NAME
xterm - terminal emulator for X
SYNOPSIS
xterm [-
toolkitoption ...] [-
option ...] [
shell]
DESCRIPTION
The
xterm program is a terminal emulator for the X Window System. It
provides DEC VT102/VT220 and selected features from higher-level terminals
such as VT320/VT420/VT520 (VT
xxx). It also provides Tektronix 4014
emulation for programs that cannot use the window system directly. If the
underlying operating system supports terminal resizing capabilities (for
example, the SIGWINCH signal in systems derived from 4.3BSD),
xterm
will use the facilities to notify programs running in the window whenever it
is resized.
The VT
xxx and Tektronix 4014 terminals each have their own window so
that you can edit text in one and look at graphics in the other at the same
time. To maintain the correct aspect ratio (height/width), Tektronix graphics
will be restricted to the largest box with a 4014's aspect ratio that will fit
in the window. This box is located in the upper left area of the window.
Although both windows may be displayed at the same time, one of them is
considered the “active” window for receiving keyboard input and
terminal output. This is the window that contains the text cursor. The active
window can be chosen through escape sequences, the
VT Options menu in
the VT
xxx window, and the
Tek Options menu in the 4014 window.
EMULATIONS
Xterm provides usable emulations of related DEC terminals:
- •
- VT52 emulation is complete.
- •
- VT102 emulation is fairly complete, but does not support
autorepeat (because that would affect the keyboard used by other X
clients).
- Double-size characters are displayed properly if your font
server supports scalable bitmap fonts.
- •
- VT220 emulation does not support soft fonts, it is
otherwise complete.
- •
- VT420 emulation (the default) supports controls for
manipulating rectangles of characters as well as left/right margins.
- Xterm does not support some other features which are
not suitable for emulation, e.g., two-sessions.
Terminal database (
terminfo (5) or
termcap (5)) entries that work
with
xterm include
- an optional platform-specific entry (“xterm”),
“xterm”,
“vt102”,
“vt100”,
“ansi” and
“dumb”
Xterm automatically searches the terminal database in this order for
these entries and then sets the “TERM” variable (and the
“TERMCAP” environment variable on a few older systems). The
alternatives after “xterm” are very old, from the late 1980s.
VT100 and VT102 emulations are commonly equated, though they actually differ.
The VT102 provided controls for inserting and deleting lines.
Similarly, “ansi” and “vt100” are often equated. These
are not really the same. For instance, they use different controls for
scrolling (but
xterm supports both). These features differ in an
“ansi” terminal description from
xterm:
- acsc
-
Pseudo-graphics (line-drawing) uses a different mapping.
- xenl
-
Xterm wraps text at the right margin using the VT100 “newline
glitch” behavior.
Because of the wrapping behavior, you would occasionally have to repaint the
screen when using a text editor with the “ansi” description.
You may also use descriptions corresponding to the various supported emulations
such as “vt220” or “vt420”, but should set the
terminal emulation level with the
decTerminalID resource.
On most systems,
xterm will use the terminfo database. Some older systems
use termcap. (The “TERMCAP” environment variable is not set if
xterm is linked against a terminfo library, since the requisite
information is not provided by the termcap emulation of terminfo libraries).
Many of the special
xterm features may be modified under program control
through a set of escape sequences different from the standard VT
xxx
escape sequences (see
Xterm Control Sequences).
The Tektronix 4014 emulation is also fairly good. It supports 12-bit graphics
addressing, scaled to the window size. Four different font sizes and five
different lines types are supported. There is no write-through or defocused
mode support. The Tektronix text and graphics commands are recorded internally
by
xterm and may be written to a file by sending the COPY escape
sequence (or through the
Tektronix menu; see below). The name of the
file will be
“COPY yyyy-MM-dd.hh:mm:ss”
where
yyyy,
MM,
dd,
hh,
mm and
ss are
the year, month, day, hour, minute and second when the COPY was performed (the
file is created in the directory
xterm is started in, or the home
directory for a login
xterm).
Not all of the features described in this manual are necessarily available in
this version of
xterm. Some (e.g., the non-VT220 extensions) are
available only if they were compiled in, though the most commonly-used are in
the default configuration.
OTHER FEATURES
Xterm automatically highlights the text cursor when the pointer enters
the window (selected) and unhighlights it when the pointer leaves the window
(unselected). If the window is the focus window, then the text cursor is
highlighted no matter where the pointer is.
In VT
xxx mode, there are escape sequences to activate and deactivate an
alternate screen buffer, which is the same size as the display area of the
window. When activated, the current screen is saved and replaced with the
alternate screen. Saving of lines scrolled off the top of the window is
disabled until the normal screen is restored. The usual terminal description
for
xterm allows the visual editor
vi(1) to switch to the
alternate screen for editing and to restore the screen on exit. A popup menu
entry makes it simple to switch between the normal and alternate screens for
cut and paste.
In either VT
xxx or Tektronix mode, there are escape sequences to change
the name of the windows. Additionally, in VT
xxx mode,
xterm
implements the window-manipulation control sequences from
dtterm, such
as resizing the window, setting its location on the screen.
Xterm allows character-based applications to receive mouse events
(currently button-press and release events, and button-motion events) as
keyboard control sequences. See
Xterm Control Sequences for details.
OPTIONS
Because
xterm uses the X Toolkit library, it accepts the standard X
Toolkit command line options.
Xterm also accepts many
application-specific options.
By convention, if an option begins with a “
+” instead of a
“
-”, the option is restored to its default value.
Most of the
xterm options are actually parsed by the X Toolkit, which
sets resource values, and overrides corresponding resource-settings in your X
resource files.
Xterm provides the X Toolkit with a table of options. A
few of these are marked, telling the X Toolkit to ignore them (
-help,
-version,
-class,
-e, and
-into). After the X
Toolkit has parsed the command-line parameters, it removes those which it
handles, leaving the specially-marked parameters for
xterm to handle.
These options do not set a resource value, and are handled specially:
- -version
- This causes xterm to print a version number to the
standard output, and then exit.
- -help
- This causes xterm to print out a verbose message
describing its options, one per line. The message is written to the
standard output. After printing the message, xterm exits.
Xterm generates this message, sorting it and noting whether a
“ -option” or a “
+option” turns the feature on or off, since some
features historically have been one or the other. Xterm generates a
concise help message (multiple options per line) when an unknown option is
used, e.g.,
xterm -z
- If the logic for a particular option such as logging is not
compiled into xterm, the help text for that option also is not
displayed by the -help option.
The
-version and
-help options are interpreted even if
xterm cannot open the display, and are useful for testing and
configuration scripts. Along with
-class, they are checked before other
options. To do this,
xterm has its own (much simpler) argument parser,
along with a table of the X Toolkit's built-in list of options.
Relying upon the X Toolkit to parse the options and associated values has the
advantages of simplicity and good integration with the X resource mechanism.
There are a few drawbacks
- •
- Xterm cannot tell easily whether a resource value
was set by one of the external resource- or application-defaults files,
whether it was set using xrdb(1), or if it was set through the
-xrm option or via some directly relevant command-line option.
Xterm sees only the end-result: a value supplied when creating its
widgets.
- •
- Xterm does not know the order in which particular
options and items in resource files are evaluated. Rather, it sees all of
the values for a given widget at the same time. In the design of these
options, some are deemed more important, and can override other
options.
- The X Toolkit uses patterns (constants and wildcards) to
match resources. Once a particular pattern has been used, it will not
modify it. To override a given setting, a more-specific pattern must be
used, e.g., replacing “*” with “.”. Some
poorly-designed resource files are too specific to allow the command-line
options to affect the relevant widget values.
- •
- In a few cases, the X Toolkit combines its standard options
in ways which do not work well with xterm. This happens with the
color ( -fg, -bg) and reverse (-rv) options.
Xterm makes a special case of these and adjusts its sense of
“reverse” to lessen user surprise.
One parameter (after all options) may be given. That overrides
xterm's
built-in choice of shell program:
- •
- If the parameter is not a relative path, i.e., beginning
with “./” or “../”, xterm looks for the
file in the user's PATH. In either case, this check fails if xterm
cannot construct an absolute path.
- •
- If that check fails (or if no such parameter is given),
xterm next checks the “SHELL” variable. If that
specifies an executable file, xterm will attempt to start that.
However, xterm additionally checks if it is a valid shell, and will
unset “SHELL” if it is not.
- •
- If “SHELL” is not set to an executable file,
xterm tries to use the shell program specified in the user's
password file entry. As before, xterm verifies if this is a valid
shell.
- •
- Finally, if the password file entry does not specify a
valid shell, xterm uses /bin/sh.
The
-e option cannot be used with this parameter since it uses all
parameters following the option.
Xterm validates shell programs by finding their pathname in the text file
/etc/shells. It treats the environment variable “SHELL”
specially because (like “TERM”),
xterm both reads and
updates the variable, and because the program started by
xterm is not
necessarily a shell.
The other options are used to control the appearance and behavior. Not all
options are necessarily configured into your copy of
xterm:
- -132
- Normally, the VT102 DECCOLM escape sequence that switches
between 80 and 132 column mode is ignored. This option causes the DECCOLM
escape sequence to be recognized, and the xterm window will resize
appropriately.
- -ah
- This option indicates that xterm should always
highlight the text cursor. By default, xterm will display a hollow
text cursor whenever the focus is lost or the pointer leaves the
window.
- +ah
- This option indicates that xterm should do text
cursor highlighting based on focus.
- -ai
- This option disables active icon support if that feature
was compiled into xterm. This is equivalent to setting the
vt100 resource activeIcon to “false”.
- +ai
- This option enables active icon support if that feature was
compiled into xterm. This is equivalent to setting the vt100
resource activeIcon to “true”.
- -aw
- This option indicates that auto-wraparound should be
allowed, and is equivalent to setting the vt100 resource
autoWrap to “true”.
- Auto-wraparound allows the cursor to automatically wrap to
the beginning of the next line when it is at the rightmost position of a
line and text is output.
- +aw
- This option indicates that auto-wraparound should not be
allowed, and is equivalent to setting the vt100 resource
autoWrap to “false”.
- -b number
- This option specifies the size of the inner border (the
distance between the outer edge of the characters and the window border)
in pixels. That is the vt100 internalBorder resource. The
default is “2”.
- -baudrate number
- Set the line-speed, used to test the behavior of
applications that use the line-speed when optimizing their output to the
screen. The default is “38400”.
- -bc
- turn on text cursor blinking. This overrides the
cursorBlink resource.
- +bc
- turn off text cursor blinking. This overrides the
cursorBlink resource.
- -bcf milliseconds
- set the amount of time text cursor is off when blinking via
the cursorOffTime resource.
- -bcn milliseconds
- set the amount of time text cursor is on when blinking via
the cursorOnTime resource.
- -bdc
- Set the vt100 resource colorBDMode to
“false”, disabling the display of characters with bold
attribute as color.
- +bdc
- Set the vt100 resource colorBDMode to
“true”, enabling the display of characters with bold attribute
as color rather than bold.
- -cb
- Set the vt100 resource cutToBeginningOfLine
to “false”.
- +cb
- Set the vt100 resource cutToBeginningOfLine
to “true”.
- -cc characterclassrange:value[,
...]
- This sets classes indicated by the given ranges for using
in selecting by words (see CHARACTER CLASSES and the
charClass resource).
- -cjk_width
- Set the cjkWidth resource to “true”.
When turned on, characters with East Asian Ambiguous (A) category in UTR
11 have a column width of 2. Otherwise, they have a column width of 1.
This may be useful for some legacy CJK text terminal-based programs
assuming box drawings and others to have a column width of 2. It also
should be turned on when you specify a TrueType CJK double-width
(bi-width/monospace) font either with -fa at the command line or
faceName resource. The default is “false”
- +cjk_width
- Reset the cjkWidth resource.
- -class string
- This option allows you to override xterm's resource
class. Normally it is “XTerm”, but can be set to another class
such as “UXTerm” to override selected resources.
- X Toolkit sets the WM_CLASS property using the
instance name and this class value.
- -cm
- This option disables recognition of ANSI color-change
escape sequences. It sets the colorMode resource to
“false”.
- +cm
- This option enables recognition of ANSI color-change escape
sequences. This is the same as the vt100 resource
colorMode.
- -cn
- This option indicates that newlines should not be cut in
line-mode selections. It sets the cutNewline resource to
“false”.
- +cn
- This option indicates that newlines should be cut in
line-mode selections. It sets the cutNewline resource to
“true”.
- -cr color
- This option specifies the color to use for text cursor. The
default is to use the same foreground color that is used for text. It sets
the cursorColor resource according to the parameter.
- -cu
- This option indicates that xterm should work around
a bug in the more(1) program that causes it to incorrectly display
lines that are exactly the width of the window and are followed by a line
beginning with a tab (the leading tabs are not displayed). This option is
so named because it was originally thought to be a bug in the
curses(3x) cursor motion package.
- +cu
- This option indicates that xterm should not work
around the more(1) bug mentioned above.
- -dc
- This option disables the escape sequence to change dynamic
colors: the vt100 foreground and background colors, its text cursor color,
the pointer cursor foreground and background colors, the Tektronix
emulator foreground and background colors, its text cursor color and
highlight color. The option sets the dynamicColors option to
“false”.
- +dc
- This option enables the escape sequence to change dynamic
colors. The option sets the dynamicColors option to
“true”.
- -e program [ arguments ...
]
- This option specifies the program (and its command line
arguments) to be run in the xterm window. It also sets the window
title and icon name to be the basename of the program being executed if
neither -T nor -n are given on the command line.
- NOTE: This must be the last option on the
command line.
- -en encoding
- This option determines the encoding on which xterm
runs. It sets the locale resource. Encodings other than UTF-8 are
supported by using luit. The -lc option should be used
instead of -en for systems with locale support.
- -fa pattern
- This option sets the pattern for fonts selected from the
FreeType library if support for that library was compiled into
xterm. This corresponds to the faceName resource. When a CJK
double-width font is specified, you also need to turn on the
cjkWidth resource.
- If you specify both -fa and the X Toolkit option
-fn, the -fa setting overrides the latter.
- See also the renderFont resource, which combines
with this to determine whether FreeType fonts are initially active.
- -fb font
- This option specifies a font to be used when displaying
bold text. It sets the boldFont resource.
- This font must be the same height and width as the normal
font, otherwise it is ignored. If only one of the normal or bold fonts is
specified, it will be used as the normal font and the bold font will be
produced by overstriking this font.
- See also the discussion of boldMode and
alwaysBoldMode resources.
- -fbb
- This option indicates that xterm should compare
normal and bold fonts bounding boxes to ensure they are compatible. It
sets the freeBoldBox resource to “false”.
- +fbb
- This option indicates that xterm should not compare
normal and bold fonts bounding boxes to ensure they are compatible. It
sets the freeBoldBox resource to “true”.
- -fbx
- This option indicates that xterm should not assume
that the normal and bold fonts have VT100 line-drawing characters. If any
are missing, xterm will draw the characters directly. It sets the
forceBoxChars resource to “false”.
- +fbx
- This option indicates that xterm should assume that
the normal and bold fonts have VT100 line-drawing characters. It sets the
forceBoxChars resource to “true”.
- -fc fontchoice
- Specify the initial font chosen from the font menu. The
option value corresponds to the initialFont resource.
- -fd pattern
- This option sets the pattern for double-width fonts
selected from the FreeType library if support for that library was
compiled into xterm. This corresponds to the
faceNameDoublesize resource.
- -fi font
- This option sets the font for active icons if that feature
was compiled into xterm.
- See also the discussion of the iconFont
resource.
- -fs size
- This option sets the pointsize for fonts selected from the
FreeType library if support for that library was compiled into
xterm. This corresponds to the faceSize resource.
- -fullscreen
- This option indicates that xterm should ask the
window manager to let it use the full-screen for display, e.g., without
window decorations. It sets the fullscreen resource to
“true”.
- +fullscreen
- This option indicates that xterm should not ask the
window manager to let it use the full-screen for display. It sets the
fullscreen resource to “false”.
- -fw font
- This option specifies the font to be used for displaying
wide text. By default, it will attempt to use a font twice as wide as the
font that will be used to draw normal text. If no double-width font is
found, it will improvise, by stretching the normal font. This corresponds
to the wideFont resource.
- -fwb font
- This option specifies the font to be used for displaying
bold wide text. By default, it will attempt to use a font twice as wide as
the font that will be used to draw bold text. If no double-width font is
found, it will improvise, by stretching the bold font. This corresponds to
the wideBoldFont resource.
- -fx font
- This option specifies the font to be used for displaying
the preedit string in the “OverTheSpot” input method.
- See also the discussion of the ximFont
resource.
- -hc color
- (see -selbg).
- -hf
- This option indicates that HP function key escape codes
should be generated for function keys. It sets the hpFunctionKeys
resource to “true”.
- +hf
- This option indicates that HP function key escape codes
should not be generated for function keys. It sets the
hpFunctionKeys resource to “false”.
- -hm
- Tells xterm to use highlightTextColor and
highlightColor to override the reversed foreground/background
colors in a selection. It sets the highlightColorMode resource to
“true”.
- +hm
- Tells xterm not to use highlightTextColor and
highlightColor to override the reversed foreground/background
colors in a selection. It sets the highlightColorMode resource to
“false”.
- -hold
- Turn on the hold resource, i.e., xterm will
not immediately destroy its window when the shell command completes. It
will wait until you use the window manager to destroy/kill the window, or
if you use the menu entries that send a signal, e.g., HUP or KILL.
- +hold
- Turn off the hold resource, i.e., xterm will
immediately destroy its window when the shell command completes.
- -ie
- Turn on the ptyInitialErase resource, i.e., use the
pseudo-terminal's sense of the stty erase value.
- +ie
- Turn off the ptyInitialErase resource, i.e., set the
stty erase value using the kb string from the termcap entry
as a reference, if available.
- -im
- Turn on the useInsertMode resource, which forces use
of insert mode by adding appropriate entries to the TERMCAP environment
variable. (This option is ignored on most systems, because TERMCAP is not
used).
- +im
- Turn off the useInsertMode resource.
- -into windowId
- Given an X window identifier (an integer, which can be
hexadecimal, octal or decimal according to whether it begins with
"0x", "0" or neither), xterm will reparent its
top-level shell widget to that window. This is used to embed xterm
within other applications.
- For instance, there are scripts for Tcl/Tk and Gtk which
can be used to demonstrate the feature. When using Gtk, there is a
limitation of that toolkit which requires that xterm's
allowSendEvents resource is enabled.
- -itc
- Set the vt100 resource colorITMode to
“false”, disabling the display of characters with italic
attribute as color.
- +itc
- Set the vt100 resource colorITMode to
“true”, enabling the display of characters with italic
attribute as color rather than italic.
- -j
- This option indicates that xterm should do jump
scrolling. It corresponds to the jumpScroll resource. Normally,
text is scrolled one line at a time; this option allows xterm to
move multiple lines at a time so that it does not fall as far behind. Its
use is strongly recommended since it makes xterm much faster when
scanning through large amounts of text. The VT100 escape sequences for
enabling and disabling smooth scroll as well as the VT Options menu
can be used to turn this feature on or off.
- +j
- This option indicates that xterm should not do jump
scrolling.
- -k8
- This option sets the allowC1Printable resource. When
allowC1Printable is set, xterm overrides the mapping of C1
control characters (code 128–159) to treat them as printable.
- +k8
- This option resets the allowC1Printable
resource.
- -kt keyboardtype
- This option sets the keyboardType resource. Possible
values include: “unknown”, “default”,
“legacy”, “hp”, “sco”,
“sun”, “tcap” and “vt220”.
- The value “unknown”, causes the corresponding
resource to be ignored.
- The value “default”, suppresses the associated
resources
- hpFunctionKeys,
scoFunctionKeys,
sunFunctionKeys,
tcapFunctionKeys,
oldXtermFKeys and
sunKeyboard,
- using the Sun/PC keyboard layout.
- -l
- Turn logging on, unless disabled by the logInhibit
resource.
- Some versions of xterm may have logging enabled.
However, normally logging is not supported, due to security concerns in
the early 1990s. That was a problem in X11R4 xterm (1989) which was
addressed by a patch to X11R5 late in 1993. X11R6 included these fixes.
The older version (when running with root privilege) would create
the log file using root privilege. The reason why xterm ran
with root privileges was to open pseudo-terminals. Those privileges
are now needed only on very old systems: Unix98 pseudo-terminals made the
BSD scheme unnecessary.
- Unless overridden by the -lf option or the
logFile resource:
- •
- If the filename is “-”, then logging is sent to
the standard output.
- •
- Otherwise a filename is generated, and the log file is
written to the directory from which xterm is invoked.
- •
- The generated filename is of the form
XtermLog. XXXXXX
- or
Xterm.log. hostname.yyyy.mm.dd.hh.mm.ss.XXXXXX
- depending on how xterm was built.
- +l
- Turn logging off.
- -lc
- Turn on support of various encodings according to the
users' locale setting, i.e., LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, or LANG environment
variables. This is achieved by turning on UTF-8 mode and by invoking
luit for conversion between locale encodings and UTF-8. (
luit is not invoked in UTF-8 locales.) This corresponds to the
locale resource.
- The actual list of encodings which are supported is
determined by luit. Consult the luit manual page for further
details.
- See also the discussion of the -u8 option which
supports UTF-8 locales.
- +lc
- Turn off support of automatic selection of locale
encodings. Conventional 8bit mode or, in UTF-8 locales or with -u8
option, UTF-8 mode will be used.
- -lcc path
- File name for the encoding converter from/to locale
encodings and UTF-8 which is used with -lc option or locale
resource. This corresponds to the localeFilter resource.
- -leftbar
- Force scrollbar to the left side of VT100 screen. This is
the default, unless you have set the rightScrollBar resource.
- -lf filename
- Specify the log filename. This sets the logFile
resource. If set to “-”, xterm writes its log to the
standard output. See the -l option.
- -ls
- This option indicates that the shell that is started in the
xterm window will be a login shell (i.e., the first character of
argv[0] will be a dash, indicating to the shell that it should read the
user's .login or .profile).
- The -ls flag and the loginShell resource are
ignored if -e is also given, because xterm does not know how
to make the shell start the given command after whatever it does when it
is a login shell - the user's shell of choice need not be a Bourne shell
after all. Also, xterm -e is supposed to provide a consistent
functionality for other applications that need to start text-mode programs
in a window, and if loginShell were not ignored, the result of
~/.profile might interfere with that.
- If you do want the effect of -ls and -e
simultaneously, you may get away with something like
xterm -e /bin/bash -l -c "my command here"
- Finally, -ls is not completely ignored, because
xterm -ls -e does write a /etc/wtmp entry (if
configured to do so), whereas xterm -e does not.
- +ls
- This option indicates that the shell that is started should
not be a login shell (i.e., it will be a normal
“subshell”).
- -maximized
- This option indicates that xterm should ask the
window manager to maximize its layout on startup. This corresponds to the
maximized resource.
- Maximizing is not the reverse of iconifying; it is possible
to do both with certain window managers.
- +maximized
- This option indicates that xterm should ask the
window manager to not maximize its layout on startup.
- -mb
- This option indicates that xterm should ring a
margin bell when the user types near the right end of a line.
- +mb
- This option indicates that margin bell should not be
rung.
- -mc milliseconds
- This option specifies the maximum time between multi-click
selections.
- -mesg
- Turn off the messages resource, i.e., disallow write
access to the terminal.
- +mesg
- Turn on the messages resource, i.e., allow write
access to the terminal.
- -mk_width
- Set the mkWidth resource to “true”. This
makes xterm use a built-in version of the wide-character width
calculation. The default is “false”
- +mk_width
- Reset the mkWidth resource.
- -ms color
- This option specifies the color to be used for the pointer
cursor. The default is to use the foreground color. This sets the
pointerColor resource.
- -nb number
- This option specifies the number of characters from the
right end of a line at which the margin bell, if enabled, will ring. The
default is “10”.
- -nul
- This option disables the display of underlining.
- +nul
- This option enables the display of underlining.
- -pc
- This option enables the PC-style use of bold colors (see
boldColors resource).
- +pc
- This option disables the PC-style use of bold colors.
- -pf font
- This option specifies the font to be used for the pointer.
The corresponding resource name is pointerFont. The resource value
default is cursor.
- -pob
- This option indicates that the window should be raised
whenever a Control-G is received.
- +pob
- This option indicates that the window should not be raised
whenever a Control-G is received.
- -report-charclass
- Print a report to the standard output showing information
about the character-classes which can be altered using the
charClass resource.
- -report-colors
- Print a report to the standard output showing information
about colors as xterm allocates them. This corresponds to the
reportColors resource.
- -report-fonts
- Print a report to the standard output showing information
about fonts which are loaded. This corresponds to the reportFonts
resource.
- -report-icons
- Print a report to the standard output showing information
about pixmap-icons which are loaded. This corresponds to the
reportIcons resource.
- -report-xres
- Print a report to the standard output showing the values of
boolean, numeric or string X resources for the VT100 widget when
initialization is complete. This corresponds to the reportXRes
resource.
- -rightbar
- Force scrollbar to the right side of VT100 screen.
- -rvc
- This option disables the display of characters with reverse
attribute as color.
- +rvc
- This option enables the display of characters with reverse
attribute as color.
- -rw
- This option indicates that reverse-wraparound should be
allowed. This allows the cursor to back up from the leftmost column of one
line to the rightmost column of the previous line. This is very useful for
editing long shell command lines and is encouraged. This option can be
turned on and off from the VT Options menu.
- +rw
- This option indicates that reverse-wraparound should not be
allowed.
- -s
- This option indicates that xterm may scroll
asynchronously, meaning that the screen does not have to be kept
completely up to date while scrolling. This allows xterm to run
faster when network latencies are very high and is typically useful when
running across a very large internet or many gateways.
- +s
- This option indicates that xterm should scroll
synchronously.
- -samename
- Does not send title and icon name change requests when the
request would have no effect: the name is not changed. This has the
advantage of preventing flicker and the disadvantage of requiring an extra
round trip to the server to find out the previous value. In practice this
should never be a problem.
- +samename
- Always send title and icon name change requests.
- -sb
- This option indicates that some number of lines that are
scrolled off the top of the window should be saved and that a scrollbar
should be displayed so that those lines can be viewed. This option may be
turned on and off from the VT Options menu.
- +sb
- This option indicates that a scrollbar should not be
displayed.
- -selbg color
- This option specifies the color to use for the background
of selected text. If not specified, reverse video is used. See the
discussion of the highlightColor resource.
- -selfg color
- This option specifies the color to use for selected text.
If not specified, reverse video is used. See the discussion of the
highlightTextColor resource.
- -sf
- This option indicates that Sun function key escape codes
should be generated for function keys.
- +sf
- This option indicates that the standard escape codes should
be generated for function keys.
- -sh number
- scale line-height values by the given number. See the
discussion of the scaleHeight resource.
- -si
- This option indicates that output to a window should not
automatically reposition the screen to the bottom of the scrolling region.
This option can be turned on and off from the VT Options menu.
- +si
- This option indicates that output to a window should cause
it to scroll to the bottom.
- -sk
- This option indicates that pressing a key while using the
scrollbar to review previous lines of text should cause the window to be
repositioned automatically in the normal position at the bottom of the
scroll region.
- +sk
- This option indicates that pressing a key while using the
scrollbar should not cause the window to be repositioned.
- -sl number
- This option specifies the number of lines to save that have
been scrolled off the top of the screen. This corresponds to the
saveLines resource. The default is “1024”.
- -sm
- This option, corresponding to the sessionMgt
resource, indicates that xterm should set up session manager
callbacks.
- +sm
- This option indicates that xterm should not set up
session manager callbacks.
- -sp
- This option indicates that Sun/PC keyboard should be
assumed, providing mapping for keypad “+” to “,”,
and CTRL-F1 to F13, CTRL-F2 to F14, etc.
- +sp
- This option indicates that the standard escape codes should
be generated for keypad and function keys.
- -t
- This option indicates that xterm should start in
Tektronix mode, rather than in VT xxx mode. Switching between the
two windows is done using the “Options” menus.
- Terminal database (terminfo (5) or termcap
(5)) entries that work with xterm are:
- “tek4014”,
“tek4015”,
“tek4012”,
“tek4013”,
“tek4010”, and
“dumb”.
- Xterm automatically searches the terminal database
in this order for these entries and then sets the “TERM”
variable (and the “TERMCAP” environment variable, if
relevant).
- +t
- This option indicates that xterm should start in
VTxxx mode.
- -tb
- This option, corresponding to the toolBar resource,
indicates that xterm should display a toolbar (or menubar) at the
top of its window. The buttons in the toolbar correspond to the popup
menus, e.g., control/left/mouse for Main Options.
- +tb
- This option indicates that xterm should not set up a
toolbar.
- -ti term_id
- Specify the name used by xterm to select the correct
response to terminal ID queries. It also specifies the emulation level,
used to determine the type of response to a DA control sequence. Valid
values include vt52, vt100, vt101, vt102, vt220, and vt240 (the
“vt” is optional). The default is “vt420”. The
term_id argument specifies the terminal ID to use. (This is the
same as the decTerminalID resource).
- -tm string
- This option specifies a series of terminal setting keywords
followed by the characters that should be bound to those functions,
similar to the stty program. The keywords and their values are
described in detail in the ttyModes resource.
