Old Options

The following command line arguments are provided for compatibility with older versions. They may not be supported in the next release as the X Toolkit provides standard options that accomplish the same task.

%geom

This option specifies the preferred size and position of the Tektronix window. It is shorthand for specifying the “tekGeometry” resource.

#geom

This option specifies the preferred position of the icon window. It is shorthand for specifying the “iconGeometry” resource.

-T string

This option specifies the title for xterm's windows. It is equivalent to -title.

-n string

This option specifies the icon name for xterm's windows. It is shorthand for specifying the “iconName” resource. Note that this is not the same as the X Toolkit option -name. The default icon name is the application name.

If no suitable icon is found, xterm provides a compiled-in pixmap.

X Toolkit sets the WM_ICON_NAME property using this value.

-r

This option indicates that reverse video should be simulated by swapping the foreground and background colors. It is equivalent to -rv.

-w number

This option specifies the width in pixels of the border surrounding the window. It is equivalent to -borderwidth or -bw.

X Toolkit Options

The following standard X Toolkit command line arguments are commonly used with xterm:

-bd color

This option specifies the color to use for the border of the window. The corresponding resource name is borderColor. Xterm uses the X Toolkit default, which is “XtDefaultForeground”.

Xterm's VT100 window has two borders: the inner border internalBorder and the outer border borderWidth, managed by the X Toolkit.

Normally xterm fills the inner border using the VT100 window's background color. If the colorInnerBorder resource is enabled, then xterm may fill the inner border using the borderColor resource.

-bg color

This option specifies the color to use for the background of the window. The corresponding resource name is background. The default is “XtDefaultBackground”.

-bw number

This option specifies the width in pixels of the border surrounding the window.

This appears to be a legacy of older X releases. It sets the borderWidth resource of the shell widget, and may provide advice to your window manager to set the thickness of the window frame. Most window managers do not use this information. See the -b option, which controls the inner border of the xterm window.

-display display

This option specifies the X server to contact; see X(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.

Xterm's -fn option accepts a comma-separated list like -fa, for the VT100 widget, using the first bitmap font (and discarding additional fonts). However, other widgets (such as the toolbar) will be confused by this and give a warning.

-font font

This is the same as -fn.

-geometry geometry

This option specifies the preferred size and position of the VTxxx window; see X(1).

The normal geometry specification can be suffixed with @ followed by a Xinerama screen specification; it can be either g for the global screen (default), c for the current screen or a screen number.

-iconic

This option indicates that xterm should ask the window manager to start it as an icon rather than as the normal window. The corresponding resource name is iconic.

-name name

This option specifies the application name under which resources are to be obtained, rather than the default executable file name. Name should not contain “.” or “*” characters.

-rv

This option indicates that reverse video should be simulated by swapping the foreground and background colors. The corresponding resource name is reverseVideo.

+rv

Disable the simulation of reverse video by swapping foreground and background colors.

-title string

This option specifies the window title string, which may be displayed by window managers if the user so chooses. It is shorthand for specifying the “title” resource. The default title is the command line specified after the -e option, if any, otherwise the application name.

X Toolkit sets the WM_NAME property using this value.

-xrm resourcestring

This option specifies a resource string to be used. This is especially useful for setting resources that do not have separate command line options.

X Toolkit accepts alternate names for a few of these options, e.g.,

• “-background” for “-bg”
• “-font” for “-fn”
• “-foreground” for “-fg”

Abbreviated options also are supported, e.g., “-v” for “-version.”

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

will affect DECBKM. First, xterm obtains the initial erase character:

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:

Summarizing the initialization details:

erase	BKIE	BK	DECBKM	result
^?	false	false	2	^H
^?	false	true	2	^?
^?	true	false	0	^?
^?	true	true	1	^?
^H	false	false	2	^H
^H	false	true	2	^?
^H	true	false	0	^H
^H	true	true	1	^H

buffered (class Buffered)

Normally xterm is built with double-buffer support. This resource can be used to turn it on or off. Setting the resource to “true” turns double-buffering on. The default value is “False”.

bufferedFPS (class BufferedFPS)

When xterm is built with double-buffer support, this gives the maximum number of frames/second. The default is “40” and is limited to the range 1 through 100.

cursorTheme (class CursorTheme)

The Xcursor(1) library provides a way to change the pointer shape and size. The X11 library uses this library to extend the font- and glyph-cursor calls used by applications such as xterm to substitute external files for the built-in “core” cursors provided by X.

Xterm uses the pointerShape resource to select the X cursor shape. Most of the available sets of cursor themes provide an incomplete set of “core” cursors (while possibly adding other cursors). Because of this limitation, xterm disables the feature by default.

The cursor theme feature can be useful because X cursors are not scalable and on a high-resolution display, the cursors are hard to find. Some of the cursor themes include larger cursors to work around this limitation:

At startup, xterm sets the XCURSOR_THEME environment variable to enable or disable the cursor theme feature. The default value is “none”. Other values (including “default”) are passed to the Xcursor library to select a cursor theme.

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:

The default is “false”.

hold (class Hold)

If true, xterm will not immediately destroy its window when the shell command completes. It will wait until you use the window manager to destroy/kill the window, or if you use the menu entries that send a signal, e.g., HUP or KILL. You may scroll back, select text, etc., to perform most graphical operations. Resizing the display will lose data, however, since this involves interaction with the shell which is no longer running.

hpFunctionKeys (class HpFunctionKeys)

Specifies whether or not HP function key escape codes should be generated for function keys. The default is “false”, i.e., this feature is disabled.

