XTERM(1) X Window System XTERM(1)NAMExterm - terminal emulator for X
SYNOPSISxterm [-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 termi‐
nals such as VT320/VT420/VT520 (VTxxx). It also provides Tektronix
4014 emulation for programs that cannot use the window system directly.
If the underlying operating system supports terminal resizing capabili‐
ties (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 VTxxx 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), Tek‐
tronix 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 termi‐
nal 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 VTxxx window, and the “Tek Options” menu in the 4014 win‐
dow.
EMULATIONS
The VT102 emulation is fairly complete, but does not support autore‐
peat. Double-size characters are displayed properly if your font
server supports scalable fonts. The VT220 emulation does not support
soft fonts, it is otherwise complete.
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” and the “TERMCAP” environment
variables. You may also use “vt220”, but must set the terminal emula‐
tion 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 con‐
trol through a set of escape sequences different from the standard
VT102 escape sequences. (See the Xterm Control Sequences document.)
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 “COPYyyyy-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 direc‐
tory xterm is started in, or the home directory for a login xterm).
Not all of the features described in this manual are necessarily avail‐
able 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 VT102 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 ter‐
minal 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 VT102 or Tektronix mode, there are escape sequences to change
the name of the windows. Additionally, in VT102 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 (cur‐
rently button-press and release events, and button-motion events) as
keyboard control sequences. See Xterm Control Sequences for details.
OPTIONS
The xterm terminal emulator accepts the standard X Toolkit command line
options as well as many application-specific options. If the option
begins with a `+' instead of a `-', the option is restored to its
default value.
-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 gener‐
ates 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.
Most of the xterm options are actually parsed by the X Toolkit, which
sets resource values. 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.
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, 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, -B) 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 cur‐
sor whenever the focus is lost or the pointer leaves the win‐
dow.
+ah This option indicates that xterm should do text cursor high‐
lighting 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.
This 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.
-b number
This option specifies the size of the inner border (the dis‐
tance between the outer edge of the characters and the window
border) in pixels. That is the vt100 internalBorder resource.
The default is “2”.
+bc turn off text cursor blinking. This overrides the cursorBlink
resource.
-bc turn on 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 dis‐
play 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 the section specifying character
classes and discussion of the charClass resource.
-cjk_width
Set the cjkWidth resource to “true”. When turned on, charac‐
ters 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 pro‐
grams 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.
-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 param‐
eter.
-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 col‐
ors: the vt100 foreground and background colors, its text cur‐
sor 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 col‐
ors. The option sets the dynamicColors option to “true”.
-e program [ arguments ... ]
This option specifies the program (and its command line argu‐
ments) 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.
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 sup‐
ported by using luit. The -lc option should be used instead of
-en for systems with locale support.
-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.
-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.
See also the renderFont resource, which combines with this to
determine whether FreeType fonts are initially active.
-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”.
-fd pattern
This option sets the pattern for double-width fonts selected
from the FreeType library if support for that library was com‐
piled 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 man‐
ager 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 dou‐
ble-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 selec‐
tion. 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 selec‐
tion. 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 win‐
dow, 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-ter‐
minal'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 refer‐
ence, 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 hexadec‐
imal, 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 dis‐
play 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 fea‐
ture 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 con‐
trol 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”, “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, tcapFunction‐
Keys and sunKeyboard, using the Sun/PC keyboard layout.
-l Turn logging on. Normally logging is not supported, due to
security concerns. Some versions of xterm may have logging
enabled. The logfile is written to the directory from which
xterm is invoked. The filename is generated, 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 corre‐
sponds 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. 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 con‐
sistent 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 /var/log/wtmpx entry (if configured to do so),
whereas xterm-e does not.
-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.
+ls This option indicates that the shell that is started should not
be a login shell (i.e., it will be a normal “subshell”).
-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 cur‐
sor. 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 bold‐
Colors resource).
+pc This option disables the PC-style use of bold colors.
-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-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.
-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 discus‐
sion of the scaleHeight resource.
-si This option indicates that output to a window should not auto‐
matically 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 “64”.
-sm This option, corresponding to the sessionMgt resource, indi‐
cates that xterm should set up session manager callbacks.