- -tn name
- This option specifies the name of the terminal type to be
set in the TERM environment variable. It corresponds to the
termName resource. This terminal type must exist in the terminal
database (termcap or terminfo, depending on how xterm is built) and
should have li# and co# entries. If the terminal type is not
found, xterm uses the built-in list “xterm”,
“vt102”, etc.
- -u8
- This option sets the utf8 resource. When utf8
is set, xterm interprets incoming data as UTF-8. This sets the
wideChars resource as a side-effect, but the UTF-8 mode set by this
option prevents it from being turned off. If you must turn UTF-8 encoding
on and off, use the -wc option or the corresponding
wideChars resource, rather than the -u8 option.
- This option and the utf8 resource are overridden by
the -lc and -en options and locale resource. That is,
if xterm has been compiled to support luit, and the
locale resource is not “false” this option is ignored.
We recommend using the -lc option or the
“locale: true” resource in UTF-8 locales when your
operating system supports locale, or -en UTF-8 option or the
“ locale: UTF-8” resource when your operating
system does not support locale.
- +u8
- This option resets the utf8 resource.
- -uc
- This option makes the cursor underlined instead of a
box.
- +uc
- This option makes the cursor a box instead of
underlined.
- -ulc
- This option disables the display of characters with
underline attribute as color rather than with underlining.
- +ulc
- This option enables the display of characters with
underline attribute as color rather than with underlining.
- -ulit
- This option, corresponding to the italicULMode
resource, disables the display of characters with underline attribute as
italics rather than with underlining.
- +ulit
- This option, corresponding to the italicULMode
resource, enables the display of characters with underline attribute as
italics rather than with underlining.
- -ut
- This option indicates that xterm should not write a
record into the system utmp log file.
- +ut
- This option indicates that xterm should write a
record into the system utmp log file.
- -vb
- This option indicates that a visual bell is preferred over
an audible one. Instead of ringing the terminal bell whenever a Control-G
is received, the window will be flashed.
- +vb
- This option indicates that a visual bell should not be
used.
- -wc
- This option sets the wideChars resource.
- When wideChars is set, xterm maintains
internal structures for 16-bit characters. If xterm is not started
in UTF-8 mode (or if this resource is not set), initially it maintains
those structures to support 8-bit characters. Xterm can later be
switched, using a menu entry or control sequence, causing it to reallocate
those structures to support 16-bit characters.
- The default is “false”.
- +wc
- This option resets the wideChars resource.
- -wf
- This option indicates that xterm should wait for the
window to be mapped the first time before starting the subprocess so that
the initial terminal size settings and environment variables are correct.
It is the application's responsibility to catch subsequent terminal size
changes.
- +wf
- This option indicates that xterm should not wait
before starting the subprocess.
- -ziconbeep percent
- Same as zIconBeep resource. If percent is non-zero,
xterms that produce output while iconified will cause an XBell sound at
the given volume and have “***” prepended to their icon
titles. Most window managers will detect this change immediately, showing
you which window has the output. (A similar feature was in x10
xterm.)
- -C
- This option indicates that this window should receive
console output. This is not supported on all systems. To obtain console
output, you must be the owner of the console device, and you must have
read and write permission for it. If you are running X under xdm on
the console screen you may need to have the session startup and reset
programs explicitly change the ownership of the console device in order to
get this option to work.
- -Sccn
- This option allows xterm to be used as an input and
output channel for an existing program and is sometimes used in
specialized applications. The option value specifies the last few letters
of the name of a pseudo-terminal to use in slave mode, plus the number of
the inherited file descriptor. If the option contains a “/”
character, that delimits the characters used for the pseudo-terminal name
from the file descriptor. Otherwise, exactly two characters are used from
the option for the pseudo-terminal name, the remainder is the file
descriptor. Examples (the first two are equivalent since the descriptor
follows the last “/”):
-S/dev/pts/123/45
-S123/45
-Sab34
- Note that xterm does not close any file descriptor
which it did not open for its own use. It is possible (though probably not
portable) to have an application which passes an open file descriptor down
to xterm past the initialization or the -S option to a
process running in the xterm.
Old Options
The following command line arguments are provided for compatibility with older
versions. They may not be supported in the next release as the X Toolkit
provides standard options that accomplish the same task.
- %geom
- This option specifies the preferred size and position of
the Tektronix window. It is shorthand for specifying the “
tekGeometry” resource.
- #geom
- This option specifies the preferred position of the icon
window. It is shorthand for specifying the “
iconGeometry” resource.
- -T string
- This option specifies the title for xterm's windows.
It is equivalent to -title.
- -n string
- This option specifies the icon name for xterm's
windows. It is shorthand for specifying the “ iconName”
resource. Note that this is not the same as the toolkit option
-name. The default icon name is the application name.
- If no suitable icon is found, xterm provides a
compiled-in pixmap.
- X Toolkit sets the WM_ICON_NAME property using this
value.
- -r
- This option indicates that reverse video should be
simulated by swapping the foreground and background colors. It is
equivalent to -rv.
- -w number
- This option specifies the width in pixels of the border
surrounding the window. It is equivalent to -borderwidth or
-bw.
X Toolkit Options
The following standard X Toolkit command line arguments are commonly used with
xterm:
- -bd color
- This option specifies the color to use for the border of
the window. The corresponding resource name is borderColor.
Xterm uses the X Toolkit default, which is
“XtDefaultForeground”.
- Xterm's VT100 window has two borders: the
inner border internalBorder and the outer border
borderWidth, managed by the X Toolkit.
- Normally xterm fills the inner border using the
VT100 window's background color. If the colorInnerBorder resource
is enabled, then xterm may fill the inner border using the
borderColor resource.
- -bg color
- This option specifies the color to use for the background
of the window. The corresponding resource name is background. The
default is “XtDefaultBackground”.
- -bw number
- This option specifies the width in pixels of the border
surrounding the window.
- This appears to be a legacy of older X releases. It sets
the borderWidth resource of the shell widget, and may provide
advice to your window manager to set the thickness of the window frame.
Most window managers do not use this information. See the -b
option, which controls the inner border of the xterm window.
- -display display
- This option specifies the X server to contact; see
X(7).
- -fg color
- This option specifies the color to use for displaying text.
The corresponding resource name is foreground. The default is
“XtDefaultForeground”.
- -fn font
- This option specifies the font to be used for displaying
normal text. The corresponding resource name is font. The resource
value default is fixed.
- -font font
- This is the same as -fn.
- -geometry geometry
- This option specifies the preferred size and position of
the VT xxx window; see X(7).
- The normal geometry specification can be suffixed with
@ followed by a Xinerama screen specification; it can be either
g for the global screen (default), c for the current screen
or a screen number.
- -iconic
-
This option indicates that xterm should ask the window manager to
start it as an icon rather than as the normal window. The corresponding
resource name is iconic.
- -name name
- This option specifies the application name under which
resources are to be obtained, rather than the default executable file
name. Name should not contain “.” or “*”
characters.
- -rv
- This option indicates that reverse video should be
simulated by swapping the foreground and background colors. The
corresponding resource name is reverseVideo.
- +rv
- Disable the simulation of reverse video by swapping
foreground and background colors.
- -title string
- This option specifies the window title string, which may be
displayed by window managers if the user so chooses. It is shorthand for
specifying the “ title” resource. The default title is
the command line specified after the -e option, if any, otherwise
the application name.
- X Toolkit sets the WM_NAME property using this
value.
- -xrm resourcestring
- This option specifies a resource string to be used. This is
especially useful for setting resources that do not have separate command
line options.
X Toolkit accepts alternate names for a few of these options, e.g.,
- •
- “-background” for
“-bg”
- •
- “-font” for
“-fn”
- •
- “-foreground” for
“-fg”
Abbreviated options also are supported, e.g., “
-v” for
“
-version.”
RESOURCES
Xterm understands all of the core X Toolkit resource names and classes.
It also uses the X Toolkit resource types (such as booleans, colors, fonts,
integers, and strings) along with their respective converters. Those resource
types are not always sufficient:
- •
- Xterm's resource values may be lists of names. X
Toolkit resource types do not include lists. Xterm uses a string
for the resource, and parses it.
- Comma-separated lists of names ignore case.
- •
- Xterm may defer processing a resource until it is
needed. For example, font2 through font7 are loaded as
needed, to start faster. Again, the actual resource type is a string,
parsed and used when needed.
Application specific resources (e.g., “
XTerm.NAME”)
follow:
Application Resources
- backarrowKeyIsErase (class
BackarrowKeyIsErase )
- Tie the VTxxx backarrowKey and
ptyInitialErase resources together by setting the DECBKM state
according to whether the initial erase character is a backspace (8)
or delete (127) character. A “false” value disables this
feature. The default is “False”.
- Here are tables showing how the initial settings for
- •
- backarrowKeyIsErase (BKIE),
- •
- backarrowKey (BK), and
- •
- ptyInitialErase (PIE), along with the
- •
- stty erase character (^H for backspace, ^? for
delete)
- will affect DECBKM. First, xterm obtains the initial
erase character:
- •
- xterm's internal value is ^H
- •
- xterm asks the operating system for the value which
stty shows
- •
- the ttyModes resource may override erase
- •
- if ptyInitialErase is false, xterm will look
in the terminal database
- Summarizing that as a table:
PIE |
stty |
termcap |
erase |
|
false |
^H |
^H |
^H |
false |
^H |
^? |
^? |
false |
^? |
^H |
^H |
false |
^? |
^? |
^? |
true |
^H |
^H |
^H |
true |
^H |
^? |
^H |
true |
^? |
^H |
^? |
true |
^? |
^? |
^? |
- Using that erase character, xterm allows
further choices:
- •
- if backarrowKeyIsErase is true, xterm uses
the erase character for the initial state of DECBKM
- •
- if backarrowKeyIsErase is false, xterm sets
DECBKM to 2 (internal). This ties together backarrowKey and
the control sequence for DECBKM.
- •
- applications can send a control sequence to set/reset
DECBKM control set
- •
- the “Backarrow Key (BS/DEL)” menu entry toggles
DECBKM
- Summarizing the initialization details:
erase |
BKIE |
BK |
DECBKM |
result |
|
^? |
false |
false |
2 |
^H |
^? |
false |
true |
2 |
^? |
^? |
true |
false |
0 |
^? |
^? |
true |
true |
1 |
^? |
^H |
false |
false |
2 |
^H |
^H |
false |
true |
2 |
^? |
^H |
true |
false |
0 |
^H |
^H |
true |
true |
1 |
^H |
- buffered (class Buffered)
- Normally xterm is built with double-buffer support.
This resource can be used to turn it on or off. Setting the resource to
“true” turns double-buffering on. The default value is
“__double_buffer__”.
- bufferedFPS (class
BufferedFPS)
- When xterm is built with double-buffer support, this
gives the maximum number of frames/second. The default is “40”
and is limited to the range 1 through 100.
- fullscreen (class
Fullscreen)
- Specifies whether or not xterm should ask the window
manager to use a fullscreen layout on startup. Xterm accepts either
a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:
- false (0)
- Fullscreen layout is not used initially, but may be later
via menu-selection or control sequence.
- true (1)
- Fullscreen layout is used initially, but may be disabled
later via menu-selection or control sequence.
- always (2)
- Fullscreen layout is used initially, and cannot be disabled
later via menu-selection or control sequence.
- never (3)
- Fullscreen layout is not used, and cannot be enabled later
via menu-selection or control sequence.
- The default is “false”.
- hold (class Hold)
- If true, xterm will not immediately destroy its
window when the shell command completes. It will wait until you use the
window manager to destroy/kill the window, or if you use the menu entries
that send a signal, e.g., HUP or KILL. You may scroll back, select text,
etc., to perform most graphical operations. Resizing the display will lose
data, however, since this involves interaction with the shell which is no
longer running.
- hpFunctionKeys (class
HpFunctionKeys)
- Specifies whether or not HP function key escape codes
should be generated for function keys. The default is “false”,
i.e., this feature is disabled.
- The keyboardType resource is the preferred mechanism
for selecting this mode.
- iconGeometry (class
IconGeometry)
- Specifies the preferred size and position of the
application when iconified. It is not necessarily obeyed by all window
managers.
- iconHint (class IconHint)
- Specifies an icon which will be added to the window manager
hints. Xterm provides no default value.
- Set this resource to “none” to omit the hint
entirely, using whatever the window manager may decide.
- If the iconHint resource is given (or is set via the
-n option) xterm searches for a pixmap file with that name,
in the current directory as well as in /usr/X11R7/include/X11/pixmaps. if
the resource does not specify an absolute pathname. In each case,
xterm adds “_48x48” and/or “.xpm” to the
filename after trying without those suffixes. If it is able to load the
file, xterm sets the window manager hint for the icon-pixmap. These
pixmaps are distributed with xterm, and can optionally be
compiled-in:
- •
- mini.xterm_16x16, mini.xterm_32x32, mini.xterm_48x48
- •
- filled-xterm_16x16, filled-xterm_32x32,
filled-xterm_48x48
- •
- xterm_16x16, xterm_32x32, xterm_48x48
- •
- xterm-color_16x16, xterm-color_32x32,
xterm-color_48x48
- In either case, xterm allows for adding a
“_48x48” to specify the largest of the pixmaps as a default.
That is, “mini.xterm” is the same as
“mini.xterm_48x48”.
- If no explicit iconHint resource is given (or if
none of the compiled-in names matches), xterm uses
“mini.xterm” (which is always compiled-in).
- The iconHint resource has no effect on
“desktop” files, including “panel” and
“menu”. Those are typically set via a “.desktop”
file; xterm provides samples for itself (and the uxterm
script). The more capable desktop systems allow changing the icon on a
per-user basis.
- iconName (class IconName)
- Specifies a label for xterm when iconified.
Xterm provides no default value; some window managers may assume
the application name, e.g., “xterm”.
- Setting the iconName resource sets the icon label
unless overridden by zIconBeep or the control sequences which
change the window and icon labels.
- keyboardType (class
KeyboardType)
- Enables one (or none) of the various keyboard-type
resources: hpFunctionKeys, scoFunctionKeys,
sunFunctionKeys, tcapFunctionKeys, oldXtermFKeys and
sunKeyboard.
- The resource's value should be one of the corresponding
strings “hp”, “sco”, “sun”,
“tcap”, “legacy” or “vt220”,
respectively.
- The individual resources are provided for legacy support;
this resource is simpler to use. Xterm will use only one
keyboard-type, but if multiple resources are set, it warns and uses the
last one it checks.
- The default is “unknown”, i.e., none of the
associated resources are set via this resource.
- maxBufSize (class
MaxBufSize)
- Specify the maximum size of the input buffer. The default
is “32768”. You cannot set this to a value less than the
minBufSize resource. It will be increased as needed to make that
value evenly divide this one.
- On some systems you may want to increase one or both of the
maxBufSize and minBufSize resource values to achieve better
performance if the operating system prefers larger buffer sizes.
- maximized (class
Maximized)
- Specifies whether or not xterm should ask the window
manager to maximize its layout on startup. The default is
“false”.
- menuHeight (class
MenuHeight)
- Specifies the height of the toolbar, which may be increased
by the X toolkit layout widget depending upon the fontsize used. The
default is “25”.
- menuLocale (class
MenuLocale)
- Specify the locale used for character-set computations when
loading the popup menus. Use this to improve initialization performance of
the Athena popup menus, which may load unnecessary (and very large) fonts,
e.g., in a locale having UTF-8 encoding. The default is “C”
(POSIX).
- To use the current locale (only useful if you have
localized the resource settings for the menu entries), set the resource to
an empty string.
- messages (class Messages)
- Specifies whether write access to the terminal is allowed
initially. See mesg(1). The default is “true”.
- minBufSize (class
MinBufSize)
- Specify the minimum size of the input buffer, i.e., the
amount of data that xterm requests on each read. The default is
“4096”. You cannot set this to a value less than 64.
- omitTranslation (class
OmitTranslation)
- Selectively omit one or more parts of xterm's
default translations at startup. The resource value is a comma-separated
list of keywords, which may be abbreviated:
- default
- ignore (mouse) button-down events which were not handled by
other translations
- fullscreen
- assigns a key-binding to the fullscreen()
action.
- keypress
- assigns keypresses by default to the
insert-seven-bit() and insert-eight-bit() actions.
- paging
- assigns key bindings to the scroll-back() and
scroll-forw() actions.
- pointer
- assigns pointer motion and button events to
the pointer-motion() and pointer-button() actions
respectively.
- popup-menu
- assigns mouse-buttons with the control modifier to
the popup-menus.
- reset
- assigns mouse-button 2 with the meta modifier to the
clear-saved-lines action.
- scroll-lock
- assigns a key-binding to the scroll-lock()
action.
- select
- assigns mouse- and keypress-combinations to actions which
manipulate the selection.
- Xterm also uses these actions to capture mouse
button and motion events which can be manipulated with the mouse protocol
control sequences. If the select translations are omitted, then the
pointer-motion and pointer-button handle these mouse
protocol control sequences instead.
- shift-fonts
- assigns key-bindings to larger-vt-font() and
smaller-vt-font() actions.
- wheel-mouse
- assigns buttons 4 and 5 with different modifiers to the
scroll-back() and scroll-forw() actions.
- ptyHandshake (class
PtyHandshake)
- If “true”, xterm will perform
handshaking during initialization to ensure that the parent and child
processes update the utmp and stty state.
- See also waitForMap which waits for the
pseudo-terminal's notion of the screen size, and ptySttySize which
resets the screen size after other terminal initialization is complete.
The default is “true”.
- ptyInitialErase (class
PtyInitialErase)
- If “true”, xterm will use the
pseudo-terminal's sense of the stty erase value. If
“false”, xterm will set the stty erase value to
match its own configuration, using the kb string from the termcap
entry as a reference, if available.
- In either case, the result is applied to the TERMCAP
variable which xterm sets, if the system uses TERMCAP.
- See also the ttyModes resource, which may override
this. The default is “False”.
- ptySttySize (class
PtySttySize)
- If “true”, xterm will reset the screen
size after terminal initialization is complete. This is needed for some
systems whose pseudo-terminals cannot propagate terminal characteristics.
Where it is not needed, it can interfere with other methods for setting
the initial screen size, e.g., via window manager interaction.
- See also waitForMap which waits for a
handshake-message giving the pseudo-terminal's notion of the screen size.
The default is “false” on Linux and macOS systems,
“true” otherwise.
- reportColors (class
ReportColors)
- If true, xterm will print to the standard output a
summary of colors as it allocates them. The default is
“false”.
- reportFonts (class
ReportFonts)
- If true, xterm will print to the standard output a
summary of each font's metrics (size, number of glyphs, etc.), as it loads
them. The default is “false”.
- reportIcons (class
ReportIcons)
- If true, xterm will print to the standard output a
summary of each pixmap icon as it loads them. The default is
“false”.
- reportXRes (class
ReportXRes)
- If true, xterm will print to the standard output a
list of the boolean, numeric and string X resources for the VT100 widget
after initialization. The default is “false”.
- sameName (class SameName)
- If the value of this resource is “true”,
xterm does not send title and icon name change requests when the
request would have no effect: the name is not changed. This has the
advantage of preventing flicker and the disadvantage of requiring an extra
round trip to the server to find out the previous value. In practice this
should never be a problem. The default is “true”.
- scaleHeight (class
ScaleHeight)
- Scale line-height values by the resource value, which is
limited to “0.9” to “1.5”. The default value is
“1.0”,
- While this resource applies to either bitmap or TrueType
fonts, its main purpose is to help work around incompatible changes in the
Xft library's font metrics. Xterm checks the font metrics to find
what the library claims are the bounding boxes for each glyph (character).
However, some of Xft's features (such as the autohinter) can cause the
glyphs to be scaled larger than the bounding boxes, and be partly
overwritten by the next row.
- See useClipping for a related resource.
- scoFunctionKeys (class
ScoFunctionKeys)
- Specifies whether or not SCO function key escape codes
should be generated for function keys. The default is “false”,
i.e., this feature is disabled.
- The keyboardType resource is the preferred mechanism
for selecting this mode.
- sessionMgt (class
SessionMgt)
- If the value of this resource is “true”,
xterm sets up session manager callbacks for XtNdieCallback
and XtNsaveCallback. The default is “true”.
- sunFunctionKeys (class
SunFunctionKeys)
- Specifies whether or not Sun function key escape codes
should be generated for function keys. The default is “false”,
i.e., this feature is disabled.
- The keyboardType resource is the preferred mechanism
for selecting this mode.
- sunKeyboard (class
SunKeyboard)
- Xterm translates certain key symbols based on its
assumptions about your keyboard. This resource specifies whether or not
Sun/PC keyboard layout (i.e., the PC keyboard's numeric keypad together
with 12 function keys) should be assumed rather than DEC VT220. This
causes the keypad “+” to be mapped to “,”. and
CTRL F1-F10 to F11-F20, depending on the setting of the ctrlFKeys
resource, so xterm emulates a DEC VT220 more accurately. Otherwise
(the default, with sunKeyboard set to “false”),
xterm uses PC-style bindings for the function keys and keypad.
- PC-style bindings use the Shift, Alt, Control and Meta keys
as modifiers for function-keys and keypad (see Xterm Control
Sequences for details). The PC-style bindings are analogous to PCTerm,
but not the same thing. Normally these bindings do not conflict with the
use of the Meta key as described for the eightBitInput resource. If
they do, note that the PC-style bindings are evaluated first.
- See also the keyboardType resource.
- tcapFunctionKeys (class
TcapFunctionKeys)
- Specifies whether or not function key escape codes read
from the termcap/terminfo entry corresponding to the TERM
environment variable should be generated for function keys instead of
those configured using sunKeyboard and keyboardType. The
default is “false”, i.e., this feature is disabled.
- The keyboardType resource is the preferred mechanism
for selecting this mode.
- termName (class TermName)
- Specifies the terminal type name to be set in the TERM
environment variable.
- title (class Title)
- Specifies a string that may be used by the window manager
when displaying this application.
- toolBar (class ToolBar)
- Specifies whether or not the toolbar should be displayed.
The default is “true”.
- ttyModes (class TtyModes)
- Specifies a string containing terminal setting keywords.
Except where noted, they may be bound to characters. Other keywords
set modes. Not all keywords are supported on a given system.
Allowable keywords include:
Keyword |
POSIX? |
Notes |
|
brk |
no |
CHAR may send an “interrupt” signal, as well as
ending the input-line. |
dsusp |
no |
CHAR will send a terminal “stop” signal after
input is flushed. |
eof |
yes |
CHAR will terminate input (i.e., an end of file). |
eol |
yes |
CHAR will end the line. |
eol2 |
no |
alternate CHAR for ending the line. |
erase |
yes |
CHAR will erase the last character typed. |
erase2 |
no |
alternate CHAR for erasing the last input-character. |
flush |
no |
CHAR will cause output to be discarded until another
flush character is typed. |
intr |
yes |
CHAR will send an “interrupt” signal. |
kill |
yes |
CHAR will erase the current line. |
lnext |
no |
CHAR will enter the next character quoted. |
quit |
yes |
CHAR will send a “quit” signal. |
rprnt |
no |
CHAR will redraw the current line. |
start |
yes |
CHAR will restart the output after stopping it. |
status |
no |
CHAR will cause a system-generated status line to be
printed. |
stop |
yes |
CHAR will stop the output. |
susp |
yes |
CHAR will send a terminal “stop” signal |
swtch |
no |
CHAR will switch to a different shell layer. |
tabs |
yes |
Mode disables tab-expansion. |
-tabs |
yes |
Mode enables tab-expansion. |
weras |
no |
CHAR will erase the last word typed. |
- Control characters may be specified as ^char (e.g., ^c or
^u) and ^? may be used to indicate delete (127). Use ^- to
denote undef. Use \034 to represent ^\, since a
literal backslash in an X resource escapes the next character.
- This is very useful for overriding the default terminal
settings without having to run stty every time an xterm is
started. Note, however, that the stty program on a given host may
use different keywords; xterm's table is built in. The POSIX
column in the table indicates which keywords are supported by a standard
stty program.
- If the ttyModes resource specifies a value for
erase, that overrides the ptyInitialErase resource setting,
i.e., xterm initializes the terminal to match that value.
- useInsertMode (class
UseInsertMode)
- Force use of insert mode by adding appropriate entries to
the TERMCAP environment variable. This is useful if the system termcap is
broken. (This resource is ignored on most systems, because TERMCAP is not
used). The default is “false”.
- utmpDisplayId (class
UtmpDisplayId)
- Specifies whether or not xterm should try to record
the display identifier (display number and screen number) as well as the
hostname in the system utmp log file. The default is
“true”.
- utmpInhibit (class
UtmpInhibit)
- Specifies whether or not xterm should try to record
the user's terminal in the system utmp log file. If true,
xterm will not try. The default is “false”.
- validShells (class
ValidShells)
- Augment (add to) the system's /etc/shells, when
determining whether to set the “SHELL” environment variable
when running a given program.
- The resource value is a list of lines (separated by
newlines). Each line holds one pathname. Xterm ignores any line
beginning with “#” after trimming leading/trailing whitespace
from each line.
- The default is an empty string.
- waitForMap (class
WaitForMap)
- Specifies whether or not xterm should wait for the
initial window map before starting the subprocess. This is part of the
ptyHandshake logic. When xterm is directed to wait in this
fashion, it passes the terminal size from the display end of the
pseudo-terminal to the terminal I/O connection, e.g., using the size
according to the window manager. Otherwise, it uses the size as given in
resource values or command-line option -geometry. The default is
“false”.
- zIconBeep (class
ZIconBeep)
- Same as -ziconbeep command line argument. If the value of
this resource is non-zero, xterms that produce output while iconified will
cause an XBell sound at the given volume and have “*** ”
prepended to their icon titles. Most window managers will detect this
change immediately, showing you which window has the output. (A similar
feature was in x10 xterm.) The default is “false”.
- zIconTitleFormat (class
ZIconTitleFormat)
- Allow customization of the string used in the
zIconBeep feature. The default value is
“*** %s”.
- If the resource value contains a “%s”, then
xterm inserts the icon title at that point rather than prepending
the string to the icon title. (Only the first “%s” is
used).
VT100 Widget Resources
The following resources are specified as part of the
vt100 widget (class
VT100). They are specified by patterns such as “
XTerm.vt100. NAME”.
If your
xterm is configured to support the “toolbar”, then
those patterns need an extra level for the form-widget which holds the toolbar
and vt100 widget. A wildcard between the top-level “XTerm” and the
“vt100” widget makes the resource settings work for either, e.g.,
“
XTerm*vt100.NAME”.
- activeIcon (class
ActiveIcon)
- Specifies whether or not active icon windows are to be used
when the xterm window is iconified, if this feature is compiled
into xterm. The active icon is a miniature representation of the
content of the window and will update as the content changes. Not all
window managers necessarily support application icon windows. Some window
managers will allow you to enter keystrokes into the active icon window.
The default is “default”.
- Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or
the number shown in parentheses:
- false (0)
- No active icon is shown.
- true (1)
- The active icon is shown. If you are using twm, use
this setting to enable active-icons.
- default (2)
- Xterm checks at startup, and shows an active icon
only for window managers which it can identify and which are known to
support the feature. These are fvwm (full support), and window
maker (limited). A few other windows managers (such as twm and
ctwm) support active icons, but do not support the extensions which
allow xterm to identify the window manager.
- allowBoldFonts (class
AllowBoldFonts)
- When set to “false”, xterm will not use
bold fonts. This overrides both the alwaysBoldMode and the
boldMode resources.
- allowC1Printable (class
AllowC1Printable)
- If true, overrides the mapping of C1 controls (codes
128–159) to make them be treated as if they were printable
characters. Although this corresponds to no particular standard, some
users insist it is a VT100. The default is “false”.
- allowColorOps (class
AllowColorOps)
- Specifies whether control sequences that set/query the
dynamic colors should be allowed. ANSI colors are unaffected by this
resource setting. The default is “true”.
- allowFontOps (class
AllowFontOps)
- Specifies whether control sequences that set/query the font
should be allowed. The default is “true”.
- allowMouseOps (class
AllowMouseOps)
- Specifies whether control sequences that enable
xterm to send escape sequences to the host on mouse-clicks and
movement. The default is “true”.
- allowPasteControls (class
AllowPasteControls )
- If true, allow control characters such as BEL and CAN to be
pasted. Formatting characters (tab, newline) are always allowed. Other C0
control characters are suppressed unless this resource is enabled. The
exact set of control characters (C0 and C1) depends upon whether UTF-8
encoding is used, as well as the allowC1Printable resource. The
default is “false”.
- allowScrollLock (class
AllowScrollLock)
- Specifies whether control sequences that set/query the
Scroll Lock key should be allowed, as well as whether the Scroll Lock key
responds to user's keypress. The default is “false”.
- When this feature is enabled, xterm will sense the
state of the Scroll Lock key each time it acquires focus. Pressing the
Scroll Lock key toggles xterm's internal state, as well as toggling
the associated LED. While the Scroll Lock is active, xterm attempts
to keep a viewport on the same set of lines. If the current viewport is
scrolled past the limit set by the saveLines resource, then Scroll
Lock has no further effect.
- The reason for setting the default to “false”
is to avoid user surprise. This key is generally unused in keyboard
configurations, and has not acquired a standard meaning even when it is
used in that manner. Consequently, users have assigned it for ad hoc
purposes.
