically provide definitions for "Meta-a", "Shift-a" and so
on, unless some of those are defined mappings themselves. See the
"builtin:" action, below, for a way to work around this when this
is a problem.

The spelling of key depends on your implementation of X. An easy
way to find a key name is to use the xev(1) command. You can find
a list by looking for the "XK_" macros in the X11/keysymdef.h
include file (omit the "XK_" prefix). Alternatively you can
specify key by its hex keysym value (0x0000 - 0xFFFF).

As with any resource value, the action string may contain
backslash escape sequences ("\n": newline, "\\": backslash,
"\000": octal number), see RESOURCES in "man 7 X" for further
details.

An action starts with an action prefix that selects a certain
type of action, followed by a colon. An action string without
colons is interpreted as a literal string to pass to the tty (as
if it was prefixed with "string:").

The following action prefixes are known - extensions can provide
additional prefixes:

string:STRING
If the action starts with "string:" (or otherwise contains no
colons), then the remaining "STRING" will be passed to the
program running in the terminal. For example, you could
replace whatever Shift-Tab outputs by the string "echo rm -rf
/" followed by a newline:

URxvt.keysym.Shift-Tab: string:echo rm -rf /\n

This could in theory be used to completely redefine your
keymap.

In addition, for actions of this type, you can define a range
of keysyms in one shot by loading the "keysym-list" perl
extension and providing an action with pattern
list/PREFIX/MIDDLE/SUFFIX, where the delimiter `/' should be
a character not used by the strings.

Its usage can be demonstrated by an example:

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

The above line is equivalent to the following three lines:

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

command:STRING
If action takes the form of "command:STRING", the specified
STRING is interpreted and executed as urxvt's control
sequence (basically the opposite of "string:" - instead of
sending it to the program running in the terminal, it will be
treated as if it were program output). This is most useful to
feed command sequences into urxvt.

For example the following means "change the current locale to
"zh_CN.GBK" when Control-Meta-c is being pressed":

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

The following example will map Control-Meta-1 and
Control-Meta-2 to the fonts "suxuseuro" and "9x15bold", 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

builtin:
The builtin action is the action that urxvt would execute if
no key binding existed for the key combination. The obvious
use is to undo the effect of existing bindings. The not so
obvious use is to reinstate bindings when another binding
overrides too many modifiers.

For example if you overwrite the "Insert" key you will
disable urxvt's "Shift-Insert" mapping. To re-enable that,
you can poke "holes" into the user-defined keymap using the
"builtin:" replacement:

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

The first line defines a mapping for "Insert" and any
combination of modifiers. The second line re-establishes the
default mapping for "Shift-Insert".

builtin-string:
This action is mainly useful to restore string mappings for
keys that have predefined actions in urxvt. The exact
semantics are a bit difficult to explain - basically, this
action will send the string to the application that would be
sent if urxvt wouldn't have a built-in action for it.

An example might make it clearer: urxvt normally pastes the
selection when you press "Shift-Insert". With the following
bindings, it would instead emit the (undocumented, but what
applications running in the terminal might expect) sequence
"ESC [ 2 $" instead:

URxvt.keysym.S-Insert: builtin-string:
URxvt.keysym.C-S-Insert: builtin:

The first line disables the paste functionality for that key
combination, and the second reinstates the default behaviour
for "Control-Shift-Insert", which would otherwise be
overridden.

Similarly, to let applications gain access to the "C-M-c"
(copy to clipboard) and "C-M-v" (paste clipboard) key
combination, you can do this:

URxvt.keysym.C-M-c: builtin-string:
URxvt.keysym.C-M-v: builtin-string:

EXTENSION:STRING
An action of this form invokes the action STRING, if any,
provided by the urxvtperl(3) extension EXTENSION. The
extension will be loaded automatically if necessary.

Not all extensions define actions, but popular extensions
that do include the selection and matcher extensions
(documented in their own manpages, urxvt-selection(1) and
urxvt-matcher(1), respectively).

From the silly examples department, this will rot13-"encrypt"
urxvt's selection when Alt-Control-c is pressed on typical PC
keyboards:

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

perl:STRING *DEPRECATED*
This is a deprecated way of invoking commands provided by
perl extensions. It is still supported, but should not be
used anymore.

perl-ext-common: string
perl-ext: string
Comma-separated list(s) of perl extension scripts (default:
"default") to use in this terminal instance; option -pe.

Extension names can be prefixed with a "-" sign to remove them
again, in case they had been specified earlier. This can be
useful to selectively disable some extensions loaded by default,
or specified via the "perl-ext-common" resource. For example,
"default,-selection" will use all the default extensions except
"selection".