+sm This option indicates that xterm should not set up session man‐
ager 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 VT102 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” and the “TERM‐
CAP” environment variables.
+t This option indicates that xterm should start in VT102 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 func‐
tions, 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 termi‐
nal 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 corre‐
sponding 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, dis‐
ables 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 the system utmpx log file.
+ut This option indicates that xterm should write a record into the
system utmpx 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 start‐
ing 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 immedi‐
ately, 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 con‐
sole 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 spe‐
cialized 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 “*tekGe‐
ometry” resource.
#geom This option specifies the preferred position of the icon win‐
dow. 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 (see below).
The default icon name is the application name.
If no suitable icon is found, xterm provides a compiled-in
pixmap.
-r This option indicates that reverse video should be simulated by
swapping the foreground and background colors. It is equiva‐
lent to -rv.
-w number
This option specifies the width in pixels of the border sur‐
rounding 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”.
-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 sur‐
rounding 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 win‐
dow 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(1).
-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
VT102 window; see X(1).
The normal geometry specification can be suffixed with @ fol‐
lowed 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 exe‐
cutable file name. Name should not contain “.” or “*” charac‐
ters.
-rv This option indicates that reverse video should be simulated by
swapping the foreground and background colors. The correspond‐
ing 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. The
default title is the command line specified after the -e
option, if any, otherwise the application name.
-xrm resourcestring
This option specifies a resource string to be used. This is
especially useful for setting resources that do not have sepa‐
rate command line options.
RESOURCES
The program understands all of the core X Toolkit resource names and
classes. 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 termi‐
nal 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 char‐
acter for the initial state of DECBKM
· if backarrowKeyIsErase is false, xterm sets DECBKM to 2
(internal). This ties together backarrowKey and the con‐
trol 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
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 instead of standard escape
sequences.
See also the keyboardType resource.
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/local/share/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 com‐
piled-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, includ‐
ing “panel” and “menu”. Those are typically set via a “.desk‐
top” 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 over‐
ridden 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, tcapFunction‐
Keys and sunKeyboard. The resource's value should be one of
the corresponding strings “hp”, “sco”, “sun”, “tcap” or
“vt220”. The individual resources are provided for legacy sup‐
port; this resource is simpler to use.
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 minBuf‐
Size 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”.
messages (class Messages)
Specifies whether write access to the terminal is allowed ini‐
tially. See mesg(1). The default is “true”.
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 unneces‐
sary (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.
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 transla‐
tions at startup. The resource value is a comma-separated list
of keywords, which may be abbreviated: “fullscreen”, “scroll-
lock”, “shift-fonts” or “wheel-mouse”. Xterm also recognizes
“default”, but omitting that will make the program unusable
unless you provide a similar definition in your resource set‐
tings.
ptyHandshake (class PtyHandshake)
If “true”, xterm will perform handshaking during initialization
to ensure that the parent and child processes update the utmpx
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.
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 ini‐
tialization 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 intial screen size, e.g., via window manager inter‐
action.
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 OS X systems, “true” otherwise.
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”.
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 lim‐
ited 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 instead of standard escape
sequences.
See also the keyboardType resource.
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 instead of standard escape
sequences.
See also the keyboardType resource.
sunKeyboard (class SunKeyboard)
Specifies whether or not Sun/PC keyboard layout 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 sunKey‐
board 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 the document 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 should be generated for function
keys instead of standard escape sequences. The default is
“false”, i.e., this feature is disabled.
See also the keyboardType resource.
termName (class TermName)
Specifies the terminal type name to be set in the TERM environ‐
ment 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 and the
characters to which they may be bound. Allowable keywords
include: brk, dsusp, eof, eol, eol2, erase, erase2, flush,
intr, kill, lnext, quit, rprnt, start, status, stop, susp,
swtch and weras. 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 lit‐
eral backslash in an X resource escapes the next character.
This is very useful for overriding the default terminal set‐
tings without having to do an 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.
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 utmpx 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 utmpx log file. If true, xterm will not
try. The default is “false”.
waitForMap (class WaitForMap)
Specifies whether or not xterm should wait for the initial win‐
dow 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
-geom. 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 iconi‐
fied 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 fea‐
ture. 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 pat‐
terns 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 applica‐
tion 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 sup‐
port), 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 over‐
rides both the alwaysBoldMode and the boldMode resources.
alwaysBoldMode (class AlwaysBoldMode)
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”.