- allowSendEvents (class
AllowSendEvents)
- Specifies whether or not synthetic key and button events
(generated using the X protocol SendEvent request) should be interpreted
or discarded. The default is “false” meaning they are
discarded. Note that allowing such events would create a very large
security hole, therefore enabling this resource forcefully disables the
allowXXXOps resources. The default is
“false”.
- allowTcapOps (class
AllowTcapOps)
- Specifies whether control sequences that query the
terminal's notion of its function-key strings, as termcap or terminfo
capabilities should be allowed. The default is “true”.
- A few programs, e.g., vim, use this feature to get
an accurate description of the terminal's capabilities, independent of the
termcap/terminfo setting:
- •
- Xterm can tell the querying program how many colors
it supports. This is a constant, depending on how it is compiled,
typically 16. It does not change if you alter resource settings, e.g., the
boldColors resource.
- •
- Xterm can tell the querying program what strings are
sent by modified (shift-, control-, alt-) function- and keypad-keys.
Reporting control- and alt-modifiers is a feature that relies on the
ncurses extended naming.
- allowTitleOps (class
AllowTitleOps)
- Specifies whether control sequences that modify the window
title or icon name should be allowed. The default is
“true”.
- allowWindowOps (class
AllowWindowOps)
- Specifies whether extended window control sequences (as
used in dtterm) should be allowed. These include several control
sequences which manipulate the window size or position, as well as
reporting these values and the title or icon name. Each of these can be
abused in a script; curiously enough most terminal emulators that
implement these restrict only a small part of the repertoire. For
fine-tuning, see disallowedWindowOps. The default is
“false”.
- altIsNotMeta (class
AltIsNotMeta)
- If “true”, treat the Alt-key as if it were the
Meta-key. Your keyboard may happen to be configured so they are the same.
But if they are not, this allows you to use the same prefix- and shifting
operations with the Alt-key as with the Meta-key. See
altSendsEscape and metaSendsEscape. The default is
“false”.
- altSendsEscape (class
AltSendsEscape)
- This is an additional keyboard operation that may be
processed after the logic for metaSendsEscape. It is only available
if the altIsNotMeta resource is set.
- •
- If “true”, Alt characters (a character combined
with the modifier associated with left/right Alt-keys) are converted into
a two-character sequence with the character itself preceded by ESC. This
applies as well to function key control sequences, unless xterm
sees that Alt is used in your key translations.
- •
- If “false”, Alt characters input from the
keyboard cause a shift to 8-bit characters (just like
metaSendsEscape). By combining the Alt- and Meta-modifiers, you can
create corresponding combinations of ESC-prefix and 8-bit characters.
- The default is “False”. Xterm provides a
menu option for toggling this resource.
- alternateScroll (class
ScrollCond)
- If “true”, the scroll-back and
scroll-forw actions send cursor-up and -down keys when xterm
is displaying the alternate screen. The default is
“false”.
- The alternateScroll state can also be set using a
control sequence.
- alwaysBoldMode (class
AlwaysBoldMode)
- Specifies whether xterm should check if the normal
and bold fonts are distinct before deciding whether to use overstriking to
simulate bold fonts. If this resource is true, xterm does not make
the check for distinct fonts when deciding how to handle the
boldMode resource. The default is “false”.
boldMode |
alwaysBoldMode |
Comparison |
Action |
|
false |
false |
ignored |
use font |
false |
true |
ignored |
use font |
true |
false |
same |
overstrike |
true |
false |
different |
use font |
true |
true |
ignored |
overstrike |
This resource is used only for bitmap fonts:
- •
- When using bitmap fonts, it is possible that the font
server will approximate the bold font by rescaling it from a different
font size than expected. The alwaysBoldMode resource allows the
user to override the (sometimes poor) resulting bold font with
overstriking (which is at least consistent).
- •
- The problem does not occur with TrueType fonts (though
there can be other unnecessary issues such as different coverage of the
normal and bold fonts).
- As an alternative, setting the allowBoldFonts
resource to false overrides both the alwaysBoldMode and the
boldMode resources.
- alwaysHighlight (class
AlwaysHighlight)
- Specifies whether or not xterm should always display
a highlighted text cursor. By default (if this resource is false), a
hollow text cursor is displayed whenever the pointer moves out of the
window or the window loses the input focus. The default is
“false”.
- alwaysUseMods (class
AlwaysUseMods)
- Override the numLock resource, telling xterm
to use the Alt and Meta modifiers to construct parameters for function key
sequences even if those modifiers appear in the translations resource.
Normally xterm checks if Alt or Meta is used in a translation that
would conflict with function key modifiers, and will ignore these
modifiers in that special case. The default is “false”.
- answerbackString (class
AnswerbackString)
- Specifies the string that xterm sends in response to
an ENQ (control/E) character from the host. The default is a blank string,
i.e., “”. A hardware VT100 implements this feature as a setup
option.
- appcursorDefault (class
AppcursorDefault)
- If “true”, the cursor keys are initially in
application mode. This is the same as the VT102 private DECCKM mode, The
default is “false”.
- appkeypadDefault (class
AppkeypadDefault)
- If “true”, the keypad keys are initially in
application mode. The default is “false”.
- assumeAllChars (class
AssumeAllChars)
- If “true”, this enables a special case in
bitmap fonts to allow the font server to choose how to display missing
glyphs. The default is “true”.
- The reason for this resource is to help with certain
quasi-automatically generated fonts (such as the ISO-10646-1 encoding of
Terminus) which have incorrect font-metrics.
- autoWrap (class AutoWrap)
- Specifies whether or not auto-wraparound should be enabled.
This is the same as the VT102 DECAWM. The default is
“true”.
- awaitInput (class
AwaitInput)
- Specifies whether or not xterm uses a 50 millisecond
timeout to await input (i.e., to support the Xaw3d arrow scrollbar). The
default is “false”.
- backarrowKey (class
BackarrowKey)
- Specifies whether the backarrow key transmits a backspace
(8) or delete (127) character. This corresponds to the DECBKM control
sequence. A “true” value specifies backspace. The default is
“True”. Pressing the control key toggles this behavior.
- background (class
Background)
- Specifies the color to use for the background of the
window. The default is “XtDefaultBackground”.
- bellIsUrgent (class
BellIsUrgent)
- Specifies whether to set the Urgency hint for the window
manager when making a bell sound. The default is “false”.
- bellOnReset (class
BellOnReset)
- Specifies whether to sound a bell when doing a hard reset.
The default is “true”.
- bellSuppressTime (class
BellSuppressTime)
- Number of milliseconds after a bell command is sent during
which additional bells will be suppressed. Default is 200. If set
non-zero, additional bells will also be suppressed until the server
reports that processing of the first bell has been completed; this feature
is most useful with the visible bell.
- boldColors (class
ColorMode)
- Specifies whether to combine bold attribute with colors
like the IBM PC, i.e., map colors 0 through 7 to colors 8 through 15.
These normally are the brighter versions of the first 8 colors, hence
bold. The default is “true”.
- boldFont (class BoldFont)
- Specifies the name of the bold font to use instead of
overstriking. There is no default for this resource.
- This font must be the same height and width as the normal
font, otherwise it is ignored. If only one of the normal or bold fonts is
specified, it will be used as the normal font and the bold font will be
produced by overstriking this font.
- See also the discussion of boldMode and
alwaysBoldMode resources.
- boldMode (class BoldMode)
- This specifies whether or not text with the bold attribute
should be overstruck to simulate bold fonts if the resolved bold font is
the same as the normal font. It may be desirable to disable bold fonts
when color is being used for the bold attribute.
- Note that xterm has one bold font which you may set
explicitly. Xterm attempts to derive a bold font for the other font
selections ( font1 through font7). If it cannot find a bold
font, it will use the normal font. In each case (whether the explicit
resource or the derived font), if the normal and bold fonts are distinct,
this resource has no effect. The default is “true”.
- See the alwaysBoldMode resource which can modify the
behavior of this resource.
- Although xterm attempts to derive a bold font for
other font selections, the font server may not cooperate. Since X11R6,
bitmap fonts have been scaled. The font server claims to provide the bold
font that xterm requests, but the result is not always readable.
XFree86 introduced a feature which can be used to suppress the scaling. In
the X server's configuration file (e.g., “/etc/X11/XFree86” or
“/etc/X11/xorg.conf”), you can add “:unscaled” to
the end of the directory specification for the “misc” fonts,
which comprise the fixed-pitch fonts that are used by xterm. For
example
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
- would become
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/:unscaled"
- Depending on your configuration, the font server may have
its own configuration file. The same “:unscaled” can be added
to its configuration file at the end of the directory specification for
“misc”.
- The bitmap scaling feature is also used by xterm to
implement VT102 double-width and double-height characters.
- brokenLinuxOSC (class
BrokenLinuxOSC)
- If true, xterm applies a workaround to ignore
malformed control sequences that a Linux script might send. Compare the
palette control sequences documented in console_codes with ECMA-48.
The default is “true”.
- brokenSelections (class
BrokenSelections)
- If true, xterm in 8-bit mode will interpret
STRING selections as carrying text in the current locale's
encoding. Normally STRING selections carry ISO-8859-1 encoded text.
Setting this resource to “true” violates the ICCCM; it may,
however, be useful for interacting with some broken X clients. The default
is “false”.
- brokenStringTerm (class
BrokenStringTerm)
- provides a work-around for some ISDN routers which start an
application control string without completing it. Set this to
“true” if xterm appears to freeze when connecting. The
default is “false”.
- Xterm's state parser recognizes several types of
control strings which can contain text, e.g.,
APC (Application Program Command),
DCS (Device Control String),
OSC (Operating System Command),
PM (Privacy Message), and
SOS (Start of String),
- Each should end with a string-terminator (a special
character which cannot appear in these strings). Ordinary control
characters found within the string are not ignored; they are processed
without interfering with the process of accumulating the control string's
content. Xterm recognizes these controls in all modes, although
some of the functions may be suppressed after parsing the control.
- When enabled, this feature allows the user to exit from an
unterminated control string when any of these ordinary control characters
are found:
control/D (used as an end of file in many
shells),
control/H (backspace),
control/I (tab-feed),
control/J (line feed aka newline),
control/K (vertical tab),
control/L (form feed),
control/M (carriage return),
control/N (shift-out),
control/O (shift-in),
control/Q (XOFF),
control/X (cancel)
- c132 (class C132)
- Specifies whether or not the VT102 DECCOLM escape sequence,
used to switch between 80 and 132 columns, should be honored. The default
is “false”.
- cacheDoublesize (class
CacheDoublesize)
- Tells whether to cache double-sized fonts by xterm.
Set this to zero to disable double-sized fonts altogether.
- cdXtraScroll (class
CdXtraScroll)
- Specifies whether xterm should scroll to a new page
when clearing the whole screen. Like tiXtraScroll, the intent of
this option is to provide a picture of the full-screen application's
display on the scrollback before wiping out the text. The default for this
resource is “false”.
- charClass (class
CharClass)
- Specifies comma-separated lists of character class bindings
of the form
low[-high][:value].
- These are used in determining which sets of characters
should be treated the same when doing cut and paste. See the CHARACTER
CLASSES section.
- checksumExtension (class
ChecksumExtension)
- DEC VT420 and up support a control sequence DECRQCRA
which reports the checksum of the characters in a rectangle. Xterm
supports this, with extensions that can be configured with bits of the
checksumExtension:
- 0
- do not negate the result.
- 1
- do not report the VT100 video attributes.
- 2
- do not omit checksum for blanks.
- 3
- omit checksum for cells not explicitly initialized.
- 4
- do not mask cell value to 8 bits or ignore combining
characters.
- 5
- do not mask cell value to 7 bits.
- With the default value (0), xterm matches the
behavior of DEC's terminals. To use all extensions, set all bits,
“-1” for example.
- cjkWidth (class CjkWidth)
- Specifies whether xterm should follow the
traditional East Asian width convention. When turned on, characters with
East Asian Ambiguous (A) category in UTR 11 have a column width of 2. You
may have to set this option to “true” if you have some old
East Asian terminal based programs that assume that line-drawing
characters have a column width of 2. If this resource is false, the
mkWidth resource controls the choice between the system's
wcwidth and xterm's built-in tables. The default is
“false”.
- color0 (class Color0)
- color1 (class Color1)
- color2 (class Color2)
- color3 (class Color3)
- color4 (class Color4)
- color5 (class Color5)
- color6 (class Color6)
- color7 (class Color7)
- These specify the colors for the ISO-6429 extension. The
defaults are, respectively, black, red3, green3, yellow3, a customizable
dark blue, magenta3, cyan3, and gray90. The default shades of color are
chosen to allow the colors 8–15 to be used as brighter
versions.
- color8 (class Color8)
- color9 (class Color9)
- color10 (class Color10)
- color11 (class Color11)
- color12 (class Color12)
- color13 (class Color13)
- color14 (class Color14)
- color15 (class Color15)
- These specify the colors for the ISO-6429 extension if the
bold attribute is also enabled. The default resource values are
respectively, gray50, red, green, yellow, a customized light blue,
magenta, cyan, and white.
- color16 (class Color16)
- through
- color255 (class Color255)
- These specify the colors for the 256-color extension. The
default resource values are for
- •
- colors 16 through 231 to make a 6x6x6 color cube, and
- •
- colors 232 through 255 to make a grayscale ramp.
- Resources past color15 are available as a
compile-time option. Due to a hardcoded limit in the X libraries on the
total number of resources (to 400), the resources for 256-colors are
omitted when wide-character support and luit are enabled. Besides
inconsistent behavior if only part of the resources were allowed,
determining the exact cutoff is difficult, and the X libraries tend to
crash if the number of resources exceeds the limit. The color palette is
still initialized to the same default values, and can be modified via
control sequences.
- On the other hand, the resource limit does permit including
the entire range for 88-colors.
- colorAttrMode (class
ColorAttrMode)
- Specifies whether colorBD, colorBL,
colorRV, and colorUL should override ANSI colors. If not,
these are displayed only when no ANSI colors have been set for the
corresponding position. The default is “false”.
- colorBD (class ColorBD)
- This specifies the color to use to display bold characters
if the “colorBDMode” resource is enabled. The default is
“XtDefaultForeground”.
- See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows
combining bold and color.
- colorBDMode (class
ColorAttrMode)
- Specifies whether characters with the bold attribute should
be displayed in color or as bold characters. Note that setting
colorMode off disables all colors, including bold. The default is
“false”.
- colorBL (class ColorBL)
- This specifies the color to use to display blink characters
if the “colorBLMode” resource is enabled. The default is
“XtDefaultForeground”.
- See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows
combining underline and color.
- colorBLMode (class
ColorAttrMode)
- Specifies whether characters with the blink attribute
should be displayed in color. Note that setting colorMode off
disables all colors, including this. The default is
“false”.
- colorIT (class ColorIT)
- This specifies the color to use to display italic
characters if the “colorITMode” resource is enabled. The
default is “XtDefaultForeground”.
- See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows
combining attributes and color.
- colorITMode (class
ColorAttrMode)
- Specifies whether characters with the italic attribute
should be displayed in color or as italic characters. The default is
“false”.
- Note that:
- •
- Setting colorMode off disables all colors, including
italic.
- •
- The italicULMode resource overrides
colorITMode.
- colorInnerBorder (class
ColorInnerBorder)
- Normally, xterm fills the VT100 window's inner
border using the background color.
- If the colorInnerBorder resource is enabled, at
startup xterm will compare the borderColor and the window's
background color. If those are different, xterm will use the
borderColor resource to fill the inner border. Otherwise, it will
use the window's background color.
- The default is “false”.
- colorMode (class
ColorMode)
- Specifies whether or not recognition of ANSI (ISO-6429)
color change escape sequences should be enabled. The default is
“true”.
- colorRV (class ColorRV)
- This specifies the color to use to display reverse
characters if the “colorRVMode” resource is enabled. The
default is “XtDefaultForeground”.
- See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows
combining reverse and color.
- colorRVMode (class
ColorAttrMode)
- Specifies whether characters with the reverse attribute
should be displayed in color. Note that setting colorMode off
disables all colors, including this. The default is
“false”.
- colorUL (class ColorUL)
- This specifies the color to use to display underlined
characters if the “colorULMode” resource is enabled. The
default is “XtDefaultForeground”.
- See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows
combining underline and color.
- colorULMode (class
ColorAttrMode)
- Specifies whether characters with the underline attribute
should be displayed in color or as underlined characters. Note that
setting colorMode off disables all colors, including underlining.
The default is “false”.
- combiningChars (class
CombiningChars)
- Specifies the number of wide-characters which can be stored
in a cell to overstrike (combine) with the base character of the cell.
This can be set to values in the range 0 to 5. The default is
“2”.
- ctrlFKeys (class
CtrlFKeys)
- In VT220 keyboard mode (see sunKeyboard resource),
specifies the amount by which to shift F1-F12 given a control modifier
(CTRL). This allows you to generate key symbols for F10-F20 on a Sun/PC
keyboard. The default is “10”, which means that CTRL F1
generates the key symbol for F11.
- curses (class Curses)
- Specifies whether or not the last column bug in
more(1) should be worked around. See the -cu option for
details. The default is “false”.
- cursorBlink (class
CursorBlink)
- Specifies whether to make the cursor blink. Xterm
accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in
parentheses:
- false (0)
- The cursor will not blink, but may be combined with escape
sequences according to the cursorBlinkXOR resource.
- true (1)
- The cursor will blink, but may be combined with escape
sequences according to the cursorBlinkXOR resource.
- always (2)
- The cursor will always blink, ignoring escape sequences.
The menu entry will be disabled.
- never (3)
- The cursor will never blink, ignoring escape sequences. The
menu entry will be disabled.
- The default is “false”.
- cursorBlinkXOR (class
CursorBlinkXOR)
- Xterm uses two inputs to determine whether the
cursor blinks:
- •
- The cursorBlink resource (which can be altered with
a menu entry).
- •
- Control sequences (private mode 12 and DECSCUSR).
- The cursorBlinkXOR resource determines how those
inputs are combined:
- false
-
Xterm uses the logical-OR of the two variables. If either is set,
xterm makes the cursor blink.
- true
-
Xterm uses the logical-XOR of the two variables. If only one is set,
xterm makes the cursor blink.
- The default is “true”.
- cursorColor (class
CursorColor)
- Specifies the color to use for the text cursor. The default
is “XtDefaultForeground”. By default, xterm attempts to
keep this color from being the same as the background color, since it
draws the cursor by filling the background of a text cell. The same
restriction applies to control sequences which may change this color.
- Setting this resource overrides most of xterm's
adjustments to cursor color. It will still use reverse-video to disallow
some cases, such as a black cursor on a black background.
- cursorOffTime (class
CursorOffTime)
- Specifies the duration of the “off” part of the
cursor blink cycle-time in milliseconds. The same timer is used for text
blinking. The default is “300”.
- cursorOnTime (class
CursorOnTime)
- Specifies the duration of the “on” part of the
cursor blink cycle-time, in milliseconds. The same timer is used for text
blinking. The default is “600”.
- cursorUnderLine (class
CursorUnderLine)
- Specifies whether to make the cursor underlined or a box.
The default is “false”.
- cutNewline (class
CutNewline)
- If “false”, triple clicking to select a line
does not include the newline at the end of the line. If
“true”, the Newline is selected. The default is
“true”.
- cutToBeginningOfLine (class
CutToBeginningOfLine )
- If “false”, triple clicking to select a line
selects only from the current word forward. If “true”, the
entire line is selected. The default is “true”.
- decGraphicsID (class
DecGraphicsID)
- Allows a way to combine the graphics feature from certain
DEC terminals (125, 240, 241, 330, 340 or 382) with other emulation levels
which did not provide the graphics feature. As in decTerminalID,
leading non-digit characters are ignored, e.g., “vt340” and
“340” are the same.
- If the resource value is nonzero, xterm uses that
emulation level when initializing the drawing region and decoding control
sequences to draw graphics.
- The default is “0”.
- decTerminalID (class
DecTerminalID)
- Specifies the emulation level (100=VT100, 220=VT220, etc.),
used to determine the type of response to a DA control sequence. Leading
non-digit characters are ignored, e.g., “vt100” and
“100” are the same. The default is “420”.
- defaultString (class
DefaultString)
- Specify the character (or string) which xterm will
substitute when pasted text includes a character which cannot be
represented in the current encoding. For instance, pasting UTF-8 text into
a display of ISO-8859-1 characters will only be able to display codes
0–255, while UTF-8 text can include Unicode values above 255. The
default is “#” (a single pound sign).
- If the undisplayable text would be double-width,
xterm will add a space after the “#” character, to give
roughly the same layout on the screen as the original text.
- deleteIsDEL (class
DeleteIsDEL)
- Specifies what the Delete key on the editing keypad
should send when pressed. The resource value is a string, evaluated as a
boolean after startup. Xterm uses it in conjunction with the
keyboardType resource:
- •
- If the keyboard type is “default”, or
“vt220” and the resource is either “true” or
“maybe” send the VT220-style Remove escape sequence.
Otherwise, send DEL (127).
- •
- If the keyboard type is “legacy”, and the
resource is “true” send DEL. Otherwise, send the Remove
sequence.
- •
- Otherwise, if the keyboard type is none of these special
cases, send DEL (127).
- The default is “Maybe”. The resource is allowed
to be a non-boolean “maybe” so that the popup menu Delete
is DEL entry does not override the keyboard type.
- directColor (class
DirectColor)
- Specifies whether to handle direct-color control sequences
using the X server's available colors, or to approximate those using a
color map with 256 entries. A “true” value enables the former.
The default is “true”.
- disallowedColorOps (class
DisallowedColorOps )
- Specify which features will be disabled if
allowColorOps is false. This is a comma-separated list of names.
The default value is
SetColor,GetColor,GetAnsiColor
- The names are listed below. Xterm ignores
capitalization, but they are shown in mixed-case for clarity.
- SetColor
- Set a specific dynamic color.
- GetColor
- Report the current setting of a given dynamic color.
- GetAnsiColor
- Report the current setting of a given ANSI color (actually
any of the colors set via ANSI-style controls).
- disallowedFontOps (class
DisallowedFontOps)
- Specify which features will be disabled if
allowFontOps is false. This is a comma-separated list of names. The
default value is
SetFont,GetFont
- The names are listed below. Xterm ignores
capitalization, but they are shown in mixed-case for clarity.
- SetFont
- Set the specified font.
- GetFont
- Report the specified font.
- disallowedMouseOps (class
DisallowedMouseOps )
- Specify which features will be disabled if
allowMouseOps is false. This is a comma-separated list of names.
The default value is “*” which matches all names. The names
are listed below. Xterm ignores capitalization, but they are shown
in mixed-case for clarity.
- X10
- The original X10 mouse protocol.
- Locator
- DEC locator mode
- VT200Click
- X11 mouse-clicks only.
- VT200Hilite
- X11 mouse-clicks and highlighting.
- AnyButton
- XFree86 xterm any-button mode sends button-clicks as
well as motion events while the button is pressed.
- AnyEvent
- XFree86 xterm any-event mode sends button-clicks as
well as motion events whether or not a button is pressed.
- FocusEvent
- Send FocusIn/FocusOut events.
- Extended
- The first extension beyond X11 mouse protocol, this encodes
the coordinates in UTF-8. It is deprecated in favor of SGR, but
provided for compatibility.
- SGR
- This is the recommended extension for
mouse-coordinates
- URXVT
- Like Extended, this is provided for
compatibility.
- AlternateScroll
- This overrides the alternateScroll resource.
- disallowedPasteControls (class
DisallowedPasteControls )
- The allowPasteControls resource is normally used to
prevent pasting C1 controls, as well as non-formatting C0 controls such as
the ASCII escape character. Those characters are simply ignored. This
resource further extends the set of control characters which cannot be
pasted, converting each into a space.
- The resource value is a comma-separated list of names.
Xterm ignores capitalization. The default value is
BS,DEL,ENQ,EOT,ESC,NUL
- The names are listed below:
- C0
- all ASCII control characters.
- Individual C0 characters
- NUL, SOH, STX, ETX, EOT, ENQ, ACK, BEL, BS, HT, LF, VT, FF,
CR, SO, SI, DLE, DC1, DC2, DC3, DC4, NAK, SYN, ETB, CAN, EM, SUB, ESC, FS,
GS, RS, US
- DEL
- ASCII delete
- NL
- ASCII line-feed, i.e., “newline” is the same as
LF.
- disallowedTcapOps (class
DisallowedTcapOps)
- Specify which features will be disabled if
allowTcapOps is false. This is a comma-separated list of names. The
default value is
SetTcap,GetTcap
- The names are listed below. Xterm ignores
capitalization, but they are shown in mixed-case for clarity.
- SetTcap
- (not implemented)
- GetTcap
- Report specified function- and other special keys.
- disallowedWindowOps (class
DisallowedWindowOps )
- Specify which features will be disabled if
allowWindowOps is false. This is a comma-separated list of names,
or (for the controls adapted from dtterm the operation number). The
default value is
20,21,SetXprop,SetSelection
(i.e., all except a few “dangerous” operations are allowed).
- The names are listed below. Xterm ignores
capitalization, but they are shown in mixed-case for clarity. Where a
number can be used as an alternative, it is given in parentheses after the
name.
- GetChecksum
- Report checksum of characters in a rectangular region.
- GetIconTitle (20)
- Report xterm window's icon label as a string.
- GetScreenSizeChars (19)
- Report the size of the screen in characters as
numbers.
- GetSelection
- Report selection data as a base64 string.
- GetWinPosition (13)
- Report xterm window position as numbers.
- GetWinSizeChars (18)
- Report the size of the text area in characters as
numbers.
- GetWinSizePixels (14)
- Report xterm window in pixels as numbers.
- GetWinState (11)
- Report xterm window state as a number.
- GetWinTitle (21)
- Report xterm window's title as a string.
- LowerWin (6)
- Lower the xterm window to the bottom of the stacking
order.
- MaximizeWin (9)
- Maximize window (i.e., resize to screen size).
- FullscreenWin (10)
- Use full screen (i.e., resize to screen size, without
window decorations).
- MinimizeWin (2)
- Iconify window.
- PopTitle (23)
- Pop title from internal stack.
- PushTitle (22)
- Push title to internal stack.
- RaiseWin (5)
- Raise the xterm window to the front of the stacking
order.
- RefreshWin (7)
- Refresh the xterm window.
- RestoreWin (1)
- De-iconify window.
- SetChecksum
- Modify algorithm for reporting checksum of characters in a
rectangular region.
- SetSelection
- Set selection data.
- SetWinLines
- Resize to a given number of lines, at least 24.
- SetWinPosition (3)
- Move window to given coordinates.
- SetWinSizeChars (8)
- Resize the text area to given size in characters.
- SetWinSizePixels (4)
- Resize the xterm window to given size in
pixels.
- SetXprop
- Set X property on top-level window.
- dynamicColors (class
DynamicColors)
- Specifies whether or not escape sequences to change colors
assigned to different attributes are recognized.
- eightBitControl (class
EightBitControl)
- Specifies whether or not control sequences sent by the
terminal should be eight-bit characters or escape sequences. The default
is “false”.
- eightBitInput (class
EightBitInput)
- If “true”, Meta characters (a single-byte
character combined with the Meta modifier key) input from the
keyboard are presented as a single character, modified according to the
eightBitMeta resource. If “false”, Meta characters are
converted into a two-character sequence with the character itself preceded
by ESC. The default is “true”.
- The metaSendsEscape and altSendsEscape
resources may override this feature. Generally keyboards do not have a key
labeled “Meta”, but “Alt” keys are common, and
they are conventionally used for “Meta”. If they were
synonymous, it would have been reasonable to name this resource “
altSendsEscape”, reversing its sense. For more background on
this, see the meta(3x) function in curses.
- Note that the Alt key is not necessarily the same as
the Meta modifier. The xmodmap utility lists your key
modifiers. X defines modifiers for shift, (caps) lock and control, as well
as 5 additional modifiers which are generally used to configure key
modifiers. Xterm inspects the same information to find the modifier
associated with either Meta key (left or right), and uses that key
as the Meta modifier. It also looks for the NumLock key, to
recognize the modifier which is associated with that.
- If your xmodmap configuration uses the same keycodes
for Alt- and Meta-keys, xterm will only see the Alt-key
definitions, since those are tested before Meta-keys. NumLock is tested
first. It is important to keep these keys distinct; otherwise some of
xterm's functionality is not available.
- The eightBitInput resource is tested at startup
time. If “true”, the xterm tries to put the terminal
into 8-bit mode. If “false”, on startup, xterm tries to
put the terminal into 7-bit mode. For some configurations this is
unsuccessful; failure is ignored. After startup, xterm does not
change the terminal between 8-bit and 7-bit mode.
- As originally implemented in X11, the resource value did
not change after startup. However (since patch #216 in 2006) xterm
can modify eightBitInput after startup via a control sequence. The
corresponding terminfo capabilities smm (set meta mode) and
rmm (reset meta mode) have been recognized by bash for some
time. Interestingly enough, bash's notion of “meta
mode” differs from the standard definition (in the terminfo
manual), which describes the change to the eighth bit of a character. It
happens that bash views “meta mode” as the ESC
character that xterm puts before a character when a special meta
key is pressed. bash's early documentation talks about the ESC
character and ignores the eighth bit.
- eightBitMeta (class
EightBitMeta)
- This controls the way xterm modifies the eighth bit
of a single-byte key when the eightBitInput resource is set. The
default is “locale”.
- The resource value is a string, evaluated as a boolean
after startup.