To prohibit autoloading of extensions, you can prefix them with
"/", which will make urxvt refuse to automatically load them
(this can be overridden, however, by specifying the extension
name again without a prefix, though). This does not prohibit
extensions themselves loading other extensions. For example,
"default,/background" will keep the "background" extension from
being loaded when a background OSC sequence is received.

The default set includes the "selection", "option-popup",
"selection-popup", "readline", "searchable-scrollback" and
"confirm-paste" extensions, as well as any extensions which are
mentioned in keysym resources.

Any extension such that a corresponding resource is given on the
command line is automatically appended to perl-ext.

Each extension is looked up in the library directories, loaded if
necessary, and bound to the current terminal instance. When the
library search path contains multiple extension files of the same
name, then the first one found will be used.

If both of these resources are the empty string, then the perl
interpreter will not be initialized. The rationale for having 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.

perl-lib: path
Colon-separated list of additional directories that hold
extension scripts. When looking for perl extensions, urxvt will
first look in these directories, then in $URXVT_PERL_LIB,
$HOME/.urxvt/ext and lastly in /usr/lib/amd64/urxvt/perl/.

See the urxvtperl(3) manpage.

selection.pattern-idx: perl-regex
Additional selection patterns, see the urxvtperl(3) manpage for
details.

selection-autotransform.idx: perl-transform
Selection auto-transform patterns, see the urxvtperl(3) manpage
for details.

searchable-scrollback: keysym *DEPRECATED*
This resource is deprecated and will be removed. Use a keysym
resource instead, e.g.:

URxvt.keysym.M-s: searchable-scrollback:start

url-launcher: string
Specifies the program to be started with a URL argument. Used by
the "selection-popup" and "matcher" perl extensions.

transient-for: windowid
Compile frills: Sets the WM_TRANSIENT_FOR property to the given
window id.

override-redirect: boolean
Compile frills: Sets override-redirect for the terminal window,
making it almost invisible to window managers; option
-override-redirect.

iso14755: boolean
Turn on/off ISO 14755 (default enabled).

iso14755_52: boolean
Turn on/off ISO 14755 5.2 mode (default enabled).

THE SCROLLBAR

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.

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.

THE SELECTION: SELECTING AND PASTING TEXT
The behaviour of text selection and insertion/pasting mechanism is
similar to xterm(1).

Selecting:
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.

Pasting:
Pressing and releasing the Middle mouse button in an urxvt window
causes the value of the PRIMARY selection (or CLIPBOARD with the
Meta modifier) to be inserted as if it had been typed on the
keyboard.

Pressing Shift-Insert causes the value of the PRIMARY selection
to be inserted too.

rxvt-unicode also provides the bindings Ctrl-Meta-c and
<Ctrl-Meta-v> to interact with the CLIPBOARD selection. The first
binding causes the value of the internal selection to be copied
to the CLIPBOARD selection, while the second binding causes the
value of the CLIPBOARD selection to be inserted.

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,
e.g.:

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

You can use keyboard shortcuts, too:

URxvt.keysym.M-C-1: command:\033]710;suxuseuro\007\033]711;suxuseuro\007
URxvt.keysym.M-C-2: command:\033]710;9x15bold\007\033]711;9x15bold\007

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 if rxvt-unicode has been compiled with
"--enable-frills", the rest is available when rxvt-unicode was
compiled with "--enable-iso14755".

+o 5.1: Basic method

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.

+o 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 "Control" and "Shift" together, then releasing
them. The next special key (cursor keys, home etc.) you enter
will not invoke its 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 been to enter a reverse tab (Shift-Tab).

+o 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.

+o 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 "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

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.

COLOURS AND GRAPHICS

In addition to the default foreground and background colours, urxvt
can display up to 88/256 colours: 8 ANSI colours plus high-intensity
(potentially bold/blink) versions of the same, and 72 (or 240 in 256
colour mode) colours arranged in an 4x4x4 (or 6x6x6) colour RGB cube
plus a 8 (24) colour greyscale ramp.

urxvt supports direct 24-bit fg/bg RGB colour escapes " ESC [ 38 ; 2
; R ; G ; Bm " / " ESC [ 48 ; 2; R ; G ; Bm ". However the number of
24-bit colours that can be used is limited: an internal 7x7x5 (256
colour mode) or 6x6x4 (88 colour mode) colour cube is used to index
into the 24-bit colour space. When indexing collisions happen, the
nearest old colour in the cube will be adapted to the new 24-bit RGB
colour. That means one cannot use many similar 24-bit colours. It's
typically not a problem in common scenarios.

Here is a list of the ANSI colours with their 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.

The following text gives values for the standard 88 colour mode (and
values for the 256 colour mode in parentheses).