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 tog‐
gling 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 configura‐
tions, 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 (gen‐
erated using the X protocol SendEvent request) should be inter‐
preted 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 force‐
fully 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 sup‐
ports. This is a constant, depending on how it is com‐
piled, 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 con‐
trol 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 cor‐
responding combinations of ESC-prefix and 8-bit characters.
The default is “False”. Xterm provides a menu option for tog‐
gling this resource.
alternateScroll (class ScrollCond)
If “true”, the scroll-back and scroll-forw actions send cur‐
sor-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 han‐
dle 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 high‐
lighted 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 con‐
trol 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 man‐
ager 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 over‐
striking. 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 selec‐
tions (font1 through font6). 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 pro‐
vide 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 specifica‐
tion 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 use‐
ful 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 char‐
acters found within the string are not ignored; they are pro‐
cessed 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 clear‐
ing 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.
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, gray30, red, green, yellow, a customizable 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 “XtDe‐
faultForeground”.
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 “XtDe‐
faultForeground”.
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 “XtDe‐
faultForeground”.
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.
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 dis‐
ables all colors, including this. The default is “false”.
colorUL (class ColorUL)
This specifies the color to use to display underlined charac‐
ters 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 4. 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. The default is
“false”.
Xterm uses two variables to determine whether the cursor
blinks. One is set by this resource. The other is set by con‐
trol sequences (private mode 12 and DECSCUSR). Xterm tests the
XOR of the two variables.
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”.
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”.
cursorUnderLine (class CursorUnderLine)
Specifies whether to make the cursor underlined or a box. The
default is “false”.
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”.
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 repre‐
sented 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 lay‐
out on the screen as the original text.
deleteIsDEL (class DeleteIsDEL)
Specifies whether the Delete key on the editing keypad should
send DEL (127) or the VT220-style Remove escape sequence. A
“false” value enables the latter. The default is “Maybe”.
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.
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
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.
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 win‐
dow 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.
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 pre‐
sented as a single character, modified according to the eight‐
BitMeta resource. If “false”, Meta characters are converted
into a two-character sequence with the character itself pre‐
ceded 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 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 Num‐
Lock 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” dif‐
fers 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 char‐
acter and ignores the eighth bit.
eightBitMeta (class EightBitMeta)
This controls the way xterm modifies the eighth bit of a sin‐
gle-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 capabil‐
ities 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.
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.
If not specified, or if there is no match for both normal and
bold fonts, xterm uses the 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 appli‐
cation requires this, e.g., in CJK applications. There is no
default value.
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 “14.0” On the VT Fonts menu, this corresponds to
the Default entry.
Although the default is “14.0”, 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. For example, the “fixed”
font usually has a pointsize of “8.0”. If you set faceSize to
match the size of the bitmap font, then switching between bit‐
map and TrueType fonts via the font menu will give comparable
sizes for the window.
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.
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.
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.
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, correspond‐
ing 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, correspond‐
ing 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.
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 nor‐
mally 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 char‐
acters, and draws them directly. The default is “false”.
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.
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 mod‐
ified 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 com‐
pares 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 VT102 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 high‐
lightColor to override the reversed foreground/background col‐
ors 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 fg/fg (useless)
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 high‐
lightTextColor 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)
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 posi‐
tions 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 XtCInputMethod)
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 charac‐
ters. It is implemented only for TrueType fonts.
jumpScroll (class JumpScroll)
Specifies whether or not jump scroll should be used. This cor‐
responds 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 keyboard rather than asking the clipboard for its
current contents when told to provide the selection. The
default is “false”.
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”.
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.
nameKeymap (class NameKeymap)
See the discussion of the keymap() action.
limitResize (class LimitResize)
Limits resizing of the screen via control sequence to a given
multiple of the display dimensions. The default is “1”.
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 accord‐
ing 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 subre‐
sources 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 subre‐
sources are found, the normal fonts such as “*vt100.font”,
etc., are used. 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.