- false
- The key is sent unmodified.
- locale
- The key is modified only if the locale uses eight-bit
encoding.
- true
- The key is sent modified.
- never
- The key is always sent unmodified.
- Except for the never choice, xterm honors the
terminfo capabilities smm (set meta mode) and rmm (reset
meta mode), allowing the feature to be turned on or off dynamically.
- If eightBitMeta is enabled when the locale uses
UTF-8, xterm encodes the value as UTF-8 (since patch #183 in
2003).
- eightBitOutput (class
EightBitOutput)
- Specifies whether or not eight-bit characters sent from the
host should be accepted as is or stripped when printed. The default is
“true”, which means that they are accepted as is.
- eightBitSelectTypes (class
EightBitSelectTypes )
- Override xterm's default selection target list (see
SELECT/PASTE) for selections in normal (ISO-8859-1) mode. The
default is an empty string, i.e., “”, which does not override
anything.
- eraseSavedLines (class
EraseSavedLines)
- Specifies whether or not to allow xterm extended
ED/DECSED control sequences to erase the saved-line buffer. The default is
“true”.
- faceName (class FaceName)
- Specify the pattern for scalable fonts selected from the
FreeType library if support for that library was compiled into
xterm. There is no default value.
- One or more fonts can be specified, separated by commas. If
prefixed with “x:” or “x11:” the specification
applies to the XLFD font resource. A “xft:” prefix is
accepted but unnecessary since a missing prefix for faceName means
that it will be used for TrueType. For example,
XTerm*faceName: x:fixed,xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
- If no faceName resource is specified, or if there is
no match for both TrueType normal and bold fonts, xterm uses the
XLFD (bitmap) font and related resources.
- It is possible to select suitable bitmap fonts using a
script such as this:
#!/bin/sh
FONT=`xfontsel -print`
test -n "$FONT" && xfd -fn "$FONT"
- However (even though xfd accepts a
“-fa” option to denote FreeType fonts), xfontsel
has not been similarly extended. As a workaround, you may try
fc-list :scalable=true:spacing=mono: family
- to find a list of scalable fixed-pitch fonts which may be
used for the faceName resource value.
- faceNameDoublesize (class
FaceNameDoublesize )
- Specify a double-width scalable font for cases where an
application requires this, e.g., in CJK applications. There is no default
value.
- Like the faceName resource, this allows one or more
comma-separated font specifications to be applied to the wide
TrueType or XLFD fonts.
- If the application uses double-wide characters and this
resource is not given, xterm will use a scaled version of the font
given by faceName.
- faceSize (class FaceSize)
- Specify the pointsize for fonts selected from the FreeType
library if support for that library was compiled into xterm. The
default is “8.0” On the VT Fonts menu, this
corresponds to the Default entry.
- Although the default is “8.0”, this may not be
the same as the pointsize for the default bitmap font, i.e., that assigned
with the -fn option, or the font resource. The default value
of faceSize is chosen to match the size of the “fixed”
font, making switching between bitmap and TrueType fonts via the font menu
give comparable sizes for the window. If your -fn option uses a
different pointsize, you might want to adjust the faceSize resource
to match.
- You can specify the pointsize for TrueType fonts selected
with the other size-related menu entries such as Medium, Huge, etc., by
using one of the following resource values. If you do not specify a value,
they default to “0.0”, which causes xterm to use the
ratio of font sizes from the corresponding bitmap font resources to obtain
a TrueType pointsize.
- If all of the faceSize resources are set, then
xterm will use this information to determine the next
smaller/larger TrueType font for the larger-vt-font() and
smaller-vt-font() actions. If any are not set, xterm will
use only the areas of the bitmap fonts.
- faceSize1 (class
FaceSize1)
- Specifies the pointsize of the first alternative font.
- faceSize2 (class
FaceSize2)
- Specifies the pointsize of the second alternative
font.
- faceSize3 (class
FaceSize3)
- Specifies the pointsize of the third alternative font.
- faceSize4 (class
FaceSize4)
- Specifies the pointsize of the fourth alternative
font.
- faceSize5 (class
FaceSize5)
- Specifies the pointsize of the fifth alternative font.
- faceSize6 (class
FaceSize6)
- Specifies the pointsize of the sixth alternative font.
- fastScroll (class
FastScroll)
- Modifies the effect of jump scroll (jumpScroll) by
suppressing screen refreshes for the special case when output to the
screen has completely shifted the contents off-screen. For instance,
cat'ing a large file to the screen does this.
- font (class Font)
- Specifies the name of the normal font. The default is
“fixed”.
- See the discussion of the locale resource, which
describes how this font may be overridden.
- NOTE: some resource files use patterns such as
*font: fixed
- which are overly broad, affecting both
xterm.vt100.font
- and
xterm.vt100.utf8Fonts.font
- which is probably not what you intended.
- font1 (class Font1)
- Specifies the name of the first alternative font,
corresponding to “Unreadable” in the standard menu.
- font2 (class Font2)
- Specifies the name of the second alternative font,
corresponding to “Tiny” in the standard menu.
- font3 (class Font3)
- Specifies the name of the third alternative font,
corresponding to “Small” in the standard menu.
- font4 (class Font4)
- Specifies the name of the fourth alternative font,
corresponding to “Medium” in the standard menu.
- font5 (class Font5)
- Specifies the name of the fifth alternative font,
corresponding to “Large” in the standard menu.
- font6 (class Font6)
- Specifies the name of the sixth alternative font,
corresponding to “Huge” in the standard menu.
- font7 (class Font7)
- Specifies the name of the seventh alternative font,
corresponding to “Enormous” in the standard menu.
- fontDoublesize (class
FontDoublesize)
- Specifies whether xterm should attempt to use font
scaling to draw double-sized characters. Some older font servers cannot do
this properly, will return misleading font metrics. The default is
“true”. If disabled, xterm will simulate double-sized
characters by drawing normal characters with spaces between them.
- fontWarnings (class
FontWarnings)
- Specify whether xterm should report an error if it
fails to load a font:
- 0
- Never report an error (though the X libraries may).
- 1
- Report an error if the font name was given as a resource
setting.
- 2
- Always report an error on failure to load a font.
- The default is “1”.
- forceBoxChars (class
ForceBoxChars)
- Specifies whether xterm should assume the normal and
bold fonts have VT100 line-drawing characters:
- •
- The fixed-pitch ISO-8859-*-encoded fonts used by
xterm normally have the VT100 line-drawing glyphs in cells
1–31. Other fixed-pitch fonts may be more attractive, but lack these
glyphs.
- •
- When using an ISO-10646-1 font and the wideChars
resource is true, xterm uses the Unicode glyphs which match the
VT100 line-drawing glyphs.
- If “false”, xterm checks for missing
glyphs in the font and makes line-drawing characters directly as needed.
If “true”, xterm assumes the font does not contain the
line-drawing characters, and draws them directly. The default is
“false”.
- The VT100 line-drawing character set (also known as the
DEC Special Character and Line Drawing Set) is shown in this table.
It includes a few special characters which are not used for drawing
lines:
Cell |
Unicode |
Description |
|
0 |
U+25AE |
black vertical rectangle |
1 |
U+25C6 |
black diamond |
2 |
U+2592 |
medium shade |
3 |
U+2409 |
symbol for horizontal tabulation |
4 |
U+240C |
symbol for form feed |
5 |
U+240D |
symbol for carriage return |
6 |
U+240A |
symbol for line feed |
7 |
U+00B0 |
degree sign |
8 |
U+00B1 |
plus-minus sign |
9 |
U+2424 |
symbol for newline |
10 |
U+240B |
symbol for vertical tabulation |
11 |
U+2518 |
box drawings light up and left |
12 |
U+2510 |
box drawings light down and left |
13 |
U+250C |
box drawings light down and right |
14 |
U+2514 |
box drawings light up and right |
15 |
U+253C |
box drawings light vertical and horizontal |
16 |
U+23BA |
box drawings scan 1 |
17 |
U+23BB |
box drawings scan 3 |
18 |
U+2500 |
box drawings light horizontal |
19 |
U+23BC |
box drawings scan 7 |
20 |
U+23BD |
box drawings scan 9 |
21 |
U+251C |
box drawings light vertical and right |
22 |
U+2524 |
box drawings light vertical and left |
23 |
U+2534 |
box drawings light up and horizontal |
24 |
U+252C |
box drawings light down and horizontal |
25 |
U+2502 |
box drawings light vertical |
26 |
U+2264 |
less-than or equal to |
27 |
U+2265 |
greater-than or equal to |
28 |
U+03C0 |
greek small letter pi |
29 |
U+2260 |
not equal to |
30 |
U+00A3 |
pound sign |
31 |
U+00B7 |
middle dot |
|
- forcePackedFont (class
ForcePackedFont)
- Specifies whether xterm should use the maximum or
minimum glyph width when displaying using a bitmap font. Use the maximum
width to help with proportional fonts. The default is “true”,
denoting the minimum width.
- forceXftHeight (class
ForceXftHeight)
- Specifies whether xterm should use the given font
metrics for TrueType fonts, or amend the ascent/descent to total no more
than the given font-height. This optional feature is used to work around
inconsistencies in FreeType's rounding computation. The default is
“false”, denoting the given metrics.
- foreground (class
Foreground)
- Specifies the color to use for displaying text in the
window. Setting the class name instead of the instance name is an easy way
to have everything that would normally appear in the text color change
color. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”.
- formatOtherKeys (class
FormatOtherKeys)
- Overrides the format of the escape sequence used to report
modified keys with the modifyOtherKeys resource.
- 0
- send modified keys as parameters for function-key 27
(default).
- 1
- send modified keys as parameters for CSI u.
- freeBoldBox (class
FreeBoldBox)
- Specifies whether xterm should assume the bounding
boxes for normal and bold fonts are compatible. If “false”,
xterm compares them and will reject choices of bold fonts that do
not match the size of the normal font. The default is “false”,
which means that the comparison is performed.
- geometry (class Geometry)
- Specifies the preferred size and position of the
VTxxx window. There is no default for this resource.
- highlightColor (class
HighlightColor)
- Specifies the color to use for the background of selected
(highlighted) text. If not specified (i.e., matching the default
foreground), reverse video is used. The default is
“XtDefaultForeground”.
- highlightColorMode (class
HighlightColorMode )
- Specifies whether xterm should use
highlightTextColor and highlightColor to override the
reversed foreground/background colors in a selection. The default is
unspecified: at startup, xterm checks if those resources are set to
something other than the default foreground and background colors. Setting
this resource disables the check.
- The following table shows the interaction of the
highlighting resources, abbreviated as shown to fit in this page:
- HCM
- highlightColorMode
- HR
- highlightReverse
- HBG
- highlightColor
- HFG
- highlightTextColor
-
HCM |
HR |
HBG |
HFG |
Highlight |
|
false |
false |
default |
default |
bg/fg |
false |
false |
default |
set |
bg/fg |
false |
false |
set |
default |
fg/HBG |
false |
false |
set |
set |
fg/HBG |
|
false |
true |
default |
default |
bg/fg |
false |
true |
default |
set |
bg/fg |
false |
true |
set |
default |
fg/HBG |
false |
true |
set |
set |
fg/HBG |
|
true |
false |
default |
default |
bg/fg |
true |
false |
default |
set |
HFG/fg |
true |
false |
set |
default |
bg/HBG |
true |
false |
set |
set |
HFG/HBG |
|
true |
true |
default |
default |
bg/fg |
true |
true |
default |
set |
HFG/fg |
true |
true |
set |
default |
fg/HBG |
true |
true |
set |
set |
HFG/HBG |
|
default |
false |
default |
default |
bg/fg |
default |
false |
default |
set |
bg/fg |
default |
false |
set |
default |
fg/HBG |
default |
false |
set |
set |
HFG/HBG |
|
default |
true |
default |
default |
bg/fg |
default |
true |
default |
set |
bg/fg |
default |
true |
set |
default |
fg/HBG |
default |
true |
set |
set |
HFG/HBG |
|
- highlightReverse (class
HighlightReverse)
- Specifies whether xterm should reverse the selection
foreground and background colors when selecting text with reverse-video
attribute. This applies only to the highlightColor and
highlightTextColor resources, e.g., to match the color scheme of
xwsh. If “true”, xterm reverses the colors, If
“false”, xterm does not reverse colors, The default is
“true”.
- highlightSelection (class
HighlightSelection )
- Tells xterm whether to highlight all of the selected
positions, or only the selected text:
- •
- If “false”, selecting with the mouse highlights
all positions on the screen between the beginning of the selection and the
current position.
- •
- If “true”, xterm highlights only the
positions that contain text that can be selected.
- The default is “false”.
- Depending on the way your applications write to the screen,
there may be trailing blanks on a line. Xterm stores data as it is
shown on the screen. Erasing the display changes the internal state of
each cell so it is not considered a blank for the purpose of selection.
Blanks written since the last erase are selectable. If you do not wish to
have trailing blanks in a selection, use the trimSelection
resource.
- highlightTextColor (class
HighlightTextColor )
- Specifies the color to use for the foreground of selected
(highlighted) text. If not specified (i.e., matching the default
background), reverse video is used. The default is
“XtDefaultBackground”.
- hpLowerleftBugCompat (class
HpLowerleftBugCompat )
- Specifies whether to work around a bug in HP's xdb,
which ignores termcap and always sends ESC F to move to the lower left
corner. “true” causes xterm to interpret ESC F as a
request to move to the lower left corner of the screen. The default is
“false”.
- i18nSelections (class
I18nSelections)
- If false, xterm will not request the targets
COMPOUND_TEXT or TEXT. The default is “true”. It
may be set to false in order to work around ICCCM violations by other X
clients.
- iconBorderColor (class
BorderColor)
- Specifies the border color for the active icon window if
this feature is compiled into xterm. Not all window managers will
make the icon border visible.
- iconBorderWidth (class
BorderWidth)
- Specifies the border width for the active icon window if
this feature is compiled into xterm. The default is
“2”. Not all window managers will make the border
visible.
- iconFont (class IconFont)
- Specifies the font for the miniature active icon window, if
this feature is compiled into xterm. The default is
“nil2”.
- initialFont (class
InitialFont)
- Specifies which of the VT100 fonts to use initially. Values
are the same as for the set-vt-font action. The default is
“d”, i.e., “default”.
- inputMethod (class
InputMethod)
- Tells xterm which type of input method to use. There
is no default method.
- internalBorder (class
BorderWidth)
- Specifies the number of pixels between the characters and
the window border. The default is “2”.
- italicULMode (class
ColorAttrMode)
- Specifies whether characters with the underline attribute
should be displayed in an italic font or as underlined characters. It is
implemented only for TrueType fonts.
- jumpScroll (class
JumpScroll)
- Specifies whether or not jump scroll should be used. This
corresponds to the VT102 DECSCLM private mode. The default is
“true”. See fastScroll for a variation.
- keepClipboard (class
KeepClipboard)
- Specifies whether xterm will reuse the selection
data which it copied to the clipboard rather than asking the clipboard for
its current contents when told to provide the selection. The default is
“false”.
- If compiled into xterm, the menu entry Keep
Clipboard allows you to change this at runtime.
- keepSelection (class
KeepSelection)
- Specifies whether xterm will keep the selection even
after the selected area was touched by some output to the terminal. The
default is “true”.
- The menu entry Keep Selection allows you to change
this at runtime.
- keyboardDialect (class
KeyboardDialect)
- Specifies the initial keyboard dialect, as well as the
default value when the terminal is reset. The value given is the same as
the final character in the control sequences which change character sets.
The default is “B”, which corresponds to US ASCII.
- limitFontsets (class
LimitFontsets)
- Limits the number of TrueType fallback fonts (i.e.,
fontset) which can be used. The default is “50”.
- This limits the number of fallback fonts which xterm
uses to display characters. Because TrueType fonts typically are small,
xterm may open several fonts for good coverage, and may open
additional fonts to obtain information. You can see which font-files
xterm opens by setting the environment variable XFT_DEBUG to
3. The Xft library and xterm write this debugging trace to the
standard output.
- Set this to “0” to disable fallbacks
entirely.
- limitResize (class
LimitResize)
- Limits resizing of the screen via control sequence to a
given multiple of the display dimensions. The default is
“1”.
- limitResponse (class
LimitResponse)
- Limits the buffer-size used when xterm replies to
various control sequences. The default is “1024”. The minimum
value is “256”.
- locale (class Locale)
- Specifies how to use luit, an encoding converter
between UTF-8 and locale encodings. The resource value (ignoring case) may
be:
- true
- Xterm will use the encoding specified by the users'
LC_CTYPE locale (i.e., LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, or LANG variables) as far as
possible. This is realized by always enabling UTF-8 mode and invoking
luit in non-UTF-8 locales.
- medium
- Xterm will follow users' LC_CTYPE locale only for
UTF-8, east Asian, and Thai locales, where the encodings were not
supported by conventional 8bit mode with changing fonts. For other
locales, xterm will use conventional 8bit mode.
- checkfont
- If mini-luit is compiled-in, xterm will check if a
Unicode font has been specified. If so, it checks if the character
encoding for the current locale is POSIX, Latin-1 or Latin-9, uses the
appropriate mapping to support those with the Unicode font. For other
encodings, xterm assumes that UTF-8 encoding is required.
- false
- Xterm will use conventional 8bit mode or UTF-8 mode
according to utf8 resource or -u8 option.
- Any other value, e.g., “UTF-8” or
“ISO8859-2”, is assumed to be an encoding name; luit
will be invoked to support the encoding. The actual list of supported
encodings depends on luit. The default is
“medium”.
- Regardless of your locale and encoding, you need an
ISO-10646-1 font to display the result. Your configuration may not include
this font, or locale-support by xterm may not be needed.
- At startup, xterm uses a mechanism equivalent to the
load-vt-fonts(utf8Fonts, Utf8Fonts) action to load font name
subresources of the VT100 widget. That is, resource patterns such as
“ *vt100.utf8Fonts.font” will be loaded, and (if this
resource is enabled), override the normal fonts. If no subresources are
found, the normal fonts such as “ *vt100.font”, etc.,
are used.
- For instance, you could have this in your resource file:
*VT100.font: 12x24
*VT100.utf8Fonts.font:9x15
- When started with a UTF-8 locale, xterm would use
9x15, but allow you to switch to the 12x24 font using the menu entry
“ UTF-8 Fonts”.
- The resource files distributed with xterm use
ISO-10646-1 fonts, but do not rely on them unless you are using the locale
mechanism.
- localeFilter (class
LocaleFilter)
- Specifies the file name for the encoding converter from/to
locale encodings and UTF-8 which is used with the -lc option or
locale resource. The help message shown by “xterm
-help” lists the default value, which depends on your system
configuration.
- If the encoding converter requires command-line parameters,
you can add those after the command, e.g.,
*localeFilter: xterm-filter -p
- Alternatively, you may put those parameter within a shell
script to execute the converter, and set this resource to point to the
shell script.
- When using a locale-filter, e.g., with the -e
option, or the shell, xterm first tries passing control via that
filter. If it fails, xterm will retry without the locale-filter.
Xterm warns about the failure before retrying.
- logFile (class Logfile)
- Specify the name for xterm's log file. If no name is
specified, xterm will generate a name when logging is enabled, as
described in the -l option.
- logInhibit (class
LogInhibit)
- If “true”, prevent the logging feature from
being enabled, whether by the command-line option -l, or the menu
entry Log to File. The default is “false”.
- logging (class Logging)
- If “true”, (and if logInhibit is not
set) enable the logging feature. This resource is set/updated by the
-l option and the menu entry Log to File. The default is
“false”.
- loginShell (class
LoginShell)
- Specifies whether or not the shell to be run in the window
should be started as a login shell. The default is
“false”.
- marginBell (class
MarginBell)
- Specifies whether or not the bell should be rung when the
user types near the right margin. The default is “false”.
- maxGraphicSize (class
MaxGraphicSize)
- If xterm is configured to support ReGIS or SIXEL
graphics, this resource controls the maximum size of a graph which can be
displayed.
- The default is “1000x1000” (given as
width by height).
- If the resource is “auto” then xterm
will use the decGraphicsID resource (or decTerminalID if
that is not set):
Result |
decGraphicsID |
|
768x400 |
125 |
800x460 |
240 |
800x460 |
241 |
800x480 |
330 |
800x480 |
340 |
860x750 |
382 |
800x480 |
other |
- metaSendsEscape (class
MetaSendsEscape)
- Tells xterm what to do with input-characters
modified by Meta:
- •
- If “true”, Meta characters (a character
combined with the Meta modifier key) are converted into a
two-character sequence with the character itself preceded by ESC. This
applies as well to function key control sequences, unless xterm
sees that Meta is used in your key translations.
- •
- If “false”, Meta characters input from the
keyboard are handled according to the eightBitInput resource.
- The default is “False”.
- mkSamplePass (class
MkSamplePass)
- If mkSampleSize is nonzero, and mkWidth (and
cjkWidth) are false, on startup xterm compares its built-in
tables to the system's wide character width data to decide if it will use
the system's data. It tests the first mkSampleSize character
values, and allows up to mkSamplePass mismatches before the test
fails. The default (for the allowed number of mismatches) is 655 (one
percent of the default value for mkSampleSize).
- mkSampleSize (class
MkSampleSize)
- With mkSamplePass, this specifies a startup test
used for initializing wide character width calculations. The default
(number of characters to check) is 65536.
- mkWidth (class MkWidth)
- Specifies whether xterm should use a built-in
version of the wide character width calculation. See also the
cjkWidth resource which can override this. The default is
“false”.
- Here is a summary of the resources which control the choice
of wide character width calculation:
cjkWidth |
mkWidth |
Action |
|
false |
false |
use system tables subject to mkSamplePass |
false |
true |
use built-in tables |
true |
false |
use built-in CJK tables |
true |
true |
use built-in CJK tables |
- To disable mkWidth, and use the system's tables, set
both mkSampleSize and mkSamplePass to “0”. Doing
that may make xterm more consistent with applications running in
xterm, but may omit some font glyphs whose width correctly differs
from the system's character tables.
- modifyCursorKeys (class
ModifyCursorKeys)
- Tells how to handle the special case where Control-,
Shift-, Alt- or Meta-modifiers are used to add a parameter to the escape
sequence returned by a cursor-key. The default is “2”:
- -1
- disables the feature.
- 0
- uses the old/obsolete behavior, i.e., the modifier is the
first parameter.
- 1
- prefixes modified sequences with CSI.
- 2
- forces the modifier to be the second parameter if it would
otherwise be the first.
- 3
- marks the sequence with a “>” to hint that
it is private.
- modifyFunctionKeys (class
ModifyFunctionKeys )
- Tells how to handle the special case where Control-,
Shift-, Alt- or Meta-modifiers are used to add a parameter to the escape
sequence returned by a (numbered) function-key. The default is
“2”. The resource values are similar to
modifyCursorKeys:
- -1
- permits the user to use shift- and control-modifiers to
construct function-key strings using the normal encoding scheme.
- 0
- uses the old/obsolete behavior, i.e., the modifier is the
first parameter.
- 1
- prefixes modified sequences with CSI.
- 2
- forces the modifier to be the second parameter if it would
otherwise be the first.
- 3
- marks the sequence with a “>” to hint that
it is private.
- If modifyFunctionKeys is zero, xterm uses
Control- and Shift-modifiers to allow the user to construct numbered
function-keys beyond the set provided by the keyboard:
- Control
- adds the value given by the ctrlFKeys resource.
- Shift
- adds twice the value given by the ctrlFKeys
resource.
- Control/Shift
- adds three times the value given by the ctrlFKeys
resource.
- modifyKeyboard (class
ModifyKeyboard)
- Normally xterm makes a special case regarding
modifiers (shift, control, etc.) to handle special keyboard layouts (
legacy and vt220). This is done to provide compatible
keyboards for DEC VT220 and related terminals that implement user-defined
keys (UDK).
- The bits of the resource value selectively enable
modification of the given category when these keyboards are selected. The
default is “0”:
- 0
- The legacy/vt220 keyboards interpret only the
Control-modifier when constructing numbered function-keys. Other special
keys are not modified.
- 1
- allows modification of the numeric keypad
- 2
- allows modification of the editing keypad
- 4
- allows modification of function-keys, overrides use of
Shift-modifier for UDK.
- 8
- allows modification of other special keys
- modifyOtherKeys (class
ModifyOtherKeys)
- Like modifyCursorKeys, tells xterm to
construct an escape sequence for ordinary (i.e.,
“other”) keys (such as “2”) when modified by
Shift-, Control-, Alt- or Meta-modifiers. This feature does not apply to
special keys, i.e., cursor-, keypad-, function- or control-keys
which are labeled on your keyboard. Those have key symbols which XKB
identifies uniquely.
- For example, this feature does not apply to special
control-keys (e.g., Escape, Tab, Enter, Backspace) Other control keys
(e.g., Control-I, Control-M, Control-H) may send escape sequences when
this feature is enabled.
- The default is “0”:
- 0
- disables this feature.
- 1
- enables this feature for keys except for those with
well-known behavior, e.g., Tab, Backarrow and some special control
character cases which are built into the X11 library, e.g., Control-Space
to make a NUL, or Control-3 to make an Escape character.
- Except for those special cases built into the X11 library,
the Shift- and Control- modifiers are treated normally. The Alt- and Meta-
modifiers do not cause xterm to send escape sequences. Those
modifier keys are interpreted according to other resources, e.g., the
metaSendsEscape resource.
- 2
- enables this feature for keys including the exceptions
listed. Xterm ignores the special cases built into the X11 library.
Any shifted (modified) ordinary key sends an escape sequence. The Alt- and
Meta- modifiers cause xterm to send escape sequences.
- The Xterm FAQ has an extended discussion of this
feature, with examples:
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/modified-keys.html
- multiClickTime (class
MultiClickTime)
- Specifies the maximum time in milliseconds between
multi-click select events. The default is “250”
milliseconds.
- multiScroll (class
MultiScroll)
- Specifies whether or not scrolling should be done
asynchronously. The default is “false”.
- nMarginBell (class Column)
- Specifies the number of characters from the right margin at
which the margin bell should be rung, when enabled by the
marginBell resource. The default is “10”.
- nameKeymap (class
Name Keymap)
- See the discussion of the keymap() action.
- nextEventDelay (class
NextEventDelay)
- Specifies a delay time in milliseconds before checking for
new X events. The default is “1”.
- numColorRegisters (class
NumColorRegisters)
- If xterm is configured to support ReGIS or SIXEL
graphics, this specifies the number of color-registers which are
available.
- If this resource is not specified, xterm uses a
value determined by the decTerminalID resource:
Result |
decTerminalID |
|
4 |
125 |
4 |
240 |
4 |
241 |
4 |
330 |
16 |
340 |
2 |
382 |
1024 |
other |
- numLock (class NumLock)
- If “true”, xterm checks if NumLock is
used as a modifier (see xmodmap(1)). If so, this modifier is used
to simplify the logic when implementing special NumLock for the
sunKeyboard resource. Also (when sunKeyboard is false),
similar logic is used to find the modifier associated with the left and
right Alt keys. The default is “true”.
- oldXtermFKeys (class
OldXtermFKeys)
- If “true”, xterm will use old-style
(X11R5) escape sequences for function keys F1 to F4, for compatibility
with X Consortium xterm. Otherwise, it uses the VT100 codes for PF1
to PF4. The default is “false”.
- Setting this resource has the same effect as setting the
keyboardType to legacy. The keyboardType resource is
the preferred mechanism for selecting this mode.
- The old-style escape sequences resemble VT220 keys, but
appear to have been invented for xterm in X11R4.
- on2Clicks (class
On2Clicks)
- on3Clicks (class
On3Clicks)
- on4Clicks (class
On4Clicks)
- on5Clicks (class
On5Clicks)
- Specify selection behavior in response to multiple mouse
clicks. A single mouse click is always interpreted as described in the
Selection Functions section (see POINTER USAGE). Multiple
mouse clicks (using the button which activates the select-start
action) are interpreted according to the resource values of
on2Clicks, etc. The resource value can be one of these:
- word
- Select a “word” as determined by the
charClass resource. See the CHARACTER CLASSES section.
- If the pointer is on a “word” then xterm
searches back to the beginning of the word, and then to the end.
- If the pointer is not on a “word” then the
result depends on whether it is on whitespace (including a newline), or
past the end of the line. In the latter case xterm may select a
“word” beginning after the newline, if there is no additional
whitespace.
- line
- Select a line (counting wrapping).
- group
- Select a group of adjacent lines (counting wrapping). The
selection stops on a blank line, and does not extend outside the current
page.
- page
- Select all visible lines, i.e., the page.
- all
-
Select all lines, i.e., including the saved lines.
- regex
- Select the best match for the POSIX extended regular
expression (ERE) which follows in the resource value:
- •
- Xterm matches the regular expression against a byte
array for the entire (possibly wrapped) line. That byte array may be UTF-8
or ISO-8859-1, depending on the mode in which xterm is
running.
- •
- Xterm steps through each byte-offset in this array,
keeping track of the best (longest) match. If more than one match ties for
the longest length, the first is used.
- Xterm does this to make it convenient to click
anywhere in the area of interest and cause the regular expression to match
the entire word, etc.
- •
- The “^” and “$” anchors in a
regular expression denote the ends of the entire line.
- •
- If the regular expression contains backslashes
“\” those should be escaped “\\” because the X
libraries interpret backslashes in resource strings.