The RGB cube uses indices 16..79 (16..231) using the following
formulas:

index_88 = (r * 4 + g) * 4 + b + 16 # r, g, b = 0..3
index_256 = (r * 6 + g) * 6 + b + 16 # r, g, b = 0..5

The grayscale ramp uses indices 80..87 (232..239), from 10% to 90% in
10% steps (1/26 to 25/26 in 1/26 steps) - black and white are already
part of the RGB cube.

Together, all those colours implement the 88 (256) colour xterm
colours. Only the first 16 can be changed using resources currently,
the rest can only be changed via command sequences ("escape codes").

Applications are advised to use terminfo or command sequences to
discover number and RGB values of all colours (yes, you can query
this...).

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.

ALPHA CHANNEL SUPPORT

If Xft support has been compiled in and as long as Xft/Xrender/X
don't get their act together, rxvt-unicode will do its own alpha
channel management:

You can prefix any colour with an opaqueness percentage enclosed in
brackets, i.e. "[percent]", where "percent" is a decimal percentage
(0-100) that specifies the opacity of the colour, where 0 is
completely transparent and 100 is completely opaque. For example,
"[50]red" is a half-transparent red, while "[95]#00ff00" is an almost
opaque green. This is the recommended format to specify transparency
values, and works with all ways to specify a colour.

For complete control, rxvt-unicode also supports
"rgba:rrrr/gggg/bbbb/aaaa" (exactly four hex digits/component) colour
specifications, where the additional "aaaa" component specifies
opacity (alpha) values. The minimum value of 0000 is completely
transparent, while "ffff" is completely opaque). The two example
colours from earlier could also be specified as
"rgba:ff00/0000/0000/8000" and "rgba:0000/ff00/0000/f332".

You probably need to specify "-depth 32", too, to force a visual with
alpha channels, and have the luck that your X-server uses ARGB pixel
layout, as X is far from just supporting ARGB visuals out of the box,
and rxvt-unicode just fudges around.

For example, the following selects an almost completely transparent
black background, and an almost opaque pink foreground:

urxvt -depth 32 -bg rgba:0000/0000/0000/4444 -fg "[80]pink"

When not using a background image, then the interpretation of the
alpha channel is up to your compositing manager (most interpret it as
transparency of course).

When using a background pixmap or pseudo-transparency, then the
background colour will always behave as if it were completely
transparent (so the background image shows instead), regardless of
how it was specified, while other colours will either be transparent
as specified (the background image will show through) on servers
supporting the RENDER extension, or fully opaque on servers not
supporting the RENDER EXTENSION.

Please note that due to bugs in Xft, specifying alpha values might
result in garbage being displayed when the X-server does not support
the RENDER extension.

ENVIRONMENT

urxvt sets and/or uses the following environment variables:

TERM
Normally set to "rxvt-unicode", unless overwritten at configure
time, via resources or on the command line.

COLORTERM
Either "rxvt", "rxvt-xpm", depending on whether urxvt was
compiled with background image support, and optionally with the
added extension "-mono" to indicate that rxvt-unicode runs on a
monochrome screen.

COLORFGBG
Set to a string of the form "fg;bg" or "fg;xpm;bg", where "fg" is
the colour code used as default foreground/text colour (or the
string "default" to indicate that the default-colour escape
sequence is to be used), "bg" is the colour code used as default
background colour (or the string "default"), and "xpm" is the
string "default" if urxvt was compiled with background image
support. Libraries like "ncurses" and "slang" 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
"--with-terminfo=PATH".

DISPLAY
Used by urxvt to connect to the display and set to the correct
display in its child processes if "-display" isn't used to
override. It defaults to ":0" if it doesn't exist.

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

RXVT_SOCKET [sic]
The unix domain socket path used by urxvtc(1) and urxvtd(1).

Default $HOME/.urxvt/urxvtd-<nodename>.

URXVT_PERL_LIB
Additional :-separated library search path for perl extensions.
Will be searched after -perl-lib but before ~/.urxvt/ext and the
system library directory.

URXVT_PERL_VERBOSITY
See urxvtperl(3).

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

XAPPLRESDIR
Directory where application-specific X resource files are
located.

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

FILES

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

SEE ALSO

urxvt(7), urxvtc(1), urxvtd(1), urxvt-extensions(1), urxvtperl(3),
xterm(1), sh(1), resize(1), X(1), pty(4), tty(4), utmp(5)

CURRENT PROJECT COORDINATOR

Project Coordinator
Marc A. Lehmann <rxvt-unicode@schmorp.de>.

<http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html>

AUTHORS

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, unicode support, rewrote almost all the
code, perl extension, random hacks, numerous bugfixes and
extensions.

Project Coordinator (Changes 1.0 -)

Emanuele Giaquinta <emanuele.giaquinta@gmail.com>
pty/utmp code rewrite, image code improvements, many random hacks
and bugfixes.

9.31 2023-01-02 urxvt(1)