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”.
metaSendsEscape (class MetaSendsEscape)
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 eightBit‐
Input 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 val‐
ues, and allows up to mkSamplePass mismatches before the test
fails. The default (for the allowed number of mismatches) is
256.
mkSampleSize (class MkSampleSize)
With mkSamplePass, this specifies a startup test used for ini‐
tializing wide character width calculations. The default (num‐
ber of characters to check) is 1024.
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
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.
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 modifyCur‐
sorKeys:
-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.
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-mod‐
ifier 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 other keys (such as “2”) when modified by Con‐
trol-, Alt- or Meta-modifiers. This feature does not apply to
function keys and well-defined keys such as ESC or the control
keys. 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 con‐
trol character cases, e.g., Control-Space to make a NUL.
2 enables this feature for keys including the exceptions
listed.
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 asyn‐
chronously. 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”.
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 control sequences for func‐
tion keys F1 to F4, for compatibility with X Consortium xterm.
Otherwise, it uses the VT100-style codes for PF1 to PF4. The
default is “false”.
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 section (see POINTER USAGE). Multi‐
ple 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.
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 a “word” as determined by the regular expression
which follows in the resource value.
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 deter‐
mines the maximum number of clicks by the onXClicks resource
values which are set.
openIm (class XtCOpenIm)
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”.
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
1 the application running in xterm has not activated mouse
mode. This is the default.
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 XtCPrecompose)
Tells xterm whether to precompose UTF-8 data into Normalization
Form C, which combines commonly-used accents onto base charac‐
ters. If it does not do this, accents are left as separatate
characters. The default is “true”.
preeditType (class XtCPreeditType)
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 VTxxx 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 (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 (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 (PrintModeImmediate)
When the print-immediate action is invoked, xterm prints the
screen contents directly to a file. You can use the printMod‐
eImmediate 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 (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 (PrintOptsImmediate)
Specify the range of text which is printed to a file when the
print-immediately 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
selectd.
· 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 nor‐
mal 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 (PrintOptsOnXError)
Specify the range of text which is printed to a file when the
print-on-error action is invoked. The resource value is inter‐
preted 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 com‐
mand. 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 true, allocate 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.
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”.
regisScreenSize (class RegisScreenSize)
If xterm is configured to support ReGIS graphics, this resource
tells xterm the maximum size (in pixels) for graphics.
Xterm accepts a special resource value “auto”, which tells
xterm to use the decTerminalID resource to set the maximum size
based on the hardware terminal's limits. Otherwise, xterm
expects the size to be given as heightxwidth, e.g., “800x1000”.
The default resource value is “800x1000”.
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
startup using the normal (bitmap) font, but enable the
“TrueType Fonts” menu entry to allow runtime switching
to/from TrueType fonts.
If there is no faceName resource set, then runtime switch‐
ing to TrueType fonts is disabled. Xterm has a separate
compiled-in value for faceName for the special case where
renderFont is “default”. That is normally “mono”.
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 R4. 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 XtCRetryInputMethod)
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 com‐
mand-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 reverseV‐
ideo 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” fea‐
ture), 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 “64”.
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 wid‐
get 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 automat‐
ically 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.
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 true, graphics scroll up one line at a time when sixels
would be written past the bottom line on the window. The
default is “false”.
tekGeometry (class Geometry)
Specifies the preferred size and position of the Tektronix win‐
dow. 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 pro‐
cessing 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)
Specifies 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. 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. 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 (overrides 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 underlin‐
ing when color is being used for the underline attribute. The
default is “true”.
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 turn‐
ing 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 pat‐
terns 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, allow‐
ing 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 over‐
ride 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 allow UTF-8
encoded title strings. That cancels the translation to UTF-8,
allowing UTF-8 strings to be displayed as is.
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 the control sequences document), to set an
equivalent flag. The titleModes resource sets the same value,
which overrides this resource.
The default is “false”.
veryBoldColors (class VeryBoldColors)
Specifies whether to combine video attributes with colors spec‐
ified 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 display‐
ing 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 char‐
acter escape sequences while in UTF-8 mode. 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 dou‐
ble-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 sta‐
tus report. The possibilities are “none”, which sends no ter‐
minating 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 “lineN” where N is a number are separators with class
SmeLine.
As with all X resource-based widgets, the labels mentioned are custom‐
ary 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.