- none
- No selection action is associated with this resource.
Xterm interprets it as the end of the list. For example, you may
use it to disable triple (and higher) clicking by setting on3Clicks
to “none”.
- The default values for on2Clicks and
on3Clicks are “word” and “line”,
respectively. There is no default value for on4Clicks or
on5Clicks, making those inactive. On startup, xterm
determines the maximum number of clicks by the
onXClicks resource values which are set.
- openIm (class OpenIm)
- Tells xterm whether to open the input method at
startup. The default is “true”.
- pointerColor (class
PointerColor)
- Specifies the foreground color of the pointer. The default
is “XtDefaultForeground”.
- pointerColorBackground (class
PointerColorBackground )
- Specifies the background color of the pointer. The default
is “XtDefaultBackground”.
- pointerFont (class
PointerFont)
- Specifies the font to be used for the pointer. The shapes
specified by pointerShape are glyphs in this font. The resource
value default is cursor.
- pointerMode (class
PointerMode)
- Specifies when the pointer may be hidden as the user types.
It will be redisplayed if the user moves the mouse, or clicks one of its
buttons.
- 0
- never. This is the default.
- 1
- the application running in xterm has not activated
mouse mode.
- 2
- always.
- pointerShape (class
Cursor)
- Specifies the name of the shape of the pointer. The default
is “xterm”.
- popOnBell (class
PopOnBell)
- Specifies whether the window would be raised when Control-G
is received. The default is “false”.
- If the window is iconified, this has no effect. However,
the zIconBeep resource provides you with the ability to see which
iconified windows have sounded a bell.
- precompose (class
Precompose)
- Tells xterm whether to precompose UTF-8 data into
Normalization Form C, which combines commonly-used accents onto base
characters. If it does not do this, accents are left as separate
characters. The default is “true”.
- preeditType (class
PreeditType)
- Tells xterm which types of preedit (preconversion)
string to display. The default is “OverTheSpot,Root”.
- printAttributes (class
PrintAttributes)
- Specifies whether to print graphic attributes along with
the text. A real DEC VT xxx terminal will print the underline,
highlighting codes but your printer may not handle these.
- •
- “0” disables the attributes.
- •
- “1” prints the normal set of attributes (bold,
underline, inverse and blink) as VT100-style control sequences.
- •
- “2” prints ANSI color attributes as well.
- The default is “1”.
- printFileImmediate (class
PrintFileImmediate )
- When the print-immediate action is invoked,
xterm prints the screen contents directly to a file. Set this
resource to the prefix of the filename (a timestamp will be appended to
the actual name).
- The default is an empty string, i.e., “”,
However, when the print-immediate action is invoked, if the string
is empty, then “XTerm” is used.
- printFileOnXError (class
PrintFileOnXError)
- If xterm exits with an X error, e.g., your
connection is broken when the server crashes, it can be told to write the
contents of the screen to a file. To enable the feature, set this resource
to the prefix of the filename (a timestamp will be appended to the actual
name).
- The default is an empty string, i.e., “”, which
disables this feature. However, when the print-on-error action is
invoked, if the string is empty, then “XTermError” is
used.
- These error codes are handled: ERROR_XERROR, ERROR_XIOERROR
and ERROR_ICEERROR.
- printModeImmediate (class
PrintModeImmediate )
- When the print-immediate action is invoked,
xterm prints the screen contents directly to a file. You can use
the printModeImmediate resource to tell it to use escape sequences
to reconstruct the video attributes and colors. This uses the same values
as the printAttributes resource. The default is
“0”.
- printModeOnXError (class
PrintModeOnXError)
- Xterm implements the printFileOnXError
feature using the printer feature, although the output is written directly
to a file. You can use the printModeOnXError resource to tell it to
use escape sequences to reconstruct the video attributes and colors. This
uses the same values as the printAttributes resource. The default
is “0”.
- printOptsImmediate (class
PrintOptsImmediate )
- Specify the range of text which is printed to a file when
the print-immediate action is invoked.
- •
- If zero (0), then this selects the current (visible screen)
plus the saved lines, except if the alternate screen is being used. In
that case, only the alternate screen is selected.
- •
- If nonzero, the bits of this resource value (checked in
descending order) select the range:
- 8
- selects the saved lines.
- 4
- selects the alternate screen.
- 2
- selects the normal screen.
- 1
- selects the current screen, which can be either the normal
or alternate screen.
- The default is “9”, which selects the current
visible screen plus saved lines, with no special case for the alternated
screen.
- printOptsOnXError (class
PrintOptsOnXError)
- Specify the range of text which is printed to a file when
the print-on-error action is invoked. The resource value is
interpreted the same as in printOptsImmediate.
- The default is “9”, which selects the current
visible screen plus saved lines, with no special case for the alternated
screen.
- printerAutoClose (class
PrinterAutoClose)
- If “true”, xterm will close the printer
(a pipe) when the application switches the printer offline with a Media
Copy command. The default is “false”.
- printerCommand (class
PrinterCommand)
- Specifies a shell command to which xterm will open a
pipe when the first MC (Media Copy) command is initiated. The default is
an empty string, i.e., “”. If the resource value is given as
an empty string, the printer is disabled.
- printerControlMode (class
PrinterControlMode )
- Specifies the printer control mode. A “1”
selects autoprint mode, which causes xterm to print a line from the
screen when
- •
- you move the cursor off that line with a line feed, form
feed or vertical tab character, or
- •
- an autowrap occurs.
- Autoprint mode is overridden by printer controller mode (a
“2”), which causes all of the output to be directed to the
printer. The default is “0”.
- printerExtent (class
PrinterExtent)
- Controls whether a print page function will print the
entire page (true), or only the portion within the scrolling margins
(false). The default is “false”.
- printerFormFeed (class
PrinterFormFeed)
- Controls whether a form feed is sent to the printer at the
end of a print page function. The default is “false”.
- printerNewLine (class
PrinterNewLine)
- Controls whether a newline is sent to the printer at the
end of a print page function. The default is “true”.
- privateColorRegisters (class
PrivateColorRegisters )
- If xterm is configured to support ReGIS or SIXEL
graphics, this controls whether xterm allocates separate color
registers for each sixel device control string, e.g., for DECGCI. If not
true, color registers are allocated only once, when the terminal is reset,
and color changes in any graphic affect all graphics. The default is
“true”.
- quietGrab (class
QuietGrab)
- Controls whether the cursor is repainted when
NotifyGrab and NotifyUngrab event types are received during
change of focus. The default is “false”.
- regisDefaultFont (class
RegisDefaultFont)
- If xterm is configured to support ReGIS graphics,
this resource tells xterm which font to use if the ReGIS data does
not specify one. No default value is specified; xterm accepts a
TrueType font specification as in the faceName resource.
- If no value is specified, xterm draws a bitmap
indicating a missing character.
- regisScreenSize (class
RegisScreenSize)
- If xterm is configured to support ReGIS graphics,
this resource tells xterm the default size (in pixels) for these
graphics, which also sets the default coordinate space to [0,0]
(upper-left) and [ width,height] (lower-right).
- The application using ReGIS may use the “A”
option of the “S” command to adjust the coordinate space or
change the addressable portion of the screen.
- Xterm accepts a special resource value
“auto”, which tells xterm to use the
decGraphicsID and decTerminalID resources to set the default
size based on the hardware terminal's limits. Those limits are the same as
for the maxGraphicSize resource.
- The default is “auto”.
- renderFont (class
RenderFont)
- If xterm is built with the Xft library, this
controls whether the faceName resource is used. The default is
“default”.
- The resource values are strings, evaluated as booleans
after startup.
- false
-
disable the feature and use the normal (bitmap) font.
- true
-
startup using the TrueType font specified by the faceName and
faceSize resource settings. If there is no value for
faceName, disable the feature and use the normal (bitmap)
font.
- After startup, you can still switch to/from the bitmap font
using the “TrueType Fonts” menu entry.
- default
-
Enable the “TrueType Fonts” menu entry to allow runtime
switching to/from TrueType fonts. The initial font used depends upon
whether the faceName resource is set:
- •
- If the faceName resource is not set, start by using
the normal (bitmap) font. Xterm has a separate compiled-in value
for faceName for this special case. That is normally
“mono”.
- •
- If the faceName resource is set, then start by using
the TrueType font rather than the bitmap font.
- resizeGravity (class
ResizeGravity)
- Affects the behavior when the window is resized to be
taller or shorter. NorthWest specifies that the top line of text on
the screen stay fixed. If the window is made shorter, lines are dropped
from the bottom; if the window is made taller, blank lines are added at
the bottom. This is compatible with the behavior in X11R4.
SouthWest (the default) specifies that the bottom line of text on
the screen stay fixed. If the window is made taller, additional saved
lines will be scrolled down onto the screen; if the window is made
shorter, lines will be scrolled off the top of the screen, and the top
saved lines will be dropped.
- retryInputMethod (class
RetryInputMethod)
- Tells xterm how many times to retry, in case the
input-method server is not responding. This is a different issue than
unsupported preedit type, etc. You may encounter retries if your X
configuration (and its libraries) are missing pieces. Setting this
resource to zero “0” will cancel the retrying. The default is
“3”.
- reverseVideo (class
ReverseVideo)
- Specifies whether or not reverse video should be simulated.
The default is “false”.
- There are several aspects to reverse video in
xterm:
- •
- The command-line -rv option tells the X libraries to
reverse the foreground and background colors. Xterm's command-line
options set resource values. In particular, the X Toolkit sets the
reverseVideo resource when the -rv option is used.
- •
- If the user has also used command-line options -fg
or -bg to set the foreground and background colors, xterm
does not see these options directly. Instead, it examines the resource
values to reconstruct the command-line options, and determine which of the
colors is the user's intended foreground, etc. Their actual values are
irrelevant to the reverse video function; some users prefer the X defaults
(black text on a white background), others prefer white text on a black
background.
- •
- After startup, the user can toggle the “Enable
Reverse Video” menu entry. This exchanges the current foreground and
background colors of the VT100 widget, and repaints the screen. Because of
the X resource hierarchy, the reverseVideo resource applies to more
than the VT100 widget.
- Programs running in an xterm can also use control
sequences to enable the VT100 reverse video mode. These are independent of
the reverseVideo resource and the menu entry. Xterm
exchanges the current foreground and background colors when drawing text
affected by these control sequences.
- Other control sequences can alter the foreground and
background colors which are used:
- •
- Programs can also use the ANSI color control sequences to
set the foreground and background colors.
- •
- Extensions to the ANSI color controls (such as 16-, 88- or
256-colors) are treated similarly to the ANSI control.
- •
- Using other control sequences (the “dynamic
colors” feature), a program can change the foreground and
background colors.
- reverseWrap (class
ReverseWrap)
- Specifies whether or not reverse-wraparound should be
enabled. This corresponds to xterm's private mode 45. The default
is “false”.
- rightScrollBar (class
RightScrollBar)
- Specifies whether or not the scrollbar should be displayed
on the right rather than the left. The default is
“false”.
- saveLines (class
SaveLines)
- Specifies the number of lines to save beyond the top of the
screen when a scrollbar is turned on. The default is
“1024”.
- scrollBar (class
ScrollBar)
- Specifies whether or not the scrollbar should be displayed.
The default is “false”.
- scrollBarBorder (class
ScrollBarBorder)
- Specifies the width of the scrollbar border. Note that this
is drawn to overlap the border of the xterm window. Modifying the
scrollbar's border affects only the line between the VT100 widget and the
scrollbar. The default value is 1.
- scrollKey (class
ScrollCond)
- Specifies whether or not pressing a key should
automatically cause the scrollbar to go to the bottom of the scrolling
region. This corresponds to xterm's private mode 1011. The default
is “false”.
- scrollLines (class
ScrollLines)
- Specifies the number of lines that the scroll-back
and scroll-forw actions should use as a default. The default value
is 1.
- scrollTtyOutput (class
ScrollCond)
- Specifies whether or not output to the terminal should
automatically cause the scrollbar to go to the bottom of the scrolling
region. The default is “true”.
- selectToClipboard (class
SelectToClipboard)
- Tells xterm whether to use the PRIMARY or
CLIPBOARD for SELECT tokens in the selection mechanism. The
set-select action can change this at runtime, allowing the user to
work with programs that handle only one of these mechanisms. The default
is “false”, which tells it to use PRIMARY.
- shiftEscape (class
ShiftEscape)
- Xterm uses the translations resource to
determine how to invoke actions for selecting and copying text using the
pointer (e.g., a mouse). It also provides a mouse protocol which can be
used by applications running in an xterm to detect mouse button
clicks.
- The mouse protocol causes xterm to send special
escape sequences which allow an application to determine if
modifiers (i.e., one or more of shift, control,
alt, and meta) were used.
- Xterm provides this mouse protocol by interpreting
button- and motion-events in the functions which the translations
resource calls for selecting and copying text:
-
insert-selection
select-end
select-extend
select-start
start-extend
- While the mouse protocol is active, xterm reserves
most of the mouse button events for sending special escape sequences to
the application. Xterm normally allows you to use the
shift-key to temporarily override this mouse protocol, permitting
the selection and copying actions to be used.
- The shiftEscape resource setting allows you to tell
xterm whether to use the shift-key in this way (i.e.,
overriding the mouse protocol). Xterm accepts either a keyword
(ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:
- false (0)
- Mouse protocol does not send special escapes when
shift-key is used.
- true (1)
- Mouse protocol may send special escapes when
shift-key is used.
- At startup, xterm analyzes the translations
to see which buttons are used in the (mouse) button-related bindings for
selection and copying text. If the shift-key is not mentioned
explicitly in a button's binding, xterm allows that button with
shift-key for overriding the mouse protocol.
- always (2)
- Mouse protocol can always send special escapes when
shift-key is used.
- never (3)
- Mouse protocol will never send special escapes when
shift-key is used.
- Xterm interprets a control sequence which can change
this setting between “true” and “false”. The
default is “false”.
- shiftFonts (class
ShiftFonts)
- Specifies whether to enable the actions
larger-vt-font() and smaller-vt-font(), which are normally
bound to the shifted KP_Add and KP_Subtract. The default is
“true”.
- showBlinkAsBold (class
ShowBlinkAsBold)
- Tells xterm whether to display text with
blink-attribute the same as bold. If xterm has not been configured
to support blinking text, the default is “true”, which
corresponds to older versions of xterm, otherwise the default is
“false”.
- showMissingGlyphs (class
ShowMissingGlyphs)
- Tells xterm whether to display a box outlining
places where a character has been used that the font does not represent.
The default is “false”.
- showWrapMarks (class
ShowWrapMarks)
- For debugging xterm and applications that may
manipulate the wrapped-line flag by writing text at the right margin, show
a mark on the right inner-border of the window. The mark shows which lines
have the flag set.
- signalInhibit (class
SignalInhibit)
- Specifies whether or not the entries in the Main
Options menu for sending signals to xterm should be disallowed.
The default is “false”.
- sixelScrolling (class
SixelScrolling)
- If xterm is configured to support SIXEL graphics,
this resource tells it whether to scroll up one line at a time when sixels
would be written past the bottom line on the window. The default is
“false”.
- sixelScrollsRight (class
SixelScrollsRight)
- If xterm is configured to support SIXEL graphics,
this resource tells it whether to scroll to the right as needed to keep
the current position visible rather than truncate the plot on the on the
right. The default is “false”.
- tekGeometry (class
Geometry)
- Specifies the preferred size and position of the Tektronix
window. There is no default for this resource.
- tekInhibit (class
TekInhibit)
- Specifies whether or not the escape sequence to enter
Tektronix mode should be ignored. The default is “false”.
- tekSmall (class TekSmall)
- Specifies whether or not the Tektronix mode window should
start in its smallest size if no explicit geometry is given. This is
useful when running xterm on displays with small screens. The
default is “false”.
- tekStartup (class
TekStartup)
- Specifies whether or not xterm should start up in
Tektronix mode. The default is “false”.
- tiXtraScroll (class
TiXtraScroll)
- Specifies whether xterm should scroll to a new page
when processing the ti termcap entry, i.e., the private modes 47,
1047 or 1049. This is only in effect if titeInhibit is
“true”, because the intent of this option is to provide a
picture of the full-screen application's display on the scrollback without
wiping out the text that would be shown before the application was
initialized. The default for this resource is “false”.
- titeInhibit (class
TiteInhibit)
- Originally specified whether or not xterm should
remove ti and te termcap entries (used to switch between
alternate screens on startup of many screen-oriented programs) from the
TERMCAP string.
- TERMCAP is used rarely now, but xterm supports the
feature on modern systems:
- •
- If set, xterm also ignores the escape sequence to
switch to the alternate screen.
- •
- Xterm supports terminfo in a different way,
supporting composite control sequences (also known as private modes) 1047,
1048 and 1049 which have the same effect as the original 47 control
sequence.
- The default for this resource is “false”.
- titleModes (class
TitleModes)
- Tells xterm whether to accept or return window- and
icon-labels in ISO-8859-1 (the default) or UTF-8. Either can be encoded in
hexadecimal:
- •
- UTF-8 titles require special treatment, because they may
contain bytes which can be mistaken for control characters.
Hexadecimal-encoding is supported to eliminate that possibility.
- •
- As an alternative, you could use the
allowC1Printable resource, which suppresses xterm's parsing
of the relevant control characters (and as a result, treats those bytes as
data).
- The default for this resource is “0”.
- Each bit (bit “0” is 1, bit “1” is
2, etc.) corresponds to one of the parameters set by the title modes
control sequence:
- 0
- Set window/icon labels using hexadecimal
- 1
- Query window/icon labels using hexadecimal
- 2
- Set window/icon labels using UTF-8 (gives the same effect
as the utf8Title resource).
- 3
- Query window/icon labels using UTF-8
- translations (class
Translations)
- Specifies the key and button bindings for menus,
selections, “programmed strings”, etc. The translations
resource, which provides much of xterm's configurability, is a
feature of the X Toolkit Intrinsics library (Xt). See the Actions
section.
- trimSelection (class
TrimSelection)
- If you set highlightSelection, you can see the text
which is selected, including any trailing spaces. Clearing the screen (or
a line) resets it to a state containing no spaces. Some lines may contain
trailing spaces when an application writes them to the screen. However,
you may not wish to paste lines with trailing spaces. If this resource is
true, xterm will trim trailing spaces from text which is selected.
It does not affect spaces which result in a wrapped line, nor will it trim
the trailing newline from your selection. The default is
“false”.
- underLine (class
UnderLine)
- This specifies whether or not text with the underline
attribute should be underlined. It may be desirable to disable underlining
when color is being used for the underline attribute. The default is
“true”.
- useBorderClipping (class
UseBorderClipping)
- Tell xterm whether to apply clipping when
useClipping is false. Unlike useClipping, this simply limits
text to keep it within the window borders, e.g., as a refinement to the
scaleHeight workaround. The default is “false”.
- useClipping (class
UseClipping)
- Tell xterm whether to use clipping to keep from
producing dots outside the text drawing area. Originally used to work
around for overstriking effects, this is also needed to work with some
incorrectly-sized fonts. The default is “true”.
- utf8 (class Utf8)
- This specifies whether xterm will run in UTF-8 mode.
If you set this resource, xterm also sets the wideChars
resource as a side-effect. The resource can be set via the menu entry
“UTF-8 Encoding”. The default is “default”.
- Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or
the number shown in parentheses:
- false (0)
- UTF-8 mode is initially off. The command-line option
+u8 sets the resource to this value. Escape sequences for turning
UTF-8 mode on/off are allowed.
- true (1)
- UTF-8 mode is initially on. Escape sequences for turning
UTF-8 mode on/off are allowed.
- always (2)
- The command-line option -u8 sets the resource to
this value. Escape sequences for turning UTF-8 mode on/off are
ignored.
- default (3)
- This is the default value of the resource. It is changed
during initialization depending on whether the locale resource was
set, to false (0) or always (2). See the locale resource for
additional discussion of non-UTF-8 locales.
- If you want to set the value of utf8, it should be
in this range. Other nonzero values are treated the same as
“1”, i.e., UTF-8 mode is initially on, and escape sequences
for turning UTF-8 mode on/off are allowed.
- utf8Fonts (class
Utf8Fonts)
- See the discussion of the locale resource. This
specifies whether xterm will use UTF-8 fonts specified via resource
patterns such as “ *vt100.utf8Fonts.font” or normal
(ISO-8859-1) fonts via patterns such as “ *vt100.font”.
The resource can be set via the menu entry “ UTF-8
Fonts”. The default is “default”.
- Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or
the number shown in parentheses:
- false (0)
- Use the ISO-8859-1 fonts. The menu entry is enabled,
allowing the choice of fonts to be changed at runtime.
- true (1)
- Use the UTF-8 fonts. The menu entry is enabled, allowing
the choice of fonts to be changed at runtime.
- always (2)
- Always use the UTF-8 fonts. This also disables the menu
entry.
- default (3)
- At startup, the resource is set to true or false, according
to the effective value of the utf8 resource.
- utf8Latin1 (class
Utf8Latin1)
- If true, allow an ISO-8859-1 normal font to be
combined with an ISO-10646-1 font if the latter is given via the
-fw option or its corresponding resource value. The default is
“false”.
- utf8SelectTypes (class
Utf8SelectTypes)
- Override xterm's default selection target list (see
SELECT/PASTE) for selections in wide-character (UTF-8) mode. The
default is an empty string, i.e., “”, which does not override
anything.
- utf8Title (class
Utf8Title)
- Applications can set xterm's title by writing a
control sequence. Normally this control sequence follows the VT220
convention, which encodes the string in ISO-8859-1 and allows for an 8-bit
string terminator. If xterm is started in a UTF-8 locale, it
translates the ISO-8859-1 string to UTF-8 to work with the X libraries
which assume the string is UTF-8.
- However, some users may wish to write a title string
encoded in UTF-8. The window manager is responsible for drawing window
titles. Some window managers (not all) support UTF-8 encoding of window
titles. Set this resource to “true” to also set UTF-8 encoded
title strings using the EWMH properties.
- This feature is available as a menu entry, since it is
related to the particular applications you are running within
xterm. You can also use a control sequence (see the discussion of
“Title Modes” in Xterm Control Sequences), to set an
equivalent flag (which can also be set using the titleModes
resource).
- Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or
the number shown in parentheses:
- false (0)
- Set only ISO-8859-1 title strings, e.g., using the ICCCM
WM_NAME STRING property. The menu entry is enabled, allowing the
choice of title-strings to be changed at runtime.
- true (1)
- Set both the EWMH (UTF-8 strings) and the ICCCM
WM_NAME, etc. The menu entry is enabled, allowing the choice to be
changed at runtime.
- always (2)
- Always set both the EWMH (UTF-8 strings) and the ICCCM
WM_NAME, etc. This also disables the menu entry.
- default (3)
- At startup, the resource is set to true or false, according
to the effective value of the utf8 resource.
- The default is “default”.
- utf8Weblike (class
Utf8Weblike)
- Provide an alternate error-handling scheme for ill-formed
UTF-8 as recommended in a W3C document. The Unicode standard does not
require this for conformance. Some additional information can be found
here:
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/bad-utf8/
- The default is “false”.
- veryBoldColors (class
VeryBoldColors)
- Specifies whether to combine video attributes with colors
specified by colorBD, colorBL, colorIT,
colorRV, and colorUL. The resource value is the sum of
values for each attribute:
1 for reverse,
2 for underline,
4 for bold,
8 for blink, and
512 for italic
- The default is “0”.
- visualBell (class
VisualBell)
- Specifies whether or not a visible bell (i.e., flashing)
should be used instead of an audible bell when Control-G is received. The
default is “false”, which tells xterm to use an audible
bell.
- visualBellDelay (class
VisualBellDelay)
- Number of milliseconds to delay when displaying a visual
bell. Default is 100. If set to zero, no visual bell is displayed. This is
useful for very slow displays, e.g., an LCD display on a laptop.
- visualBellLine (class
VisualBellLine)
- Specifies whether to flash only the current line when
displaying a visual bell rather than flashing the entire screen: The
default is “false”, which tells xterm to flash the
entire screen.
- vt100Graphics (class
VT100Graphics)
- This specifies whether xterm will interpret VT100
graphic character escape sequences while in UTF-8 mode. This feature also
applies to code-pages (e.g., for VT320 and VT520) and National Replacement
Character Sets (VT220 and up), but not US-ASCII (the initially selected
character set), to avoid conflict with UTF-8. The default is
“true”, to provide support for various legacy
applications.
- wideBoldFont (class
WideBoldFont)
- This option specifies the font to be used for displaying
bold wide text. By default, it will attempt to use a font twice as wide as
the font that will be used to draw bold text. If no double-width font is
found, it will improvise, by stretching the bold font.
- wideChars (class
WideChars)
- Specifies if xterm should respond to control
sequences that process 16-bit characters. The default is
“false”.
- wideFont (class WideFont)
- This option specifies the font to be used for displaying
wide text. By default, it will attempt to use a font twice as wide as the
font that will be used to draw normal text. If no double-width font is
found, it will improvise, by stretching the normal font.
- ximFont (class XimFont)
- This option specifies the font to be used for displaying
the preedit string in the “OverTheSpot” input method.
- In “OverTheSpot” preedit type, the preedit
(preconversion) string is displayed at the position of the cursor. It is
the XIM server's responsibility to display the preedit string. The XIM
client must inform the XIM server of the cursor position. For best
results, the preedit string must be displayed with a proper font.
Therefore, xterm informs the XIM server of the proper font. The
font is be supplied by a "fontset", whose default value is
“*”. This matches every font, the X library automatically
chooses fonts with proper charsets. The ximFont resource is
provided to override this default font setting.
Tek4014 Widget Resources
The following resources are specified as part of the
tek4014 widget
(class
Tek4014). These are specified by patterns such as “
XTerm.tek4014. NAME”:
- font2 (class Font)
- Specifies font number 2 to use in the Tektronix
window.
- font3 (class Font)
- Specifies font number 3 to use in the Tektronix
window.
- fontLarge (class Font)
- Specifies the large font to use in the Tektronix
window.
- fontSmall (class Font)
- Specifies the small font to use in the Tektronix
window.
- ginTerminator (class
GinTerminator)
- Specifies what character(s) should follow a GIN report or
status report. The possibilities are “none”, which sends no
terminating characters, “CRonly”, which sends CR, and
“CR&EOT”, which sends both CR and EOT. The default is
“none”.
- height (class Height)
- Specifies the height of the Tektronix window in
pixels.
- initialFont (class
InitialFont)
- Specifies which of the four Tektronix fonts to use
initially. Values are the same as for the set-tek-text action. The
default is “large”.
- width (class Width)
- Specifies the width of the Tektronix window in pixels.
Menu Resources
The resources that may be specified for the various menus are described in the
documentation for the Athena
SimpleMenu widget. The name and classes of
the entries in each of the menus are listed below. Resources named “
line N” where
N is a number are separators with
class
SmeLine.
As with all X resource-based widgets, the labels mentioned are customary
defaults for the application.
The
Main Options menu (widget name
mainMenu) has the following
entries:
- toolbar (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-toolbar(toggle) action.
- securekbd (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the secure() action.
- allowsends (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
allow-send-events(toggle ) action.
- redraw (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the redraw() action.
- logging (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the logging(toggle)
action.
- print-immediate (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the print-immediate()
action.
- print-on-error (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the print-on-error() action.
- print (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the print() action.
- print-redir (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the print-redir() action.
- dump-html (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the dump-html() action.
- dump-svg (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the dump-svg() action.
- 8-bit-control (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-8-bit-control(toggle ) action.
- backarrow key (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-backarrow(toggle) action.
- num-lock (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-num-lock(toggle) action.
- alt-esc (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
alt-sends-escape(toggle ) action.
- meta-esc (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
meta-sends-escape(toggle ) action.
- delete-is-del (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
delete-is-del(toggle) action.
- oldFunctionKeys (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-old-function-keys(toggle ) action.
- hpFunctionKeys (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-hp-function-keys(toggle ) action.
- scoFunctionKeys (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-sco-function-keys(toggle ) action.
- sunFunctionKeys (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-sun-function-keys(toggle ) action.
- sunKeyboard (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
sunKeyboard(toggle) action.
- suspend (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
send-signal(tstp) action on systems that support job
control.
- continue (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
send-signal(cont) action on systems that support job
control.
- interrupt (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
send-signal(int) action.
- hangup (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
send-signal(hup) action.
- terminate (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
send-signal(term) action.
- kill (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
send-signal(kill) action.
- quit (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the quit() action.
The
VT Options menu (widget name
vtMenu) has the following
entries:
- scrollbar (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-scrollbar(toggle) action.
- jumpscroll (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-jumpscroll(toggle) action.
- reversevideo (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-reverse-video(toggle ) action.
- autowrap (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-autowrap(toggle) action.
- reversewrap (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-reversewrap(toggle) action.
- autolinefeed (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-autolinefeed(toggle ) action.
- appcursor (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-appcursor(toggle) action.
- appkeypad (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-appkeypad(toggle) action.
- scrollkey (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-scroll-on-key(toggle ) action.
- scrollttyoutput (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-scroll-on-tty-output(toggle ) action.
- allow132 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-allow132(toggle) action.
- cursesemul (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-cursesemul(toggle) action.
- keepSelection (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-keep-selection(toggle ) action.
- selectToClipboard (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-keep-clipboard(toggle ) action.
- visualbell (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-visual-bell(toggle) action.
- bellIsUrgent (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-bellIsUrgent(toggle ) action.