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 old-function-keys(toggle) action.
hpFunctionKeys (class SmeBSB)
This entry invokes the hp-function-keys(toggle) action.
scoFunctionKeys (class SmeBSB)
This entry invokes the sco-function-keys(toggle) action.
sunFunctionKeys (class SmeBSB)
This entry invokes the 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.
visualbell (class SmeBSB)
This entry invokes the set-visualbell(toggle) action.
bellIsUrgent (class SmeBSB)
This entry invokes the set-bellIsUrgent(toggle) action.
poponbell (class SmeBSB)
This entry invokes the set-poponbell(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.
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.
fontescape (class SmeBSB)
This entry invokes the set-vt-font(e) action.
fontsel (class SmeBSB)
This entry invokes the set-vt-font(s) 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-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.
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:
thickness (class Thickness)
Specifies the width in pixels of the scrollbar.
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.
The “thumb” of the scrollbar is a simple checkerboard pattern
alternating pixels for foreground and background color.
POINTER USAGE
Once the VT102 window is created, xterm allows you to select text and
copy it within the same or other windows.
Selection
The selection functions are invoked when the pointer buttons are used
with no modifiers, and when they are used with the “shift” key. 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. 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 PRIMARY selection when the button is
released. 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/but‐
ton 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
PRIMARY selection, if any, otherwise from the cut buffer, inserting it
as keyboard input.
Pointer button three (usually right) extends the current selection.
(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 com‐
mand 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 VT102 window, the Tektronix window does not allow the copy‐
ing 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 server.
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.
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 (see resource selectToClipboard),
the problem with persistence of ownership is bypassed. Otherwise,
there is no difference regarding the data which can be passed via
selection.
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.
However, many applications use CLIPBOARD in imitation of other window‐
ing 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.
Selection Targets
The different types of data which are passed depend on what the receiv‐
ing 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-charac‐
ter support, it both accepts and provides this type.
TEXT the text is in the encoding which corresponds to your cur‐
rent 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 config‐
ured 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 spe‐
cific 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
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 VT102 and Tektronix windows. There are several sections:
Commands for managing X events:
Toolbar
Clicking on the “Toolbar” menu entry hides the toolbar if
it is visible, and shows it if it is not.
Secure Keyboard (securekbd)
The Secure Keyboard mode is helpful when typing in pass‐
words or other sensitive data in an unsecure environment;
see SECURITY below (but read the limitations carefully).
Allow SendEvents (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 (redraw)
Forces the X display to repaint; useful in some environ‐
ments.
Commands for capturing output:
Log to File (logging)
Captures text sent to the screen in a logfile, as in the
-l logging option.
Print-All Immediately
Invokes the print-immediate action, sending the text of
the current window directly to a file, as specified by
the printFileImmediate, printModeImmediate and printOpt‐
sImmediate resources.
Print-All 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 printFileXError, printModeXError and
printOptsXError resources.
Print Window (print)
Sends the text of the current window to the program given
in the printerCommand resource.
Redirect to Printer (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.
Modes for setting keyboard style:
8-Bit Controls (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 the document Xterm Control
Sequences). This corresponds to the eightBitControl
resource.
Backarrow Key (BS/DEL) (backarrow key)
Modifies the behavior of the backarrow key, making it
transmit either a backspace (8) or delete (127) charac‐
ter. This corresponds to the backarrowKey resource.
Alt/NumLock Modifiers (num-lock)
Controls the treatment of Alt- and NumLock-key modifiers.
This corresponds to the numLock resource.
Meta Sends Escape (meta-esc)
Controls whether Meta keys are converted into a two-char‐
acter sequence with the character itself preceded by ESC.
This corresponds to the metaSendsEscape resource.
Delete is DEL (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 (oldFunctionKeys)
HP Function-Keys (hpFunctionKeys)
SCO Function-Keys (scoFunctionKeys)
Sun Function-Keys (sunFunctionKeys)
VT220 Keyboard (sunKeyboard)
These act as a radio-button, selecting one style for the
keyboard layout. It corresponds to more than one
resource setting: sunKeyboard, sunFunctionKeys, scoFunc‐
tionKeys and hpFunctionKeys.
Commands for process signalling:
Send STOP Signal (suspend)
Send CONT Signal (continue)
Send INT Signal (interrupt)
Send HUP Signal (hangup)
Send TERM Signal (terminate)
Send KILL Signal (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 (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 vtMenu sets various modes in the VT102 emulation, and is popped up
when the “control” key and pointer button two are pressed in the VT102
window.
VT102/VT220 Modes:
Enable Scrollbar (scrollbar)
Enable (or disable) the scrollbar. This corresponds to
the -sb option and the scrollBar resource.
Enable Jump Scroll (jumpscroll)
Enable (or disable) jump scrolling. This corresponds to
the -j option and the jumpScroll resource.
Enable Reverse Video (reversevideo)
Enable (or disable) reverse-video. This corresponds to
the -rv option and the reverseVideo resource.
Enable Auto Wraparound (autowrap)
Enable (or disable) auto-wraparound. This corresponds to
the -aw option and the autoWrap resource.
Enable Reverse Wraparound (reversewrap)
Enable (or disable) reverse wraparound. This corresponds
to the -rw option and the reverseWrap resource.
Enable Auto Linefeed (autolinefeed)
Enable (or disable) auto-linefeed. This is the VT102 NEL
function, which causes the emulator to emit a linefeed
after each carriage return. There is no corresponding
command-line option or resource setting.
Enable Application Cursor Keys (appcursor)
Enable (or disable) application cursor keys. This corre‐
sponds to the appcursorDefault resource. There is no
corresponding command-line option.
Enable Application Keypad (appkeypad)
Enable (or disable) application keypad keys. This corre‐
sponds to the appkeypadDefault resource. There is no
corresponding command-line option.
Scroll to Bottom on Key Press (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 (scrollttyoutput)
Enable (or disable) scrolling to the bottom of the
scrolling region on output to the terminal. This corre‐
sponds to the -si option and the scrollTtyOutput
resource.
Allow 80/132 Column Switching (allow132)
Enable (or disable) switching between 80 and 132 columns.
This corresponds to the -132 option and the c132
resource.
Keep Selection (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, it can provide the corresponding text to other
clients via cut/paste. This corresponds to the keepSe‐
lection resource. There is no corresponding command-line
option.
Select to Clipboard (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.
Enable Visual Bell (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 (bellIsUrgent)
Enable (or disable) Urgency window manager hint when Con‐
trol-G is received. This corresponds to the bellIsUrgent
resource.
Enable Pop on Bell (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 (cursorblink)
Enable (or disable) the blinking-cursor feature. This
corresponds to the -bc option and the cursorBlink
resource. There is also an escape sequence (see the doc‐
ument Xterm Control Sequences). The menu entry and the
escape sequence states are XOR'd: if both are enabled,
the cursor will not blink, if only one is enabled, the
cursor will blink.
Enable Alternate Screen Switching (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 (activeicon)
Enable (or disable) the active-icon feature. This corre‐
sponds to the -ai option and the activeIcon resource.
Sixel Scrolling (sixelScrolling)
When enabled, sixel graphics are positioned at the cur‐
rent 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 dis‐
abled, 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 com‐
mand-line option.
Private Color Registers (privateColorRegisters)
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 True‐
Color hardware. This corresponds to the privateColorReg‐
isters resource. There is no corresponding command-line
option.
VT102/VT220 Commands:
Do Soft Reset (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 corre‐
sponds to the VT220 DECSTR control sequence.
Do Full Reset (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 (clearsavedlines)
Perform a full reset, and also clear the saved lines.
Commands for setting the current screen:
Show Tek Window (tekshow)
When enabled, pops the Tektronix 4014 window up (makes it
visible). When disabled, hides the Tektronix 4014 win‐
dow.
Switch to Tek Mode (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 VTxxx window.
Hide VT Window (vthide)
When enabled, hides the VTxxx window, shows the Tektronix
4014 window if it was not already visible and switches
the input stream to that window. When disabled, shows
the VTxxx window, and switches the input stream to that
window.
Show Alternate Screen (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 fontMenu pops up when when the “control” key and pointer button
three are pressed in a window. It sets the font used in the VT102 win‐
dow, 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 alterna‐
tives:
Default (fontdefault)
Set the font to the default, i.e., that given by the
*VT100.font resource.