- poponbell (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-pop-on-bell(toggle) action.
- cursorblink (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-cursorblink(toggle) action.
- titeInhibit (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-titeInhibit(toggle) action.
- activeicon (class SmeBSB)
- This entry toggles active icons on and off if this feature
was compiled into xterm. It is enabled only if xterm was
started with the command line option +ai or the activeIcon resource
is set to “true”.
- softreset (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the soft-reset() action.
- hardreset (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the hard-reset() action.
- clearsavedlines (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the clear-saved-lines()
action.
- tekshow (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-visibility(tek,toggle ) action.
- tekmode (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-terminal-type(tek) action.
- vthide (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-visibility(vt,off) action.
- altscreen (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-altscreen(toggle) action.
- sixelScrolling (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-sixel-scrolling(toggle ) action.
- privateColorRegisters (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-private-colors(toggle ) action.
The
VT Fonts menu (widget name
fontMenu) has the following
entries:
- fontdefault (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(d)
action, setting the font using the font (default) resource, e.g.,
“Default” in the menu.
- font1 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(1)
action, setting the font using the font1 resource, e.g.,
“Unreadable” in the menu.
- font2 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(2)
action, setting the font using the font2 resource, e.g.,
“Tiny” in the menu.
- font3 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(3)
action, setting the font using the font3 resource, e.g.,
“Small” in the menu.
- font4 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(4)
action, letting the font using the font4 resource, e.g.,
“Medium” in the menu.
- font5 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(5)
action, letting the font using the font5 resource, e.g.,
“Large” in the menu.
- font6 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(6)
action, letting the font using the font6 resource, e.g.,
“Huge” in the menu.
- font7 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(7)
action, letting the font using the font7 resource, e.g.,
“Enormous” in the menu.
- fontescape (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(e)
action.
- fontsel (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-vt-font(s)
action.
- allow-bold-fonts (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
allow-bold-fonts(toggle ) action.
- font-linedrawing (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-font-linedrawing(s) action.
- font-packed (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-font-packed(s) action.
- font-doublesize (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-font-doublesize(s) action.
- render-font (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-render-font(s) action.
- utf8-fonts (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-utf8-fonts(s) action.
- utf8-mode (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-utf8-mode(s) action.
- utf8-title (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-utf8-title(s) action.
- allow-color-ops (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
allow-color-ops(toggle) action.
- allow-font-ops (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
allow-fonts-ops(toggle) action.
- allow-tcap-ops (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
allow-tcap-ops(toggle) action.
- allow-title-ops (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
allow-title-ops(toggle) action.
- allow-window-ops (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
allow-window-ops(toggle ) action.
The
Tek Options menu (widget name
tekMenu) has the following
entries:
- tektextlarge (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-tek-text(large) action.
- tektext2 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-tek-text(2)
action.
- tektext3 (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the set-tek-text(3)
action.
- tektextsmall (class
SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-tek-text(small) action.
- tekpage (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the tek-page() action.
- tekreset (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the tek-reset() action.
- tekcopy (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the tek-copy() action.
- vtshow (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-visibility(vt,toggle ) action.
- vtmode (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-terminal-type(vt) action.
- tekhide (class SmeBSB)
- This entry invokes the
set-visibility(tek,toggle ) action.
Scrollbar Resources
The following resources are useful when specified for the Athena Scrollbar
widget:
- background (class
Background)
- Specifies the color to use for the background of the
scrollbar.
- foreground (class
Foreground)
- Specifies the color to use for the foreground of the
scrollbar.
- thickness (class
Thickness)
- Specifies the width in pixels of the scrollbar (default:
14).
- This may be overridden by the width resource.
- thumb (class Thumb)
- The default “thumb” pixmap used for the
scrollbar is a simple checkerboard pattern alternating pixels for
foreground and background color.
- width (class Width)
- Specifies the width in pixels of the scrollbar (default:
0).
- The widget checks the width resource first, using
the thickness value if the width is zero.
POINTER USAGE
Once the VT
xxx window is created,
xterm allows you to select text
and copy it within the same or other windows using the
pointer or the
keyboard.
A “pointer” could be a mouse, touchpad or similar device. X
applications generally do not care, since they see only
button events
which have
- •
- position and
- •
- button up/down state
Xterm can see these events as long as it has
focus.
The keyboard also supplies events, but it is less flexible than the pointer for
selecting/copying text.
Events are applied to
actions using the
translations
resource. See
Actions for a complete list, and
Default Key
Bindings for the built-in set of
translations resources.
Selection Functions
By default, the selection functions are invoked when the pointer buttons are
used with no modifiers, and when they are used with the “shift”
key. The “shift” key is special, because
xterm uses that to
ensure that selection functions are still available when it is programmed to
send escape sequences in one of the mouse modes (see
Xterm Control
Sequences, as well as the resource
disallowedMouseOps).
At startup,
xterm inspects the
translations resource to see which
pointer buttons may be used in this way, and remembers these buttons when
deciding whether to send escape sequences or perform selection when those
buttons are used with the “shift” modifier. Other pointer buttons,
e.g., typically those sent for wheel mouse events, are not affected.
The assignment of the functions described below to keys and buttons may be
changed through the resource database; see
Actions below.
- Pointer button one (usually left)
- is used to save text into the cut buffer:
~Meta <Btn1Down>: select-start()
- Move the cursor to beginning of the text, and then hold the
button down while moving the cursor to the end of the region and releasing
the button. The selected text is highlighted and is saved in the global
cut buffer and made the selection when the button is released:
<BtnUp>: select-end(SELECT, CUT_BUFFER0) \n
- Normally (but see the discussion of on2Clicks,
etc):
- •
- Double-clicking selects by words.
- •
- Triple-clicking selects by lines.
- •
- Quadruple-clicking goes back to characters, etc.
- Multiple-click is determined by the time from button up to
button down, so you can change the selection unit in the middle of a
selection. Logical words and lines selected by double- or triple-clicking
may wrap across more than one screen line if lines were wrapped by
xterm itself rather than by the application running in the window.
If the key/button bindings specify that an X selection is to be made,
xterm will leave the selected text highlighted for as long as it is
the selection owner.
- Pointer button two (usually middle)
- “types” (pastes) the text from the given
selection, if any, otherwise from the cut buffer, inserting it as keyboard
input:
~Ctrl ~Meta <Btn2Up>: insert-selection(SELECT, CUT_BUFFER0)
- Pointer button three (usually right)
- extends the current selection.
~Ctrl ~Meta <Btn3Down>: start-extend()
- (Without loss of generality, you can swap
“right” and “left” everywhere in the rest of this
paragraph.) If pressed while closer to the right edge of the selection
than the left, it extends/contracts the right edge of the selection. If
you contract the selection past the left edge of the selection,
xterm assumes you really meant the left edge, restores the original
selection, then extends/contracts the left edge of the selection.
Extension starts in the selection unit mode that the last selection or
extension was performed in; you can multiple-click to cycle through
them.
By cutting and pasting pieces of text without trailing new lines, you can take
text from several places in different windows and form a command to the shell,
for example, or take output from a program and insert it into your favorite
editor. Since cut buffers are globally shared among different applications,
you may regard each as a “file” whose contents you know. The
terminal emulator and other text programs should be treating it as if it were
a text file, i.e., the text is delimited by new lines.
Scrolling
The scroll region displays the position and amount of text currently showing in
the window (highlighted) relative to the amount of text actually saved. As
more text is saved (up to the maximum), the size of the highlighted area
decreases.
Clicking button one with the pointer in the scroll region moves the adjacent
line to the top of the display window.
Clicking button three moves the top line of the display window down to the
pointer position.
Clicking button two moves the display to a position in the saved text that
corresponds to the pointer's position in the scrollbar.
Tektronix Pointer
Unlike the VT
xxx window, the Tektronix window does not allow the copying
of text. It does allow Tektronix GIN mode, and in this mode the cursor will
change from an arrow to a cross. Pressing any key will send that key and the
current coordinate of the cross cursor. Pressing button one, two, or three
will return the letters “l”, “m”, and “r”,
respectively. If the “shift” key is pressed when a pointer button
is pressed, the corresponding upper case letter is sent. To distinguish a
pointer button from a key, the high bit of the character is set (but this is
bit is normally stripped unless the terminal mode is RAW; see
tty(4)
for details).
SELECT/PASTE
X clients provide select and paste support by responding to requests conveyed by
the X server. The X server holds data in “atoms” which correspond
to the different types of selection (
PRIMARY,
SECONDARY,
CLIPBOARD) as well as the similar cut buffer mechanism (
CUT_BUFFER0 to
CUT_BUFFER7). Those are documented in the ICCCM.
The ICCCM deals with the underlying mechanism for select/paste. It does not
mention
highlighting. The
selection is not the same as
highlighting.
Xterm (like many applications) uses highlighting
to show you the currently selected text. An X application may
own a
selection, which allows it to be the source of data copied using a given
selection atom
Xterm may continue owning a selection after it stops
highlighting (see
keepSelection).
PRIMARY
When configured to use the primary selection (the default),
xterm can
provide the selection data in ways which help to retain character encoding
information as it is pasted.
The
PRIMARY token is a standard X feature, documented in the ICCCM (
Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual), which states
The selection named by the atom
PRIMARY is used for all commands that
take only a single argument and is the principal means of communication
between clients that use the selection mechanism.
A user “selects” text on
xterm, which highlights the selected
text. A subsequent “paste” to another client forwards a request to
the client owning the selection. If
xterm owns the primary selection,
it makes the data available in the form of one or more “selection
targets”. If it does not own the primary selection, e.g., if it has
released it or another client has asserted ownership, it relies on cut-buffers
to pass the data. But cut-buffers handle only ISO-8859-1 data (officially -
some clients ignore the rules).
CLIPBOARD
When configured to use the clipboard (using the
selectToClipboard
resource), the problem with persistence of ownership is bypassed. Otherwise,
there is no difference regarding the data which can be passed via selection.
The
selectToClipboard resource is a compromise, allowing
CLIPBOARD
to be treated almost like
PRIMARY, unlike the ICCCM, which describes
CLIPBOARD in different terms than
PRIMARY or
SECONDARY.
Its lengthy explanation begins with the essential points:
The selection named by the atom CLIPBOARD is used to hold data that is being
transferred between clients, that is, data that usually is being cut and then
pasted or copied and then pasted. Whenever a client wants to transfer data to
the clipboard:
- •
- It should assert ownership of the CLIPBOARD.
- •
- If it succeeds in acquiring ownership, it should be
prepared to respond to a request for the contents of the CLIPBOARD in the
usual way (retaining the data to be able to return it). The request may be
generated by the clipboard client described below.
SELECT
However, many applications use
CLIPBOARD in imitation of other windowing
systems. The
selectToClipboard resource (and corresponding menu entry
Select to Clipboard) introduce the
SELECT token (known only to
xterm) which chooses between the
PRIMARY and
CLIPBOARD
tokens.
Without using this feature, one can use workarounds such as the
xclip
program to show the contents of the X clipboard within an
xterm window.
SECONDARY
This is used less often than
PRIMARY or
CLIPBOARD. According to
the ICCCM, it is used
- •
- As the second argument to commands taking two arguments
(for example, “exchange primary and secondary
selections”)
- •
- As a means of obtaining data when there is a primary
selection and the user does not want to disturb it
Selection Targets
The different types of data which are passed depend on what the receiving client
asks for. These are termed
selection targets.
When asking for the selection data,
xterm tries the following types in
this order:
- UTF8_STRING
- This is an XFree86 extension, which denotes that the data
is encoded in UTF-8. When xterm is built with wide-character
support, it both accepts and provides this type.
- TEXT
- the text is in the encoding which corresponds to your
current locale.
- COMPOUND_TEXT
- this is a format for multiple character set data, such as
multi-lingual text. It can store UTF-8 data as a special case.
- STRING
- This is Latin 1 (ISO-8859-1) data.
The middle two (TEXT and COMPOUND_TEXT) are added if
xterm is configured
with the
i18nSelections resource set to “true”.
UTF8_STRING is preferred (therefore first in the list) since
xterm stores
text as Unicode data when running in wide-character mode, and no translation
is needed. On the other hand, TEXT and COMPOUND_TEXT may require translation.
If the translation is incomplete, they will insert X's
“defaultString” whose value cannot be set, and may simply be
empty.
Xterm's
defaultString resource specifies the string to
use for incomplete translations of the UTF8_STRING.
You can alter the types which
xterm tries using the
eightBitSelectTypes or
utf8SelectTypes resources. For instance,
you might have some specific locale setting which does not use UTF-8 encoding.
The resource value is a comma-separated list of the selection targets, which
consist of the names shown. You can use the special name I18N to denote the
optional inclusion of TEXT and COMPOUND_TEXT. The names are matched ignoring
case, and can be abbreviated. The default list can be expressed in several
ways, e.g.,
UTF8_STRING,I18N,STRING
utf8,i18n,string
u,i,s
Mouse Protocol
Applications can send escape sequences to
xterm to cause it to send
escape sequences back to the computer when you press a pointer button, or even
(depending on which escape sequence) send escape sequences back to the
computer as you move the pointer.
These escape sequences and the responses, called the
mouse protocol, are
documented in
XTerm Control Sequences. They do not appear in the
actions invoked by the
translations resource because the
resource does not change while you run
xterm, whereas applications can
change the mouse prototol (i.e., enable, disable, use different modes).
However, the mouse protocol is interpreted within the
actions that are
usually associated with the pointer buttons.
Xterm ignores the mouse
protocol in the
insert-selection action if the shift-key is pressed at
the same time. It also modifies a few other actions if the shift-key is
pressed, e.g., suppressing the response with the pointer position, though not
eliminating changes to the selected text.
MENUS
Xterm has four menus, named
mainMenu,
vtMenu,
fontMenu, and
tekMenu. Each menu pops up under the correct
combinations of key and button presses. Each menu is divided into sections,
separated by a horizontal line. Some menu entries correspond to modes that can
be altered. A check mark appears next to a mode that is currently active.
Selecting one of these modes toggles its state. Other menu entries are
commands; selecting one of these performs the indicated function.
All of the menu entries correspond to X actions. In the list below, the menu
label is shown followed by the action's name in parenthesis.
Main Options
The
xterm mainMenu pops up when the “control” key and
pointer button one are pressed in a window. This menu contains items that
apply to both the VT
xxx and Tektronix windows. There are several
sections:
- Commands for managing X events:
- Toolbar (resource toolbar)
- Clicking on the “Toolbar” menu entry hides the
toolbar if it is visible, and shows it if it is not.
- Secure Keyboard (resource
securekbd)
- The Secure Keyboard mode is helpful when typing in
passwords or other sensitive data in an unsecure environment (see
SECURITY below, but read the limitations carefully).
- Allow SendEvents (resource
allowsends)
- Specifies whether or not synthetic key and button events
generated using the X protocol SendEvent request should be interpreted or
discarded. This corresponds to the allowSendEvents resource.
- Redraw Window (resource
redraw)
- Forces the X display to repaint; useful in some
environments.
- Commands for capturing output:
- Log to File (resource
logging)
- Captures text sent to the screen in a log file, as in the
-l logging option.
- Print-All Immediately (resource
print-immediate )
- Invokes the print-immediate action, sending the text
of the current window directly to a file, as specified by the
printFileImmediate, printModeImmediate and
printOptsImmediate resources.
- Print-All on Error (resource
print-on-error )
- Invokes the print-on-error action, which toggles a
flag telling xterm that if it exits with an X error, to send the
text of the current window directly to a file, as specified by the
printFileOnXError, printModeOnXError and
printOptsOnXError resources.
- Print Window (resource
print)
- Sends the text of the current window to the program given
in the printerCommand resource.
- Redirect to Printer (resource
print-redir)
- This sets the printerControlMode to 0 or 2. You can
use this to turn the printer on as if an application had sent the
appropriate control sequence. It is also useful for switching the printer
off if an application turns it on without resetting the print control
mode.
- XHTML Screen Dump (resource
dump-html)
- Available only when compiled with screen dump support.
Invokes the dump-html action. This creates an XHTML file matching
the contents of the current screen, including the border, internal border,
colors and most attributes: bold, italic, underline, faint, strikeout,
reverse; blink is rendered as white-on-red; double underline is rendered
the same as underline since there is no portable equivalent in CSS
2.2.
- The font is whatever your browser uses for preformatted
(<pre>) elements. The XHTML file references a cascading style sheet
(CSS) named “ xterm.css” that you can create to select
a font or override properties.
The following CSS selectors are used with the expected default behavior in the
XHTML file:
.ul for underline,
.bd for bold,
.it for italic,
.st for strikeout,
.lu for strikeout combined with underline.
In addition you may use
.ev to affect even numbered lines and
.od to affect odd numbered lines.
- Attributes faint, reverse and blink are implemented as
style attributes setting color properties. All colors are specified
as RGB percentages in order to support displays with 10 bits per RGB.
- The name of the file will be
xterm.yyyy.MM.dd.hh.mm.ss.xhtml
- where yyyy, MM, dd, hh,
mm and ss are the year, month, day, hour, minute and second
when the screen dump was performed (the file is created in the directory
xterm is started in, or the home directory for a login
xterm).
- The dump-html action can also be triggered using the
Media Copy control sequence CSI 1 0 i, for example from a shell script
with
printf '\033[10i'
Only the UTF-8 encoding is supported.
- SVG Screen Dump (resource
dump-svg)
- Available only when compiled with screen dump support.
Invokes the dump-svg action. This creates a Scalable Vector
Graphics (SVG) file matching the contents of the current screen, including
the border, internal border, colors and most attributes: bold, italic,
underline, double underline, faint, strikeout, reverse; blink is rendered
as white-on-red. The font is whatever your renderer uses for the
monospace font-family. All colors are specified as RGB percentages
in order to support displays with 10 bits per RGB.
- The name of the file will be
xterm.yyyy.MM.dd.hh.mm.ss.svg
- where yyyy, MM, dd, hh,
mm and ss are the year, month, day, hour, minute and second
when the screen dump was performed (the file is created in the directory
xterm is started in, or the home directory for a login
xterm).
- The dump-svg action can also be triggered using the
Media Copy control sequence CSI 1 1 i, for example from a shell script
with
printf '\033[11i'
Only the UTF-8 encoding is supported.
- Modes for setting keyboard style:
- 8-Bit Controls (resource
8-bit-control)
- Enabled for VT220 emulation, this controls whether
xterm will send 8-bit control sequences rather than using 7-bit
(ASCII) controls, e.g., sending a byte in the range 128–159 rather
than the escape character followed by a second byte. Xterm always
interprets both 8-bit and 7-bit control sequences (see Xterm Control
Sequences). This corresponds to the eightBitControl
resource.
- Backarrow Key (BS/DEL) (resource
backarrow key )
- Modifies the behavior of the backarrow key, making it
transmit either a backspace (8) or delete (127) character. This
corresponds to the backarrowKey resource.
- Alt/NumLock Modifiers (resource
num-lock)
- Controls the treatment of Alt- and NumLock-key modifiers.
This corresponds to the numLock resource.
- Meta Sends Escape (resource
meta-esc)
- Controls whether Meta keys are converted into a
two-character sequence with the character itself preceded by ESC. This
corresponds to the metaSendsEscape resource.
- Delete is DEL (resource
delete-is-del)
- Controls whether the Delete key on the editing keypad
should send DEL (127) or the VT220-style Remove escape sequence. This
corresponds to the deleteIsDEL resource.
- Old Function-Keys (resource
oldFunctionKeys )
- HP Function-Keys (resource
hpFunctionKeys)
- SCO Function-Keys (resource
scoFunctionKeys )
- Sun Function-Keys (resource
sunFunctionKeys )
- VT220 Keyboard (resource
sunKeyboard)
- These act as a radio-button, selecting one style for the
keyboard layout. The layout corresponds to more than one resource setting:
sunKeyboard, sunFunctionKeys, scoFunctionKeys and
hpFunctionKeys.
- Commands for process signalling:
- Send STOP Signal (resource
suspend)
- Send CONT Signal (resource
continue)
- Send INT Signal (resource
interrupt)
- Send HUP Signal (resource
hangup)
- Send TERM Signal (resource
terminate)
- Send KILL Signal (resource
kill)
- These send the SIGTSTP, SIGCONT, SIGINT, SIGHUP, SIGTERM
and SIGKILL signals respectively, to the process group of the process
running under xterm (usually the shell). The SIGCONT
function is especially useful if the user has accidentally typed CTRL-Z,
suspending the process.
- Quit (resource quit)
- Stop processing X events except to support the -hold
option, and then send a SIGHUP signal to the process group of the process
running under xterm (usually the shell).
VT Options
The
xterm vtMenu sets various modes in the VT
xxx
emulation, and is popped up when the “control” key and pointer
button two are pressed in the VT
xxx window.
- VTxxx Modes:
- Enable Scrollbar (resource
scrollbar)
- Enable (or disable) the scrollbar. This corresponds to the
-sb option and the scrollBar resource.
- Enable Jump Scroll (resource
jumpscroll)
- Enable (or disable) jump scrolling. This corresponds to the
-j option and the jumpScroll resource.
- Enable Reverse Video (resource
reversevideo )
- Enable (or disable) reverse-video. This corresponds to the
-rv option and the reverseVideo resource.
- Enable Auto Wraparound (resource
autowrap)
- Enable (or disable) auto-wraparound. This corresponds to
the -aw option and the autoWrap resource.
- Enable Reverse Wraparound (resource
reversewrap )
- Enable (or disable) reverse wraparound. This corresponds to
the -rw option and the reverseWrap resource.
- Enable Auto Linefeed (resource
autolinefeed )
- Enable (or disable) auto-linefeed. This is the VT102 NEL
function, which causes the emulator to emit a line feed after each
carriage return. There is no corresponding command-line option or resource
setting.
- Enable Application Cursor Keys (resource
appcursor )
- Enable (or disable) application cursor keys. This
corresponds to the appcursorDefault resource. There is no
corresponding command-line option.
- Enable Application Keypad (resource
appkeypad )
- Enable (or disable) application keypad keys. This
corresponds to the appkeypadDefault resource. There is no
corresponding command-line option.
- Scroll to Bottom on Key Press (resource
scrollkey )
- Enable (or disable) scrolling to the bottom of the
scrolling region on a keypress. This corresponds to the -sk option
and the scrollKey resource.
- As a special case, the XON / XOFF keys (control/S and
control/Q) are ignored.
- Scroll to Bottom on Tty Output (resource
scrollttyoutput )
- Enable (or disable) scrolling to the bottom of the
scrolling region on output to the terminal. This corresponds to the
-si option and the scrollTtyOutput resource.
- Allow 80/132 Column Switching (resource
allow132 )
- Enable (or disable) switching between 80 and 132 columns.
This corresponds to the -132 option and the c132
resource.
- Keep Selection (resource
keepSelection)
- Tell xterm whether to disown the selection when it
stops highlighting it, e.g., when an application modifies the display so
that it no longer matches the text which has been highlighted. As long as
xterm continues to own the selection for a given atom, it can
provide the corresponding text to other clients which request the
selection using that atom.
- This corresponds to the keepSelection resource.
There is no corresponding command-line option.
- Telling xterm to not disown the selection does not
prevent other applications from taking ownership of the selection. When
that happens, xterm receives notification that this has happened,
and removes its highlighting.
- See SELECT/PASTE for more information.
- Select to Clipboard (resource
selectToClipboard )
- Tell xterm whether to use the PRIMARY or
CLIPBOARD for SELECT tokens in the translations
resource which maps keyboard and mouse actions to select/paste
actions.
- This corresponds to the selectToClipboard resource.
There is no corresponding command-line option.
- The keepSelection resource setting applies to
CLIPBOARD selections just as it does for PRIMARY selections.
However some window managers treat the clipboard specially. For instance,
XQuartz's synchronization between the OSX pasteboard and the X11
clipboard causes applications to lose the selection ownership for
that atom when a selection is copied to the clipboard.
- See SELECT/PASTE for more information.
- Enable Visual Bell (resource
visualbell)
- Enable (or disable) visible bell (i.e., flashing) instead
of an audible bell. This corresponds to the -vb option and the
visualBell resource.
- Enable Bell Urgency (resource
bellIsUrgent)
- Enable (or disable) Urgency window manager hint when
Control-G is received. This corresponds to the bellIsUrgent
resource.
- Enable Pop on Bell (resource
poponbell)
- Enable (or disable) raising of the window when Control-G is
received. This corresponds to the -pop option and the
popOnBell resource.
- Enable Blinking Cursor (resource
cursorblink )
- Enable (or disable) the blinking-cursor feature. This
corresponds to the -bc option and the cursorBlink resource.
There are also escape sequences (see Xterm Control Sequences):
- •
- If the cursorBlinkXOR resource is set, the menu
entry and the escape sequence states will be XOR'd: if both are enabled,
the cursor will not blink, if only one is enabled, the cursor will
blink.
- •
- If the cursorBlinkXOR is not set; if either the menu
entry or the escape sequence states are set, the cursor will blink.
- In either case, the checkbox for the menu shows the state
of the cursorBlink resource, which may not correspond to what the
cursor is actually doing.
- Enable Alternate Screen Switching (resource
titeInhibit )
- Enable (or disable) switching between the normal and
alternate screens. This corresponds to the titeInhibit resource.
There is no corresponding command-line option.
- Enable Active Icon (resource
activeicon)
- Enable (or disable) the active-icon feature. This
corresponds to the -ai option and the activeIcon
resource.
- Sixel Scrolling (resource
sixelScrolling)
- When enabled, sixel graphics are positioned at the current
text cursor location, scroll the image vertically if larger than the
screen, and leave the text cursor at the start of the next complete line
after the image when returning to text mode (this is the default). When
disabled, sixel graphics are positioned at the upper left of the screen,
are cropped to fit the screen, and do not affect the text cursor location.
This corresponds to the sixelScrolling resource. There is no
corresponding command-line option.
- Private Color Registers (resource
privateColorRegisters )
- If xterm is configured to support ReGIS graphics,
this controls whether a private color palette can be used.
- When enabled, each graphic image uses a separate set of
color registers, so that it essentially has a private palette (this is the
default). If it is not set, all graphics images share a common set of
registers which is how sixel and ReGIS graphics worked on actual hardware.
The default is likely a more useful mode on modern TrueColor
hardware.
- This corresponds to the privateColorRegisters
resource. There is no corresponding command-line option.
- VTxxx Commands:
- Do Soft Reset (resource
softreset)
- Reset scroll regions. This can be convenient when some
program has left the scroll regions set incorrectly (often a problem when
using VMS or TOPS-20). This corresponds to the VT220 DECSTR control
sequence.
- Do Full Reset (resource
hardreset)
- The full reset entry will clear the screen, reset tabs to
every eight columns, and reset the terminal modes (such as wrap and smooth
scroll) to their initial states just after xterm has finished
processing the command line options. This corresponds to the VT102 RIS
control sequence, with a few obvious differences. For example, your
session is not disconnected as a real VT102 would do.
- Reset and Clear Saved Lines (resource
clearsavedlines )
- Perform a full reset, and also clear the saved lines.
- Commands for setting the current screen:
- Show Tek Window (resource
tekshow)
- When enabled, pops the Tektronix 4014 window up (makes it
visible). When disabled, hides the Tektronix 4014 window.
- Switch to Tek Mode (resource
tekmode)
- When enabled, pops the Tektronix 4014 window up if it is
not already visible, and switches the input stream to that window. When
disabled, hides the Tektronix 4014 window and switches input back to the
VT xxx window.
- Hide VT Window (resource
vthide)
- When enabled, hides the VT xxx window, shows the
Tektronix 4014 window if it was not already visible and switches the input
stream to that window. When disabled, shows the VT xxx window, and
switches the input stream to that window.
- Show Alternate Screen (resource
altscreen)
- When enabled, shows the alternate screen. When disabled,
shows the normal screen. Note that the normal screen may have saved lines;
the alternate screen does not.
VT Fonts
The
xterm fontMenu pops up when the “control” key and
pointer button three are pressed in a window. It sets the font used in the VT
xxx window, or modifies the way the font is specified or displayed.
There are several sections.
The first section allows you to select the font from a set of alternatives:
- Default (resource
fontdefault)
- Set the font to the default, i.e., that given by the
*VT100.font resource.
- Unreadable (resource
font1)
- Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font1
resource.
- Tiny (resource font2)
- Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font2
resource.
- Small (resource font3)
- Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font3
resource.
- Medium (resource font4)
- Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font4
resource.
- Large (resource font5)
- Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font5
resource.
- Huge (resource font6)
- Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font6
resource.
- Enormous (resource font7)
- Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font7
resource.
- Escape Sequence (resource
fontescape)
- This allows you to set the font last specified by the Set
Font escape sequence (see Xterm Control Sequences).
- Selection (resource
fontsel)
- This allows you to set the font specified the current
selection as a font name (if the PRIMARY selection is owned).
The second section allows you to modify the way it is displayed:
- Bold Fonts (resource
allow-bold-fonts)
- This is normally checked (enabled). When unchecked,
xterm will not use bold fonts. The setting corresponds to the
allowBoldFonts resource.
- Line-Drawing Characters (resource
font-linedrawing )
- When set, tells xterm to draw its own line-drawing
characters. Otherwise it relies on the font containing these. Compare to
the forceBoxChars resource.
- Packed Font (resource
font-packed)
- When set, tells xterm to use the minimum glyph-width
from a font when displaying characters. Use the maximum width (unchecked)
to help display proportional fonts. Compare to the forcePackedFont
resource.