Unreadable (font1)
Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font1 resource.
Tiny (font2)
Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font2 resource.
Small (font3)
Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font3 resource.
Medium (font4)
Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font4 resource.
Large (font5)
Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font5 resource.
Huge (font6)
Set the font to that given by the *VT100.font6 resource.
Escape Sequence
This allows you to set the font last specified by the Set
Font escape sequence (see the document Xterm Control
Sequences).
Selection (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
This is normally checked (enabled). When unchecked,
xterm will not use bold fonts. The setting corresponds
to the allowBoldFonts resource.
Line-Drawing Characters (font-linedrawing)
When set, tells xterm to draw its own line-drawing char‐
acters. Otherwise it relies on the font containing
these. Compare to the forceBoxChars resource.
Packed Font (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 (font-doublesize)
When set, xterm may ask the font server to produce scaled
versions of the normal font, for VT102 double-size char‐
acters.
The third section allows you to modify the way it is specified:
TrueType Fonts (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 (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 (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.
UTF-8 Titles (utf8-titles)
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 oper‐
ations which can be controlled by writing escape sequences to
the terminal. These are disabled if the SendEvents feature is
enabled:
Allow Color Ops (allow-font-ops)
This corresponds to the allowColorOps resource. Enable
or disable control sequences that set/query the colors.
Allow Font Ops (allow-font-ops)
This corresponds to the allowFontOps resource. Enable or
disable control sequences that set/query the font.
Allow Tcap Ops (allow-tcap-ops)
Enable or disable control sequences that query the termi‐
nal's notion of its function-key strings, as termcap or
terminfo capabilities. This corresponds to the allowT‐
capOps resource.
Allow Title Ops (allow-title-ops)
Enable or disable control sequences that modify the win‐
dow title or icon name. This corresponds to the allowTi‐
tleOps resource.
Allow Window Ops (allow-window-ops)
Enable or disable extended window control sequences (as
used in dtterm). This corresponds to the allowWindowOps
resource.
TEK Options
The 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 (tektextlarge)
#2 Size Characters (tektext2)
#3 Size Characters (tektext3)
Small Characters (tektextsmall)
Commands:
PAGE (tekpage)
Clear the Tektronix window.
RESET (tekreset)
COPY (tekcopy)
Windows:
Show VT Window (vtshow)
Switch to VT Mode (vtmode)
Hide Tek Window (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 secu‐
rity 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 applica‐
tions 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 bet‐
ter authorization mechanism than is provided by X.
Subject to all of these caveats, a simple mechanism exists for protect‐
ing 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 key‐
strokes.
· 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 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 dis‐
plays 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 win‐
dow 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 fore‐
ground 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, although 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 bytes 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 char‐
acters 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 unpre‐
dictable behavior.
Actions
The following actions are provided for use within the vt100 or tek4014
translations resources:
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-send-events(on/off/toggle)
This action sets, unsets or toggles the allowSendEvents
resource and is also invoked by the allowsends entry in main‐
Menu.
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() (see below) 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
beep(). 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 fea‐
ture 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 echo‐
ing the event's position (i.e., character line and column) in
the following format:
^X ESC G <line+“ ”> <col+“ ”>
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 sec‐
ond parameter specifies the method for copying the data as in
the onClicks 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 charac‐
ter 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 metaSend‐
sEscape 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 copy‐
ing the data as in the onClicks resource.
insert-selection(sourcename [, ...])
This action inserts the string found in the selection or cut‐
buffer indicated by sourcename. Sources are checked in the
order given (case is significant) until one is found. Com‐
monly-used selections include: PRIMARY, SECONDARY, and CLIP‐
BOARD. 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 (case is signifi‐
cant). The name None restores the original translation table.
larger-vt-font()
Set the font to the next larger one, based on the font dimen‐
sions. 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 wideBold‐
Font.
maximize()
Resizes the window to fill the screen.
meta-sends-escape()
This action toggles the state of the metaSendsEscape 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 over‐
ride 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 new‐
line) to the screen width (i.e., printerNewLine is
``true'').
noAttrs
the page is printed without attributes (i.e., printAt‐
tributes 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 printerCom‐
mand 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 printFileXError, printModeXError and printOpt‐
sXError 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 cur‐
sor 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 visi‐
ble.