- Doublesized Characters (resource
font-doublesize )
- When set, xterm may ask the font server to produce
scaled versions of the normal font, for VT102 double-size characters.
The third section allows you to modify the way it is specified:
- TrueType Fonts (resource
render-font)
- If the renderFont and corresponding resources were
set, this is a further control whether xterm will actually use the
Xft library calls to obtain a font.
- UTF-8 Encoding (resource
utf8-mode)
- This controls whether xterm uses UTF-8 encoding of
input/output. It is useful for temporarily switching xterm to
display text from an application which does not follow the locale
settings. It corresponds to the utf8 resource.
- UTF-8 Fonts (resource
utf8-fonts)
- This controls whether xterm uses UTF-8 fonts for
display. It is useful for temporarily switching xterm to display
text from an application which does not follow the locale settings. It
combines the utf8 and utf8Fonts resources, subject to the
locale resource.
- UTF-8 Titles (resource
utf8-title)
- This controls whether xterm accepts UTF-8 encoding
for title control sequences. It corresponds to the utf8Fonts
resource.
- Initially the checkmark is set according to both the
utf8 and utf8Fonts resource values. If the latter is set to
“always”, the checkmark is disabled. Likewise, if there are no
fonts given in the utf8Fonts subresources, then the checkmark also
is disabled.
- The standard XTerm app-defaults file defines both
sets of fonts, while the UXTerm app-defaults file defines only one
set. Assuming the standard app-defaults files, this command will launch
xterm able to switch between UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 encoded fonts:
uxterm -class XTerm
The fourth section allows you to enable or disable special operations which can
be controlled by writing escape sequences to the terminal. These are disabled
if the SendEvents feature is enabled:
- Allow Color Ops (resource
allow-font-ops)
- This corresponds to the allowColorOps resource.
Enable or disable control sequences that set/query the colors.
- Allow Font Ops (resource
allow-font-ops)
- This corresponds to the allowFontOps resource.
Enable or disable control sequences that set/query the font.
- Allow Mouse Ops (resource
allow-mouse-ops)
- Enable or disable control sequences that cause the terminal
to send escape sequences on pointer-clicks and movement. This corresponds
to the allowMouseOps resource.
- Allow Tcap Ops (resource
allow-tcap-ops)
- Enable or disable control sequences that query the
terminal's notion of its function-key strings, as termcap or terminfo
capabilities. This corresponds to the allowTcapOps resource.
- Allow Title Ops (resource
allow-title-ops)
- Enable or disable control sequences that modify the window
title or icon name. This corresponds to the allowTitleOps
resource.
- Allow Window Ops (resource
allow-window-ops )
- Enable or disable extended window control sequences (as
used in dtterm). This corresponds to the allowWindowOps
resource.
Tek Options
The
xterm tekMenu sets various modes in the Tektronix emulation,
and is popped up when the “control” key and pointer button two are
pressed in the Tektronix window. The current font size is checked in the modes
section of the menu.
- Large Characters (resource
tektextlarge)
- #2 Size Characters (resource
tektext2)
- #3 Size Characters (resource
tektext3)
- Small Characters (resource
tektextsmall)
Commands:
- PAGE (resource tekpage)
- Simulates the Tektronix “PAGE” button by
- •
- clearing the window,
- •
- cancelling the graphics input-mode, and
- •
- moving the cursor to the home position.
- RESET (resource tekreset)
- Unlike the similarly-named Tektronix “RESET”
button, this does everything that PAGE does as well as resetting
the line-type and font-size to their default values.
- COPY (resource tekcopy)
- Simulates the Tektronix “COPY” button (which
makes a hard-copy of the screen) by writing the information to a text
file.
Windows:
- Show VT Window (resource
vtshow)
- Switch to VT Mode (resource
vtmode)
- Hide Tek Window (resource
tekhide)
SECURITY
X environments differ in their security consciousness.
- •
- Most servers, run under xdm, are capable of using a
“magic cookie” authorization scheme that can provide a
reasonable level of security for many people. If your server is only using
a host-based mechanism to control access to the server (see
xhost(1)), then if you enable access for a host and other users are
also permitted to run clients on that same host, it is possible that
someone can run an application which uses the basic services of the X
protocol to snoop on your activities, potentially capturing a transcript
of everything you type at the keyboard.
- •
- Any process which has access to your X display can
manipulate it in ways that you might not anticipate, even redirecting your
keyboard to itself and sending events to your application's windows. This
is true even with the “magic cookie” authorization scheme.
While the allowSendEvents provides some protection against rogue
applications tampering with your programs, guarding against a snooper is
harder.
- •
- The X input extension for instance allows an application to
bypass all of the other (limited) authorization and security features,
including the GrabKeyboard protocol.
- •
- The possibility of an application spying on your keystrokes
is of particular concern when you want to type in a password or other
sensitive data. The best solution to this problem is to use a better
authorization mechanism than is provided by X.
Subject to all of these caveats, a simple mechanism exists for protecting
keyboard input in
xterm.
The
xterm menu (see
MENUS above) contains a
Secure Keyboard
entry which, when enabled, attempts to ensure that all keyboard input is
directed
only to
xterm (using the GrabKeyboard protocol
request). When an application prompts you for a password (or other sensitive
data), you can enable
Secure Keyboard using the menu, type in the data,
and then disable
Secure Keyboard using the menu again.
- •
- This ensures that you know which window is accepting your
keystrokes.
- •
- It cannot ensure that there are no processes which have
access to your X display that might be observing the keystrokes as
well.
Only one X client at a time can grab the keyboard, so when you attempt to enable
Secure Keyboard it may fail. In this case, the bell will sound. If the
Secure Keyboard succeeds, the foreground and background colors will be
exchanged (as if you selected the
Enable Reverse Video entry in the
Modes menu); they will be exchanged again when you exit secure mode. If
the colors do
not switch, then you should be
very suspicious
that you are being spoofed. If the application you are running displays a
prompt before asking for the password, it is safest to enter secure mode
before the prompt gets displayed, and to make sure that the prompt gets
displayed correctly (in the new colors), to minimize the probability of
spoofing. You can also bring up the menu again and make sure that a check mark
appears next to the entry.
Secure Keyboard mode will be disabled automatically if your
xterm
window becomes iconified (or otherwise unmapped), or if you start up a
reparenting window manager (that places a title bar or other decoration around
the window) while in
Secure Keyboard mode. (This is a feature of the X
protocol not easily overcome.) When this happens, the foreground and
background colors will be switched back and the bell will sound in warning.
CHARACTER CLASSES
Clicking the left pointer button twice in rapid succession (double-clicking)
causes all characters of the same class (e.g., letters, white space,
punctuation) to be selected as a “word”. Since different people
have different preferences for what should be selected (for example, should
filenames be selected as a whole or only the separate subnames), the default
mapping can be overridden through the use of the
charClass (class
CharClass) resource.
This resource is a series of comma-separated
range:
value pairs.
- •
- The range is either a single number or
low-high in the range of 0 to 65535, corresponding to the
code for the character or characters to be set.
- •
- The value is arbitrary. For example, the default
table uses the character number of the first character occurring in the
set. When not in UTF-8 mode, only the first 256 entries of this table will
be used.
The default table starts as follows -
static int charClass[256] = {
/∗ NUL SOH STX ETX EOT ENQ ACK BEL */
32, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/∗ BS HT NL VT NP CR SO SI */
1, 32, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/∗ DLE DC1 DC2 DC3 DC4 NAK SYN ETB */
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/∗ CAN EM SUB ESC FS GS RS US */
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/∗ SP ! " # $ % & ' */
32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39,
/∗ ( ) * + , - . / */
40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47,
/∗ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ 8 9 : ; < = > ? */
48, 48, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63,
/∗ @ A B C D E F G */
64, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ H I J K L M N O */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ P Q R S T U V W */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _ */
48, 48, 48, 91, 92, 93, 94, 48,
/∗ ` a b c d e f g */
96, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ h i j k l m n o */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ p q r s t u v w */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ x y z { | } ~ DEL */
48, 48, 48, 123, 124, 125, 126, 1,
/∗ x80 x81 x82 x83 IND NEL SSA ESA */
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/∗ HTS HTJ VTS PLD PLU RI SS2 SS3 */
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/∗ DCS PU1 PU2 STS CCH MW SPA EPA */
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/∗ x98 x99 x9A CSI ST OSC PM APC */
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/∗ - i c/ L ox Y- | So */
160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167,
/∗ .. c0 ip << _ R0 - */
168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175,
/∗ o +- 2 3 ' u q| . */
176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183,
/∗ , 1 2 >> 1/4 1/2 3/4 ? */
184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191,
/∗ A` A' A^ A~ A: Ao AE C, */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ E` E' E^ E: I` I' I^ I: */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ D- N~ O` O' O^ O~ O: X */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 215,
/∗ O/ U` U' U^ U: Y' P B */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ a` a' a^ a~ a: ao ae c, */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ e` e' e^ e: i` i' i^ i: */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/∗ d n~ o` o' o^ o~ o: -: */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 247,
/∗ o/ u` u' u^ u: y' P y: */
48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48};
- For example, the string
“33:48,37:48,45-47:48,38:48” indicates that the exclamation
mark, percent sign, dash, period, slash, and ampersand characters should
be treated the same way as characters and numbers. This is useful for
cutting and pasting electronic mailing addresses and filenames.
KEY BINDINGS
It is possible to rebind keys (or sequences of keys) to arbitrary strings for
input, by changing the
translations resources for the vt100 or tek4014
widgets. Changing the
translations resource for events other than key
and button events is not expected, and will cause unpredictable behavior.
Actions
The following actions are provided for use within the
vt100 or
tek4014 translations resources:
- allow-bold-fonts(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
allowBoldFonts resource and is also invoked by the
allow-bold-fonts entry in fontMenu.
- allow-color-ops(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
allowColorOps resource and is also invoked by the
allow-color-ops entry in fontMenu.
- allow-font-ops(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the allowFontOps
resource and is also invoked by the allow-font-ops entry in
fontMenu.
- allow-mouse-ops(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
allowMousepOps resource and is also invoked by the
allow-mouse-ops entry in fontMenu.
- allow-send-events(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
allowSendEvents resource and is also invoked by the
allowsends entry in mainMenu.
- allow-tcap-ops(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the allowTcapOps
resource and is also invoked by the allow-tcap-ops entry in
fontMenu.
- allow-title-ops(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
allowTitleOps resource and is also invoked by the
allow-title-ops entry in fontMenu.
- allow-window-ops(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
allowWindowOps resource and is also invoked by the
allow-window-ops entry in fontMenu.
- alt-sends-escape()
- This action toggles the state of the altSendsEscape
resource.
- bell([percent])
- This action rings the keyboard bell at the specified
percentage above or below the base volume.
- clear-saved-lines()
- This action does hard-reset() and also clears the
history of lines saved off the top of the screen. It is also invoked from
the clearsavedlines entry in vtMenu. The effect is identical
to a hardware reset (RIS) control sequence.
- copy-selection(destname [, ...])
- This action puts the currently selected text into all of
the selections or cutbuffers specified by destname. Unlike
select-end, it does not send a mouse position or otherwise modify
the internal selection state.
- create-menu(m/v/f/t)
- This action creates one of the menus used by xterm,
if it has not been previously created. The parameter values are the menu
names: mainMenu, vtMenu, fontMenu, tekMenu,
respectively.
- dabbrev-expand()
- Expands the word before cursor by searching in the
preceding text on the screen and in the scrollback buffer for words
starting with that abbreviation. Repeating dabbrev-expand() several
times in sequence searches for an alternative expansion by looking farther
back. Lack of more matches is signaled by a bell. Attempts to expand an
empty word (i.e., when cursor is preceded by a space) yield successively
all previous words. Consecutive identical expansions are ignored. The word
here is defined as a sequence of non-whitespace characters. This feature
partially emulates the behavior of “dynamic abbreviation”
expansion in Emacs (bound there to M-/). Here is a resource setting for
xterm which will do the same thing:
*VT100*translations: #override \n\
Meta <KeyPress> /: dabbrev-expand()
- deiconify()
- Changes the window state back to normal, if it was
iconified.
- delete-is-del()
- This action toggles the state of the deleteIsDEL
resource.
- dired-button()
- Handles a button event (other than press and release) by
echoing the event's position (i.e., character line and column) in the
following format:
^X ESC G <line+“ ”> <col+“ ”>
- dump-html()
- Invokes the XHTML Screen Dump feature.
- dump-svg()
- Invokes the SVG Screen Dump feature.
- exec-formatted(format, sourcename [,
...])
- Execute an external command, using the current selection
for part of the command's parameters. The first parameter, format
gives the basic command. Succeeding parameters specify the selection
source as in insert-selection.
- The format parameter allows these
substitutions:
- %%
- inserts a "%".
- %P
- the screen-position at the beginning of the highlighted
region, as a semicolon-separated pair of integers using the values that
the CUP control sequence would use.
- %p
- the screen-position after the beginning of the highlighted
region, using the same convention as “%P”.
- %S
- the length of the string that “%s” would
insert.
- %s
- the content of the selection, unmodified.
- %T
- the length of the string that “%t” would
insert.
- %t
- the selection, trimmed of leading/trailing whitespace.
Embedded spaces (and newlines) are copied as is.
- %R
- the length of the string that “%r” would
insert.
- %r
- the selection, trimmed of trailing whitespace.
- %V
- the video attributes at the beginning of the highlighted
region, as a semicolon-separated list of integers using the values that
the SGR control sequence would use.
- %v
- the video attributes after the end of the highlighted
region, using the same convention as “%V”.
- After constructing the command-string, xterm forks a
subprocess and executes the command, which completes independently of
xterm.
- For example, this translation would invoke a new
xterm process to view a file whose name is selected while holding
the shift key down. The new process is started when the mouse button is
released:
*VT100*translations: #override Shift \
<Btn1Up>: exec-formatted("xterm -e view '%t'", SELECT)
- exec-selectable(format, onClicks)
- Execute an external command, using data copied from the
screen for part of the command's parameters. The first parameter,
format gives the basic command as in exec-formatted. The
second parameter specifies the method for copying the data as in the
on2Clicks resource.
- fullscreen(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the fullscreen
resource.
- iconify()
- Iconifies the window.
- hard-reset()
- This action resets the scrolling region, tabs, window size,
and cursor keys and clears the screen. It is also invoked from the
hardreset entry in vtMenu.
- ignore()
- This action ignores the event but checks for special
pointer position escape sequences.
- insert()
- This action inserts the character or string associated with
the key that was pressed.
- insert-eight-bit()
- This action inserts an eight-bit (Meta) version of the
character or string associated with the key that was pressed. Only
single-byte values are treated specially. The exact action depends on the
value of the altSendsEscape and the metaSendsEscape and the
eightBitInput resources. The metaSendsEscape resource is
tested first. See the eightBitInput resource for a full
discussion.
- The term “eight-bit” is misleading:
xterm checks if the key is in the range 128 to 255 (the eighth bit
is set). If the value is in that range, depending on the resource values,
xterm may then do one of the following:
- •
- add 128 to the value, setting its eighth bit,
- •
- send an ESC byte before the key, or
- •
- send the key unaltered.
- insert-formatted(format, sourcename [,
...])
- Insert the current selection or data related to it,
formatted. The first parameter, format gives the template for the
data as in exec-formatted. Succeeding parameters specify the
selection source as in insert-selection.
- insert-selectable(format,
onClicks)
- Insert data copied from the screen, formatted. The first
parameter, format gives the template for the data as in
exec-formatted. The second parameter specifies the method for
copying the data as in the on2Clicks resource.
- insert-selection(sourcename [, ...])
- This action inserts the string found in the selection or
cutbuffer indicated by sourcename. Sources are checked in the order
given (case is significant) until one is found. Commonly-used selections
include: PRIMARY, SECONDARY, and CLIPBOARD. Cut
buffers are typically named CUT_BUFFER0 through
CUT_BUFFER7.
- insert-seven-bit()
- This action is a synonym for insert(). The term
“seven-bit” is misleading: it only implies that xterm
does not try to add 128 to the key's value as in
insert-eight-bit().
- interpret(control-sequence)
- Interpret the given control sequence locally, i.e., without
passing it to the host. This works by inserting the control sequence at
the front of the input buffer. Use “\” to escape octal digits
in the string. Xt does not allow you to put a null character (i.e.,
“\000”) in the string.
- keymap(name)
- This action dynamically defines a new translation table
whose resource name is name with the suffix
“Keymap” (i.e., nameKeymap, where case is
significant). The name None restores the original translation
table.
- larger-vt-font()
- Set the font to the next larger one, based on the font
dimensions. See also set-vt-font().
- load-vt-fonts(name[,class])
- Load fontnames from the given subresource name and class.
That is, load the “*VT100. name.font”, resource as
“*VT100.font” etc. If no name is given, the original set of
fontnames is restored.
- Unlike set-vt-font(), this does not affect the
escape- and select-fonts, since those are not based on resource values. It
does affect the fonts loosely organized under the “Default”
menu entry, including font, boldFont, wideFont and
wideBoldFont.
- maximize()
- Resizes the window to fill the screen.
- meta-sends-escape()
- This action toggles the state of the metaSendsEscape
resource.
- pointer-button()
- Use this action as a fall-back to handle button press- and
release-events for the mouse control sequence protocol when the
selection-related translations are suppressed with the
omitTranslation resource.
- pointer-motion()
- Use this action as a fall-back to handle motion-events for
the mouse control sequence protocol when the selection-related
translations are suppressed with the omitTranslation resource.
- popup-menu(menuname)
- This action displays the specified popup menu. Valid names
(case is significant) include: mainMenu, vtMenu,
fontMenu, and tekMenu.
- print(printer-flags)
- This action prints the window. It is also invoked by the
print entry in mainMenu.
- The action accepts optional parameters, which temporarily
override resource settings. The parameter values are matched ignoring
case:
- noFormFeed
- no form feed will be sent at the end of the last line
printed (i.e., printerFormFeed is “false”).
- FormFeed
- a form feed will be sent at the end of the last line
printed (i.e., printerFormFeed is “true”).
- noNewLine
- no newline will be sent at the end of the last line
printed, and wrapped lines will be combined into long lines (i.e.,
printerNewLine is “false”).
- NewLine
- a newline will be sent at the end of the last line printed,
and each line will be limited (by adding a newline) to the screen width
(i.e., printerNewLine is “true”).
- noAttrs
- the page is printed without attributes (i.e.,
printAttributes is “0”).
- monoAttrs
- the page is printed with monochrome (vt220) attributes
(i.e., printAttributes is “1”).
- colorAttrs
- the page is printed with ANSI color attributes (i.e.,
printAttributes is “2”).
- print-everything(printer-flags)
- This action sends the entire text history, in addition to
the text currently visible, to the program given in the
printerCommand resource. It allows the same optional parameters as
the print action. With a suitable printer command, the action can
be used to load the text history in an editor.
- print-immediate()
- Sends the text of the current window directly to a file, as
specified by the printFileImmediate, printModeImmediate and
printOptsImmediate resources.
- print-on-error()
- Toggles a flag telling xterm that if it exits with
an X error, to send the text of the current window directly to a file, as
specified by the printFileOnXError, printModeOnXError and
printOptsOnXError resources.
- print-redir()
- This action toggles the printerControlMode between 0
and 2. The corresponding popup menu entry is useful for switching the
printer off if you happen to change your mind after deciding to print
random binary files on the terminal.
- quit()
-
This action sends a SIGHUP to the subprogram and exits. It is also invoked
by the quit entry in mainMenu.
- readline-button()
- Supports the optional readline feature by echoing repeated
cursor forward or backward control sequences on button release event, to
request that the host application update its notion of the cursor's
position to match the button event.
- redraw()
- This action redraws the window. It is also invoked by the
redraw entry in mainMenu.
- restore()
- Restores the window to the size before it was last
maximized.
- scroll-back(count [,units [,mouse]
])
- This action scrolls the text window backward so that text
that had previously scrolled off the top of the screen is now
visible.
- The count argument indicates the number of
units (which may be page, halfpage, pixel, or
line) by which to scroll. If no count parameter is given,
xterm uses the number of lines given by the scrollLines
resource.
- An adjustment can be specified for the page or
halfpage units by appending a “+” or “-”
sign followed by a number, e.g., page-2 to specify 2 lines less
than a page.
- If the second parameter is omitted “lines” is
used.
- If the third parameter mouse is given, the action is
ignored when mouse reporting is enabled.
- scroll-forw(count [,units [,mouse]
])
- This action is similar to scroll-back except that it
scrolls in the other direction.
- secure()
- This action toggles the Secure Keyboard mode (see
SECURITY), and is invoked from the securekbd entry in
mainMenu.
- scroll-lock(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles internal state which
tells xterm whether Scroll Lock is active, subject to the
allowScrollLock resource.
- scroll-to(count)
- Scroll to the given line relative to the beginning of the
saved-lines. For instance, “ scroll-to(0)” would scroll
to the beginning. Two special nonnumeric parameters are recognized:
- scroll-to(begin)
- Scroll to the beginning of the saved lines.
- scroll-to(end)
- Scroll to the end of the saved lines, i.e., to the
currently active page.
- select-cursor-end(destname [, ...])
- This action is similar to select-end except that it
should be used with select-cursor-start.
- select-cursor-extend()
- This action is similar to select-extend except that
it should be used with select-cursor-start.
- select-cursor-start()
- This action is similar to select-start except that
it begins the selection at the current text cursor position.
- select-end(destname [, ...])
- This action puts the currently selected text into all of
the selections or cutbuffers specified by destname. It also sends a
mouse position and updates the internal selection state to reflect the end
of the selection process.
- select-extend()
- This action tracks the pointer and extends the selection.
It should only be bound to Motion events.
- select-set()
- This action stores text that corresponds to the current
selection, without affecting the selection mode.
- select-start()
- This action begins text selection at the current pointer
location. See the section on POINTER USAGE for information on
making selections.
- send-signal(signame)
- This action sends the signal named by signame to the
xterm subprocess (the shell or program specified with the -e
command line option). It is also invoked by the suspend,
continue, interrupt, hangup, terminate, and
kill entries in mainMenu. Allowable signal names are (case
is not significant): tstp (if supported by the operating system),
suspend (same as tstp), cont (if supported by the
operating system), int, hup, term, quit,
alrm, alarm (same as alrm) and kill.
- set-8-bit-control(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
eightBitControl resource. It is also invoked from the
8-bit-control entry in vtMenu.
- set-allow132(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the c132
resource. It is also invoked from the allow132 entry in
vtMenu.
- set-altscreen(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles between the alternate
and current screens.
- set-appcursor(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the handling
Application Cursor Key mode and is also invoked by the appcursor
entry in vtMenu.
- set-appkeypad(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the handling of
Application Keypad mode and is also invoked by the appkeypad entry
in vtMenu.
- set-autolinefeed(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles automatic insertion of
line feeds. It is also invoked by the autolinefeed entry in
vtMenu.
- set-autowrap(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles automatic wrapping of
long lines. It is also invoked by the autowrap entry in
vtMenu.
- set-backarrow(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the backarrowKey
resource. It is also invoked from the backarrow key entry in
vtMenu.
- set-bellIsUrgent(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the bellIsUrgent
resource. It is also invoked by the bellIsUrgent entry in
vtMenu.
- set-cursorblink(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the cursorBlink
resource. It is also invoked from the cursorblink entry in
vtMenu.
- set-cursesemul(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the curses
resource. It is also invoked from the cursesemul entry in
vtMenu.
- set-font-doublesize(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
fontDoublesize resource. It is also invoked by the
font-doublesize entry in fontMenu.
- set-hp-function-keys(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
hpFunctionKeys resource. It is also invoked by the
hpFunctionKeys entry in mainMenu.
- set-jumpscroll(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the jumpscroll
resource. It is also invoked by the jumpscroll entry in
vtMenu.
- set-font-linedrawing(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the xterm's
state regarding whether the current font has line-drawing characters and
whether it should draw them directly. It is also invoked by the
font-linedrawing entry in fontMenu.
- set-font-packed(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
forcePackedFont resource which controls use of the font's minimum
or maximum glyph width. It is also invoked by the font-packed entry
in fontMenu.
- set-keep-clipboard(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
keepClipboard resource.
- set-keep-selection(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
keepSelection resource. It is also invoked by the
keepSelection entry in vtMenu.
- set-logging(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the state of the
logging option.
- set-old-function-keys(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the state of legacy
function keys. It is also invoked by the oldFunctionKeys entry in
mainMenu.
- set-marginbell(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the marginBell
resource.
- set-num-lock(on/off/toggle)
- This action toggles the state of the numLock
resource.
- set-pop-on-bell(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the popOnBell
resource. It is also invoked by the poponbell entry in
vtMenu.
- set-private-colors(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
privateColorRegisters resource.
- set-render-font(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the renderFont
resource. It is also invoked by the render-font entry in
fontMenu.
- set-reverse-video(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the reverseVideo
resource. It is also invoked by the reversevideo entry in
vtMenu.
- set-reversewrap(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the reverseWrap
resource. It is also invoked by the reversewrap entry in
vtMenu.
- set-scroll-on-key(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the scrollKey
resource. It is also invoked from the scrollkey entry in
vtMenu.
- set-scroll-on-tty-output(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
scrollTtyOutput resource. It is also invoked from the
scrollttyoutput entry in vtMenu.
- set-scrollbar(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the scrollbar
resource. It is also invoked by the scrollbar entry in
vtMenu.
- set-sco-function-keys(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
scoFunctionKeys resource. It is also invoked by the
scoFunctionKeys entry in mainMenu.
- set-select(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
selectToClipboard resource. It is also invoked by the
selectToClipboard entry in vtMenu.
- set-sixel-scrolling(on/off/toggle)
- This action toggles between inline (sixel scrolling) and
absolute positioning. It can also be controlled via DEC private mode 80
(DECSDM) or from the sixelScrolling entry in the
btMenu.
- set-sun-function-keys(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the
sunFunctionKeys resource. It is also invoked by the
sunFunctionKeys entry in mainMenu.
- set-sun-keyboard(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the sunKeyboard
resource. It is also invoked by the sunKeyboard entry in
mainMenu.
- set-tek-text(large/2/3/small)
- This action sets the font used in the Tektronix window to
the value of the selected resource according to the argument. The argument
can be either a keyword or single-letter alias, as shown in
parentheses:
- large (l)
- Use resource fontLarge, same as menu entry
tektextlarge.
- two (2)
- Use resource font2, same as menu entry
tektext2.
- three (3)
- Use resource font3, same as menu entry
tektext3.
- small (s)
- Use resource fontSmall, same as menu entry
tektextsmall.
- set-terminal-type(type)
- This action directs output to either the vt or
tek windows, according to the type string. It is also
invoked by the tekmode entry in vtMenu and the vtmode
entry in tekMenu.
- set-titeInhibit(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the titeInhibit
resource, which controls switching between the alternate and current
screens.
- set-toolbar(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the toolbar feature. It
is also invoked by the toolbar entry in mainMenu.
- set-utf8-fonts(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the utf8Fonts
resource. It is also invoked by the utf8-fonts entry in
fontMenu.
- set-utf8-mode(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the utf8
resource. It is also invoked by the utf8-mode entry in
fontMenu.
- set-utf8-title(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the utf8Title
resource. It is also invoked by the utf8-title entry in
fontMenu.
- set-visibility(vt/tek,on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles whether or not the
vt or tek windows are visible. It is also invoked from the
tekshow and vthide entries in vtMenu and the
vtshow and tekhide entries in tekMenu.
- set-visual-bell(on/off/toggle)
- This action sets, unsets or toggles the visualBell
resource. It is also invoked by the visualbell entry in
vtMenu.
- set-vt-font(d/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/e/s
[,normalfont [, boldfont]])
- This action sets the font or fonts currently being used in
the VT xxx window. The first argument is a single character that
specifies the font to be used:
d or
D indicate the default font (the font initially used when xterm
was started),
1
through 7 indicate the fonts specified by the font1 through
font7 resources,
e or
E indicate the normal and bold fonts that have been set through escape
codes (or specified as the second and third action arguments, respectively),
and
s or
S indicate the font selection (as made by programs such as
xfontsel(1)) indicated by the second action argument.
- If xterm is configured to support wide characters,
an additional two optional parameters are recognized for the e
argument: wide font and wide bold font.
- smaller-vt-font()
- Set the font to the next smaller one, based on the font
dimensions. See also set-vt-font().
- soft-reset()
- This action resets the scrolling region. It is also invoked
from the softreset entry in vtMenu. The effect is identical
to a soft reset (DECSTR) control sequence.
- spawn-new-terminal(params)
- Spawn a new xterm process. This is available on
systems which have a modern version of the process filesystem, e.g.,
“/proc”, which xterm can read.
- Use the “cwd” process entry, e.g.,
/proc/12345/cwd to obtain the working directory of the process which is
running in the current xterm.
- On systems which have the “exe” process entry,
e.g., /proc/12345/exe, use this to obtain the actual executable.
Otherwise, use the $PATH variable to find xterm.
- If parameters are given in the action, pass them to the new
xterm process.
- start-extend()
- This action is similar to select-start except that
the selection is extended to the current pointer location.
- start-cursor-extend()
- This action is similar to select-extend except that
the selection is extended to the current text cursor position.
- string(string)
- This action inserts the specified text string as if it had
been typed. Quotation is necessary if the string contains whitespace or
non-alphanumeric characters. If the string argument begins with the
characters “0x”, it is interpreted as a hex character
constant.
- tek-copy()
- This action copies the escape codes used to generate the
current window contents to a file in the current directory beginning with
the name COPY. It is also invoked from the tekcopy entry in
tekMenu.
- tek-page()
- This action clears the Tektronix window. It is also invoked
by the tekpage entry in tekMenu.
- tek-reset()
- This action resets the Tektronix window. It is also invoked
by the tekreset entry in tekMenu.
- vi-button()
- Handles a button event (other than press and release) by
echoing a control sequence computed from the event's line number in the
screen relative to the current line:
ESC ^P
- or
ESC ^N
- according to whether the event is before, or after the
current line, respectively. The ^N (or ^P) is repeated once for each line
that the event differs from the current line. The control sequence is
omitted altogether if the button event is on the current line.
- visual-bell()
- This action flashes the window quickly.
The Tektronix window also has the following action:
- gin-press(l/L/m/M/r/R)
- This action sends the indicated graphics input code.
Default Key Bindings
The default bindings in the VT
xxx window use the
SELECT token,
which is set by the
selectToClipboard resource. These are for the
vt100 widget:
Shift <KeyPress> Prior: scroll-back(1,halfpage) \n\
Shift <KeyPress> Next: scroll-forw(1,halfpage) \n\
Shift <KeyPress> Select: select-cursor-start() \
select-cursor-end(SELECT, CUT_BUFFER0) \n\
Shift <KeyPress> Insert: insert-selection(SELECT, CUT_BUFFER0) \n\
Alt <Key>Return: fullscreen() \n\
<KeyRelease> Scroll_Lock: scroll-lock() \n\
Shift~Ctrl <KeyPress> KP_Add: larger-vt-font() \n\
Shift Ctrl <KeyPress> KP_Add: smaller-vt-font() \n\
Shift <KeyPress> KP_Subtract: smaller-vt-font() \n\
~Meta <KeyPress>: insert-seven-bit() \n\
Meta <KeyPress>: insert-eight-bit() \n\
!Ctrl <Btn1Down>: popup-menu(mainMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl <Btn1Down>: popup-menu(mainMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl @Num_Lock <Btn1Down>: popup-menu(mainMenu) \n\
! @Num_Lock Ctrl <Btn1Down>: popup-menu(mainMenu) \n\
~Meta <Btn1Down>: select-start() \n\
~Meta <Btn1Motion>: select-extend() \n\
!Ctrl <Btn2Down>: popup-menu(vtMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl <Btn2Down>: popup-menu(vtMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl @Num_Lock <Btn2Down>: popup-menu(vtMenu) \n\
! @Num_Lock Ctrl <Btn2Down>: popup-menu(vtMenu) \n\
~Ctrl ~Meta <Btn2Down>: ignore() \n\
Meta <Btn2Down>: clear-saved-lines() \n\
~Ctrl ~Meta <Btn2Up>: insert-selection(SELECT, CUT_BUFFER0) \n\
!Ctrl <Btn3Down>: popup-menu(fontMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl <Btn3Down>: popup-menu(fontMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl @Num_Lock <Btn3Down>: popup-menu(fontMenu) \n\
! @Num_Lock Ctrl <Btn3Down>: popup-menu(fontMenu) \n\
~Ctrl ~Meta <Btn3Down>: start-extend() \n\
~Meta <Btn3Motion>: select-extend() \n\
Ctrl <Btn4Down>: scroll-back(1,halfpage,m) \n\
Lock Ctrl <Btn4Down>: scroll-back(1,halfpage,m) \n\
Lock @Num_Lock Ctrl <Btn4Down>: scroll-back(1,halfpage,m) \n\
@Num_Lock Ctrl <Btn4Down>: scroll-back(1,halfpage,m) \n\
<Btn4Down>: scroll-back(5,line,m) \n\
Ctrl <Btn5Down>: scroll-forw(1,halfpage,m) \n\
Lock Ctrl <Btn5Down>: scroll-forw(1,halfpage,m) \n\
Lock @Num_Lock Ctrl <Btn5Down>: scroll-forw(1,halfpage,m) \n\
@Num_Lock Ctrl <Btn5Down>: scroll-forw(1,halfpage,m) \n\
<Btn5Down>: scroll-forw(5,line,m) \n\
<BtnUp>: select-end(SELECT, CUT_BUFFER0) \n\
<BtnMotion>: pointer-motion() \n\
<BtnDown>: pointer-button() \n\
<BtnUp>: pointer-button() \n\
<BtnDown>: ignore()
The default bindings in the Tektronix window are analogous but less extensive.
These are for the
tek4014 widget:
~Meta<KeyPress>: insert-seven-bit() \n\
Meta<KeyPress>: insert-eight-bit() \n\
!Ctrl <Btn1Down>: popup-menu(mainMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl <Btn1Down>: popup-menu(mainMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl @Num_Lock <Btn1Down>: popup-menu(mainMenu) \n\
!Ctrl @Num_Lock <Btn1Down>: popup-menu(mainMenu) \n\
!Ctrl <Btn2Down>: popup-menu(tekMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl <Btn2Down>: popup-menu(tekMenu) \n\
!Lock Ctrl @Num_Lock <Btn2Down>: popup-menu(tekMenu) \n\
!Ctrl @Num_Lock <Btn2Down>: popup-menu(tekMenu) \n\
Shift ~Meta<Btn1Down>: gin-press(L) \n\
~Meta<Btn1Down>: gin-press(l) \n\
Shift ~Meta<Btn2Down>: gin-press(M) \n\
~Meta<Btn2Down>: gin-press(m) \n\
Shift ~Meta<Btn3Down>: gin-press(R) \n\
~Meta<Btn3Down>: gin-press(r)
Custom Key Bindings
You can modify the
translations resource by overriding parts of it, or
merging your resources with it.
Here is an example which uses shifted select/paste to copy to the clipboard, and
unshifted select/paste for the primary selection. In each case, a (different)
cut buffer is also a target or source of the select/paste operation. It is
important to remember however, that cut buffers store data in ISO-8859-1
encoding, while selections can store data in a variety of formats and
encodings. While
xterm owns the selection, it highlights it. When it
loses the selection, it removes the corresponding highlight. But you can still
paste from the corresponding cut buffer.
*VT100*translations: #override \n\
~Shift~Ctrl<Btn2Up>: insert-selection(PRIMARY, CUT_BUFFER0) \n\
Shift~Ctrl<Btn2Up>: insert-selection(CLIPBOARD, CUT_BUFFER1) \n\
~Shift <BtnUp> : select-end(PRIMARY, CUT_BUFFER0) \n\
Shift <BtnUp> : select-end(CLIPBOARD, CUT_BUFFER1)
In the example, the class name
VT100 is used rather than the widget name.
These are different; a class name could apply to more than one widget. A
leading “*” is used because the widget hierarchy above the
vt100 widget depends on whether the toolbar support is compiled into
xterm.
Most of the predefined translations are related to the mouse, with a few that
use some of the special keys on the keyboard. Applications use special keys
(function-keys, cursor-keys, keypad-keys) with modifiers (shift, control,
alt). If
xterm defines a translation for a given combination of special
key and modifier, that makes it unavailable for use by applications within the
terminal. For instance, one might extend the use of
Page Up and
Page
Down keys seen here:
Shift <KeyPress> Prior : scroll-back(1,halfpage) \n\
Shift <KeyPress> Next : scroll-forw(1,halfpage) \n\
to the
Home and
End keys:
Shift <KeyPress> Home : scroll-to(begin) \n\
Shift <KeyPress> End : scroll-to(end)
but then shift-
Home and shift-
End would then be unavailable to
applications.
Not everyone finds the three-button mouse bindings easy to use. In a wheel
mouse, the middle button might be the wheel. As an alternative, you could add
a binding using shifted keys:
*VT100*translations: #override \n\
Shift <Key>Home: copy-selection(SELECT) \n\
Shift <Key>Insert: copy-selection(SELECT) \n\
Ctrl Shift <Key>C: copy-selection(SELECT) \n\
Ctrl Shift <Key>V: insert-selection(SELECT)
You would still use the left- and right-mouse buttons (typically 1 and 3) for
beginning and extending selections.
Besides mouse problems, there are also keyboards with inconvenient layouts. Some
lack a numeric keypad, making it hard to use the shifted keypad plus and minus
bindings for switching between font sizes. You can work around that by
assigning the actions to more readily accessed keys:
*VT100*translations: #override \n\
Ctrl <Key> +: larger-vt-font() \n\
Ctrl <Key> -: smaller-vt-font()
The keymap feature allows you to switch between sets of translations. The sample
below shows how the
keymap() action may be used to add special keys for
entering commonly-typed words:
*VT100.Translations: #override <Key>F13: keymap(dbx)
*VT100.dbxKeymap.translations: \
<Key>F14: keymap(None) \n\
<Key>F17: string("next") \n\
string(0x0d) \n\
<Key>F18: string("step") \n\
string(0x0d) \n\
<Key>F19: string("continue") \n\
string(0x0d) \n\
<Key>F20: string("print ") \n\
insert-selection(PRIMARY, CUT_BUFFER0)
Default Scrollbar Bindings
Key bindings are normally associated with the
vt100 or
tek4014
widgets which act as terminal emulators.
Xterm's scrollbar (and toolbar
if it is configured) are separate widgets. Because all of these use the X
Toolkit, they have corresponding
translations resources. Those
resources are distinct, and match different patterns, e.g., the differences in
widget-name and number of levels of widgets which they may contain.
The
scrollbar widget is a child of the
vt100 widget. It is
positioned on top of the
vt100 widget. Toggling the scrollbar on and
off causes the
vt100 widget to resize.
The default bindings for the scrollbar widget use only mouse-button events:
<Btn5Down>: StartScroll(Forward) \n\
<Btn1Down>: StartScroll(Forward) \n\
<Btn2Down>: StartScroll(Continuous) MoveThumb() NotifyThumb() \n\
<Btn3Down>: StartScroll(Backward) \n\
<Btn4Down>: StartScroll(Backward) \n\
<Btn2Motion>: MoveThumb() NotifyThumb() \n\
<BtnUp>: NotifyScroll(Proportional) EndScroll()
Events which the
scrollbar widget does not recognize at all are lost.
However, at startup,
xterm augments these translations with the default
translations used for the
vt100 widget, together with the resource
“actions” which those translations use. Because the
scrollbar (or
menubar) widgets do not recognize these actions
(but because it has a corresponding translation), they are passed on to the
vt100 widget.
This augmenting of the scrollbar's translations has a few limitations:
- •
- Xterm knows what the default translations are, but
there is no suitable library interface for determining what customizations
a user may have added to the vt100 widget. All that xterm
can do is augment the scrollbar widget to give it the same starting
point for further customization by the user.
- •
- Events in the gap between the widgets may be lost.
- •
- Compose sequences begun in one widget cannot be completed
in the other, because the input methods for each widget do not share
context information.
Most customizations of the scrollbar translations do not concern key bindings.
Rather, users are generally more interested in changing the bindings of the
mouse buttons. For example, some people prefer using the left pointer button
for dragging the scrollbar thumb. That can be set up by altering the
translations resource, e.g.,
*VT100.scrollbar.translations: #override \n\
<Btn5Down>: StartScroll(Forward) \n\
<Btn1Down>: StartScroll(Continuous) MoveThumb() NotifyThumb() \n\
<Btn4Down>: StartScroll(Backward) \n\
<Btn1Motion>: MoveThumb() NotifyThumb() \n\
<BtnUp>: NotifyScroll(Proportional) EndScroll()
CONTROL SEQUENCES AND KEYBOARD
Applications can send sequences of characters to the terminal to change its
behavior. Often they are referred to as “ANSI escape sequences” or
just plain “escape sequences” but both terms are misleading:
- •
- ANSI x3.64 (obsolete) which was replaced by ISO 6429
(ECMA-48) gave rules for the format of these sequences of
characters.
- •
- While the original VT100 was claimed to be ANSI-compatible
(against x3.64), there is no freely available version of the ANSI standard
to show where the VT100 differs. Most of the documents which mention the
ANSI standard have additions not found in the original (such as those
based on ansi.sys). So this discussion focuses on the ISO
standards.
- •
- The standard describes only sequences sent from the host to
the terminal. There is no standard for sequences sent by special keys from
the terminal to the host. By convention (and referring to existing
terminals), the format of those sequences usually conforms to the
host-to-terminal standard.
- •
- Some of xterm's sequences do not fit into the
standard scheme. Technically those are “unspecified”. As an
example, DEC Screen Alignment Test (DECALN) is this three-character
sequence:
ESC # 8
- •
- Some sequences fit into the standard format, but are not
listed in the standard. These include the sequences used for setting up
scrolling margins and doing forward/reverse scrolling.
- •
- Some of the sequences (in particular, the single-character
functions such as tab and backspace) do not include the escape
character.
With all of that in mind, the standard refers to these sequences of characters
as “control sequences”.
Xterm Control Sequences lists the control sequences which an application
can send
xterm to make it perform various operations. Most of these
operations are standardized, from either the DEC or Tektronix terminals, or
from more widely used standards such as ISO-6429.
A few examples of usage are given in this section.
Window and Icon Titles
Some scripts use
echo with options
-e and
-n to tell the
shell to interpret the string “\e” as the
escape character
and to suppress a trailing newline on output. Those are not portable, nor
recommended. Instead, use
printf (POSIX).
For example, to set the
window title to “Hello world!”, you
could use one of these commands in a script:
printf '\033]2;Hello world!\033\'
printf '\033]2;Hello world!\007'
printf '\033]2;%s\033\' "Hello world!"
printf '\033]2;%s\007' "Hello world!"
The
printf command interprets the octal value “\033” for
escape, and (since it was not given in the format) omits a trailing
newline from the output.
Some programs (such as
screen(1)) set both window- and icon-titles at the
same time, using a slightly different control sequence:
printf '\033]0;Hello world!\033\'
printf '\033]0;Hello world!\007'
printf '\033]0;%s\033\' "Hello world!"
printf '\033]0;%s\007' "Hello world!"
The difference is the
parameter “0” in each command. Most
window managers will honor either window title or icon title. Some will make a
distinction and allow you to set just the icon title. You can tell
xterm to ask for this with a different parameter in the control
sequence:
printf '\033]1;Hello world!\033\'
printf '\033]1;Hello world!\007'
printf '\033]1;%s\033\' "Hello world!"
printf '\033]1;%s\007' "Hello world!"
Special Keys
Xterm, like any VT100-compatible terminal emulator, has two modes for the
special keys (cursor-keys, numeric keypad, and certain function-keys):
- •
- normal mode, which makes the special keys transmit
“useful” sequences such as the control sequence for cursor-up
when pressing the up-arrow, and
- •
- application mode, which uses a different control
sequence that cannot be mistaken for the “useful”
sequences.
The main difference between the two modes is that normal mode sequences start
with
CSI (
escape [) and application mode sequences start
with
SS3 (
escape O).
The terminal is initialized into one of these two modes (usually the normal
mode), based on the terminal description (termcap or terminfo). The terminal
description also has capabilities (strings) defined for the keypad mode used
in curses applications.
There is a problem in using the terminal description for applications that are
not intended to be full-screen curses applications: the definitions of special
keys are only correct for this keypad mode. For example, some shells (unlike
ksh(1), which appears to be hard-coded, not even using termcap) allow
their users to customize key-bindings, assigning shell actions to special
keys.
- •
- bash(1) allows constant strings to be
assigned to functions. This is only successful if the terminal is
initialized to application mode by default, because bash lacks
flexibility in this area. It uses a (less expressive than bash's)
readline scripting language for setting up key bindings, which
relies upon the user to statically enumerate the possible bindings for
given values of $TERM.
- •
- zsh(1) provides an analogous feature, but it accepts
runtime expressions, as well as providing a $terminfo array for
scripts. In particular, one can use the terminal database, transforming
when defining a key-binding. By transforming the output so that CSI
and SS3 are equated, zsh can use the terminal database to
obtain useful definitions for its command-line use regardless of whether
the terminal uses normal or application mode initially. Here is an
example:
[[ "$terminfo[kcuu1]" == "^[O"* ]] && \
bindkey -M viins "${terminfo[kcuu1]/O/[}" \
vi-up-line-or-history
Changing Colors
A few shell programs provide the ability for users to add color and other video
attributes to the shell prompt strings. Users can do this by setting
$PS1 (the primary prompt string). Again,
bash and
zsh
have provided features not found in
ksh. There is a problem, however:
the prompt's width on the screen will not necessarily be the same as the
number of characters. Because there is no guidance in the POSIX standard, each
shell addresses the problem in a different way:
- •
- bash treats characters within “\[” and
“\]” as nonprinting (using no width on the screen).
- •
- zsh treats characters within “%{” and
“%}” as nonprinting.
In addition to the difference in syntax, the shells provide different methods
for obtaining useful escape sequences:
- •
- As noted in Special Keys, zsh initializes the
$terminfo array with the terminal capabilities.
- It also provides a function echoti which works like
tput(1) to convert a terminal capability with its parameters into a
string that can be written to the terminal.
- •
- Shells lacking a comparable feature (such as bash)
can always use the program tput to do this transformation.
Hard-coded escape sequences are supported by each shell, but are not recommended
because those rely upon particular configurations and cannot be easily moved
between different user environments.
ENVIRONMENT
Xterm sets several environment variables.
System Independent
Some variables are used on every system:
- DISPLAY
- is the display name, pointing to the X server (see
DISPLAY NAMES in X(7)).
- TERM
-
is set according to the terminfo (or termcap) entry which it is using as a
reference.
- On some systems, you may encounter situations where the
shell which you use and xterm are built using libraries with
different terminal databases. In that situation, xterm may choose a
terminal description not known to the shell.
- WINDOWID
- is set to the X window id number of the xterm
window.
- XTERM_FILTER
- is set if a locale-filter is used. The value is the
pathname of the filter.
- XTERM_LOCALE
- shows the locale which was used by xterm on startup.
Some shell initialization scripts may set a different locale.
- XTERM_SHELL
- is set to the pathname of the program which is invoked.
Usually that is a shell program, e.g., /bin/sh. Since it is not
necessarily a shell program however, it is distinct from
“SHELL”.
- XTERM_VERSION
- is set to the string displayed by the -version
option. That is normally an identifier for the X Window libraries used to
build xterm, followed by xterm's patch number in
parenthesis. The patch number is also part of the response to a Secondary
Device Attributes (DA) control sequence (see Xterm Control
Sequences).
System Dependent
Depending on your system configuration,
xterm may also set the following:
- COLUMNS
- the width of the xterm in characters (cf:
“stty columns”).
- When this variable is set, curses applications (and
most terminal programs) will assume that the terminal has this many
columns.
- Xterm would do this for systems which have no
ability to tell the size of the terminal. Those are very rare, none newer
than the mid 1990s when SVR4 became prevalent.
- HOME
-
when xterm is configured (at build-time) to update utmp.
- LINES
- the height of the xterm in characters (cf:
“stty rows”).
- When this variable is set, curses applications (and
most terminal programs) will assume that the terminal has this many lines
(rows).
- Xterm would do this for systems which have no
ability to tell the size of the terminal. Those are very rare, none newer
than the mid 1990s when SVR4 became prevalent.
- LOGNAME
- when xterm is configured (at build-time) to update
utmp.
- Your configuration may have set LOGNAME;
xterm does not modify that. If it is unset, xterm will use
USER if it is set. Finally, if neither is set, xterm will
use the getlogin(3) function.
- SHELL
- when xterm is configured (at build-time) to update
utmp. It is also set if you provide a valid shell name as the optional
parameter.
- Xterm sets this to an absolute pathname. If you have
set the variable to a relative pathname, xterm may set it to a
different shell pathname.
- If you have set this to an pathname which does not
correspond to a valid shell, xterm may unset it, to avoid
confusion.
- TERMCAP
- the contents of the termcap entry corresponding to
$TERM, with lines and columns values substituted for the actual
size window you have created.
- This feature is, like LINES and COLUMNS, used
rarely. It addresses the same limitation of a few older systems by
providing a way for termcap-based applications to get the initial
screen size.
- TERMINFO
- may be defined to a nonstandard location using the
configure script.
WINDOW PROPERTIES
In the output from
xprop(1), there are several properties.
Properties set by X Toolkit
- WM_CLASS
- This shows the instance name and the X resource
class, passed to X Toolkit during initialization of xterm,
e.g.,
WM_CLASS(STRING) = "xterm", "UXTerm"
- WM_CLIENT_LEADER
- This shows the window-id which xterm provides with
an environment variable ( WINDOWID), e.g.,
WM_CLIENT_LEADER(WINDOW): window id # 0x800023
- WM_COMMAND
- This shows the command-line arguments for xterm
which are passed to X Toolkit during initialization, e.g.,
WM_COMMAND(STRING) = { "xterm", "-class", "UXTerm", "-title", "uxterm", "-u8" }
- WM_ICON_NAME
- This holds the icon title, which different window managers
handle in various ways. It is set via the iconName resource.
Applications can change this using control sequences.
- WM_LOCALE_NAME
- This shows the result from the setlocale(3) function
for the LC_CTYPE category, e.g.,
WM_LOCALE_NAME(STRING) = "en_US.UTF-8"
- WM_NAME
- This holds the window title, normally at the top of
xterm's window. It is set via the title resource.
Applications can change this using control sequences.
Properties set by Xterm
X Toolkit does not manage EWMH properties. Xterm does this directly.
- _NET_WM_ICON_NAME
- stores the icon name.
- _NET_WM_NAME
- stores the title string.
- _NET_WM_PID
- stores the process identifier for xterm's
display.
Properties used by Xterm
- _NET_SUPPORTED
- Xterm checks this property on the supporting window
to decide if the window manager supports specific maximizing styles. That
may include other window manager hints; xterm uses the X library
calls to manage those.
- _NET_SUPPORTING_WM_CHECK
- Xterm checks this to ensure that it will only update the
EWMH properties for a window manager which claims EWMH compliance.
- _NET_WM_STATE
- This tells xterm whether its window has been
maximized by the window manager, and if so, what type of maximizing:
- _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN
- _NET_WM_STATE_MAXIMIZED_HORZ
- _NET_WM_STATE_MAXIMIZED_VERT
FILES
The actual pathnames given may differ on your system.
- /etc/shells
- contains a list of valid shell programs, used by
xterm to decide if the “SHELL” environment variable
should be set for the process started by xterm.
- On systems which have the getusershell function,
xterm will use that function rather than directly reading the file,
since the file may not be present if the system uses default
settings.
- /etc/utmp
- the system log file, which records user logins.
- /etc/wtmp
- the system log file, which records user logins and
logouts.
- /usr/X11R7/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm
- the xterm default application resources.
- /usr/X11R7/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm-color
- the xterm color application resources. If your
display supports color, use this
*customization: -color
- in your .Xdefaults file to automatically use this resource
file rather than /usr/X11R7/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm. If you do
not do this, xterm uses its compiled-in default resource settings
for colors.
- /usr/X11R7/include/X11/pixmaps
- the directory in which xterm's pixmap icon files are
installed.
ERROR MESSAGES
Most of the fatal error messages from
xterm use the following format:
xterm: Error XXX, errno YYY: ZZZ
The
XXX codes (which are used by
xterm as its exit-code) are
listed below, with a brief explanation.
- 1
- is used for miscellaneous errors, usually accompanied by a
specific message,
- 11
- ERROR_FIONBIO
main: ioctl() failed on FIONBIO
- 12
- ERROR_F_GETFL
main: ioctl() failed on F_GETFL
- 13
- ERROR_F_SETFL
main: ioctl() failed on F_SETFL
- 14
- ERROR_OPDEVTTY
spawn: open() failed on /dev/tty
- 15
- ERROR_TIOCGETP
spawn: ioctl() failed on TIOCGETP
- 17
- ERROR_PTSNAME
spawn: ptsname() failed
- 18
- ERROR_OPPTSNAME
spawn: open() failed on ptsname
- 19
- ERROR_PTEM
spawn: ioctl() failed on I_PUSH/"ptem"
- 20
- ERROR_CONSEM
spawn: ioctl() failed on I_PUSH/"consem"
- 21
- ERROR_LDTERM
spawn: ioctl() failed on I_PUSH/"ldterm"
- 22
- ERROR_TTCOMPAT
spawn: ioctl() failed on I_PUSH/"ttcompat"
- 23
- ERROR_TIOCSETP
spawn: ioctl() failed on TIOCSETP
- 24
- ERROR_TIOCSETC
spawn: ioctl() failed on TIOCSETC
- 25
- ERROR_TIOCSETD
spawn: ioctl() failed on TIOCSETD
- 26
- ERROR_TIOCSLTC
spawn: ioctl() failed on TIOCSLTC
- 27
- ERROR_TIOCLSET
spawn: ioctl() failed on TIOCLSET
- 28
- ERROR_INIGROUPS
spawn: initgroups() failed
- 29
- ERROR_FORK
spawn: fork() failed
- 30
- ERROR_EXEC
spawn: exec() failed
- 32
- ERROR_PTYS
get_pty: not enough ptys
- 34
- ERROR_PTY_EXEC
waiting for initial map
- 35
- ERROR_SETUID
spawn: setuid() failed
- 36
- ERROR_INIT
spawn: can't initialize window
- 46
- ERROR_TIOCKSET
spawn: ioctl() failed on TIOCKSET
- 47
- ERROR_TIOCKSETC
spawn: ioctl() failed on TIOCKSETC
- 49
- ERROR_LUMALLOC
luit: command-line malloc failed
- 50
- ERROR_SELECT
in_put: select() failed
- 54
- ERROR_VINIT
VTInit: can't initialize window
- 57
- ERROR_KMMALLOC1
HandleKeymapChange: malloc failed
- 60
- ERROR_TSELECT
Tinput: select() failed
- 64
- ERROR_TINIT
TekInit: can't initialize window
- 71
- ERROR_BMALLOC2
SaltTextAway: malloc() failed
- 80
- ERROR_LOGEXEC
StartLog: exec() failed
- 83
- ERROR_XERROR
xerror: XError event
- 84
- ERROR_XIOERROR
xioerror: X I/O error
- 85
- ERROR_ICEERROR
ICE I/O error
- 90
- ERROR_SCALLOC
Alloc: calloc() failed on base
- 91
- ERROR_SCALLOC2
Alloc: calloc() failed on rows
- 102
- ERROR_SAVE_PTR
ScrnPointers: malloc/realloc() failed
BUGS
Large pastes do not work on some systems. This is not a bug in
xterm; it
is a bug in the pseudo terminal driver of those systems.
Xterm feeds
large pastes to the pty only as fast as the pty will accept data, but some pty
drivers do not return enough information to know if the write has succeeded.
When connected to an input method, it is possible for
xterm to hang if
the XIM server is suspended or killed.
Many of the options are not resettable after
xterm starts.
This program still needs to be rewritten. It should be split into very modular
sections, with the various emulators being completely separate widgets that do
not know about each other. Ideally, you'd like to be able to pick and choose
emulator widgets and stick them into a single control widget.
There needs to be a dialog box to allow entry of the Tek COPY file name.
SEE ALSO
resize(1), luit(1), uxterm(1), X(7), pty(4), tty(4)
Xterm Control Sequences (this is the file ctlseqs.ms).
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.html
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/manpage/xterm.html
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.faq.html
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.log.html
X Toolkit Intrinsics – C Language Interface (Xt),
Joel McCormack, Paul Asente, Ralph R. Swick (1994),
Thomas E. Dickey (2019).
Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM),
David Rosenthal and Stuart W. Marks (version 2.0, 1994).
Extended Window Manager Hints (EWMH),
X Desktop Group (version 1.3, 2005).
EWMH uses
UTF8_STRING pervasively without defining it, but does mention
the ICCCM. Version 2.0 of the ICCCM does not address UTF-8. That is an
extension added in XFree86.
- •
- Markus Kuhn summarized this in UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ for
Unix/Linux (2001), in the section “Is X11 ready for
Unicode?”
- https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html
- •
- Juliusz Chroboczek proposed the UTF8_STRING selection atom
in 1999/2000, which became part of the ICCCM in XFree86.
- https://www.irif.fr/~jch/software/UTF8_STRING/
- An Xorg developer removed that part of the documentation in
2004 when incorporating other work from XFree86 into Xorg. The feature is
still supported in Xorg, though undocumented as of 2019.
AUTHORS
Far too many people.
These contributed to the X Consortium: Loretta Guarino Reid (DEC-UEG-WSL), Joel
McCormack (DEC-UEG-WSL), Terry Weissman (DEC-UEG-WSL), Edward Moy (Berkeley),
Ralph R. Swick (MIT-Athena), Mark Vandevoorde (MIT-Athena), Bob McNamara
(DEC-MAD), Jim Gettys (MIT-Athena), Bob Scheifler (MIT X Consortium), Doug
Mink (SAO), Steve Pitschke (Stellar), Ron Newman (MIT-Athena), Jim Fulton (MIT
X Consortium), Dave Serisky (HP), Jonathan Kamens (MIT-Athena).
Beginning with XFree86, there were far more identifiable contributors. The
THANKS file in
xterm's source lists 228 in September 2020. Keep
in mind these: Jason Bacon, Jens Schweikhardt, Ross Combs, Stephen P. Wall,
David Wexelblat, and Thomas Dickey (invisible-island.net).