The count argument indicates the number of units (which may be
page, halfpage, pixel, or line) by which to scroll.
An adjustment can be specified for these values by appending a
“+” or “-” sign followed by a number, e.g., page-2 to specify 2
lines less than a page.
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 described in the
section named 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 allowScrol‐
lLock resource.
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 selec‐
tion, without affecting the selection mode.
select-start()
This action begins text selection at the current pointer loca‐
tion. See the section on POINTER USAGE for information on mak‐
ing selections.
send-signal(signame)
This action sends the signal named by signame to the xterm sub‐
process (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
linefeeds. 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's
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 func‐
tion 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 abso‐
lute 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 tek‐
mode 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-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/e/s [,normalfont [, boldfont]])
This action sets the font or fonts currently being used in the
VT102 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 6 indicate the fonts specified by the font1 through
font6 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 addi‐
tional two optional parameters are recognized for the e argu‐
ment: wide font and wide bold font.
smaller-vt-font()
Set the font to the next smaller one, based on the font dimen‐
sions. 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 selec‐
tion is extended to the current pointer location.
start-cursor-extend()
This action is similar to select-extend except that the selec‐
tion 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 white‐
space 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 cur‐
rent window contents to a file in the current directory begin‐
ning 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 echo‐
ing 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 VT102 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\
<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)
Here is an example which uses shifted select/paste to copy to the clip‐
board, 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 corre‐
sponding 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; the class name provides a more-specific
match than the widget name. A leading “*” is used because the widget
hierarchy above the vt100 widget depends on whether the toolbar support
is compiled into xterm.
Below is shown a sample of 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") string(0x0d) \n\
<Key>F18: string("step") string(0x0d) \n\
<Key>F19: string("continue") string(0x0d) \n\
<Key>F20: string("print ") 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 differ‐
ences 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 con‐
text 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 men‐
tion 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 func‐
tions such as tab and backspace) do not include the escape charac‐
ter.
With all of that in mind, the standard refers to these sequences of
characters as “control sequences”.
The Xterm Control Sequences document 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 Tek‐
tronix terminals, or from more widely used standards such as ISO-6429.
A few examples of usage are given in this section.
Window 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, not 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.
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 can‐
not 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 defi‐
nitions 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 stati‐
cally 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 $terminfo array for scripts.
In particular, one can use the terminal database, transforming when
defining a key-binding. By transforming the output so that CSI and
SS3 are equated, zsh can use the terminal database to obtain useful
definitions for its command-line use regardless of whether the ter‐
minal uses normal or application mode initially. Here is an exam‐
ple:
[[ "$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 stan‐
dard, 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 con‐
vert 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 can‐
not be easily moved between different user environments.
ENVIRONMENT
Xterm sets several environment variables:
DISPLAY
is the display name, pointing to the X server (see DISPLAY NAMES
in X(1)).
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 termi‐
nal 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 necessar‐
ily 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).
Depending on your system configuration, xterm may also set the follow‐
ing:
COLUMNS
the width of the xterm in characters (cf: “stty columns”).
HOME when xterm is configured to update utmp.
LINES
the height of the xterm in characters (cf: “stty rows”).
LOGNAME
when xterm is configured to update utmp.
SHELL
when xterm is configured 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.
TERMINFO
may be defined to a nonstandard location in the configure script.
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.
/var/run/utmpx
the system logfile, which records user logins.
/var/log/wtmpx
the system logfile, which records user logins and logouts.
/usr/local/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm
the xterm default application resources.
/usr/local/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/local/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm. If you do not
do this, xterm uses its compiled-in default resource settings for
colors.
/usr/local/share/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 spe‐
cific 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 ALSOresize(1), luit(1), uxterm(1), X(1), pty(4), tty(4)
Xterm Control Sequences (this is the file ctlseqs.ms).
http://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.html
http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html
http://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.faq.html
AUTHORS
Far too many people, including:
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), Jason
Bacon, Ross Combs, Stephen P. Wall, David Wexelblat, and Thomas Dickey
(invisible-island.net).
Patch #322 2016-01-02 XTERM(1)