The keyboardType resource is the preferred mechanism for selecting this mode.

iconGeometry (class IconGeometry)

Specifies the preferred size and position of the application when iconified. It is not necessarily obeyed by all window managers.

iconHint (class IconHint)

Specifies an icon which will be added to the window manager hints. Xterm provides no default value.

Set this resource to “none” to omit the hint entirely, using whatever the window manager may decide.

If the iconHint resource is given (or is set via the -n option) xterm searches for a pixmap file with that name, in the current directory as well as in /usr/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 compiled-in:

In either case, xterm allows for adding a “_48x48” to specify the largest of the pixmaps as a default. That is, “mini.xterm” is the same as “mini.xterm_48x48”.

If no explicit iconHint resource is given (or if none of the compiled-in names matches), xterm uses “mini.xterm” (which is always compiled-in).

The iconHint resource has no effect on “desktop” files, including “panel” and “menu”. Those are typically set via a “.desktop” file; xterm provides samples for itself (and the uxterm script). The more capable desktop systems allow changing the icon on a per-user basis.

iconName (class IconName)

Specifies a label for xterm when iconified. Xterm provides no default value; some window managers may assume the application name, e.g., “xterm”.

Setting the iconName resource sets the icon label unless overridden by zIconBeep or the control sequences which change the window and icon labels.

keyboardType (class KeyboardType)

Enables one (or none) of the various keyboard-type resources: hpFunctionKeys, scoFunctionKeys, sunFunctionKeys, tcapFunctionKeys, oldXtermFKeys and sunKeyboard.

The resource's value should be one of the corresponding strings “hp”, “sco”, “sun”, “tcap”, “legacy” or “vt220”, respectively.

The individual resources are provided for legacy support; this resource is simpler to use. Xterm will use only one keyboard-type, but if multiple resources are set, it warns and uses the last one it checks.

The default is “unknown”, i.e., none of the associated resources are set via this resource.

maxBufSize (class MaxBufSize)

Specify the maximum size of the input buffer. The default is “32768”. You cannot set this to a value less than the minBufSize resource. It will be increased as needed to make that value evenly divide this one.

On some systems you may want to increase one or both of the maxBufSize and minBufSize resource values to achieve better performance if the operating system prefers larger buffer sizes.

maximized (class Maximized)

Specifies whether or not xterm should ask the window manager to maximize its layout on startup. The default is “false”.

menuHeight (class MenuHeight)

Specifies the height of the toolbar, which may be increased by the X Toolkit Layout widget depending upon the fontsize used. The default is “25”.

menuLocale (class MenuLocale)

Specify the locale used for character-set computations when loading the popup menus. Use this to improve initialization performance of the Athena popup menus, which may load unnecessary (and very large) fonts, e.g., in a locale having UTF-8 encoding. The default is “C” (POSIX).

To use the current locale (only useful if you have localized the resource settings for the menu entries), set the resource to an empty string.

messages (class Messages)

Specifies whether write access to the terminal is allowed initially. See mesg(1). The default is “true”.

minBufSize (class MinBufSize)

Specify the minimum size of the input buffer, i.e., the amount of data that xterm requests on each read. The default is “4096”. You cannot set this to a value less than 64.

omitTranslation (class OmitTranslation)

Selectively omit one or more parts of xterm's default translations at startup. The resource value is a comma-separated list of keywords, which may be abbreviated:

ptyHandshake (class PtyHandshake)

If “true”, xterm will perform handshaking during initialization to ensure that the parent and child processes update the utmp and stty(1) state.

See also waitForMap which waits for the pseudo-terminal's notion of the screen size, and ptySttySize which resets the screen size after other terminal initialization is complete. The default is “true”.

ptyInitialErase (class PtyInitialErase)

If “true”, xterm will use the pseudo-terminal's sense of the stty erase value. If “false”, xterm will set the stty erase value to match its own configuration, using the kb string from the termcap entry as a reference, if available.

In either case, the result is applied to the TERMCAP variable which xterm sets, if the system uses TERMCAP.

See also the ttyModes resource, which may override this. The default is “False”.

ptySttySize (class PtySttySize)

If “true”, xterm will reset the screen size after terminal initialization is complete. This is needed for some systems whose pseudo-terminals cannot propagate terminal characteristics. Where it is not needed, it can interfere with other methods for setting the initial screen size, e.g., via window manager interaction.

See also waitForMap which waits for a handshake-message giving the pseudo-terminal's notion of the screen size. The default is “false” on Linux and macOS systems, “true” otherwise.

reportColors (class ReportColors)

If true, xterm will print to the standard output a summary of colors as it allocates them. The default is “false”.

reportFonts (class ReportFonts)

If true, xterm will print to the standard output a summary of each font's metrics (size, number of glyphs, etc.), as it loads them. The default is “false”.

reportIcons (class ReportIcons)

If true, xterm will print to the standard output a summary of each pixmap icon as it loads them. The default is “false”.

reportXRes (class ReportXRes)

If true, xterm will print to the standard output a list of the boolean, numeric and string X resources for the VT100 widget after initialization. The default is “false”.

sameName (class SameName)

If the value of this resource is “true”, xterm does not send title and icon name change requests when the request would have no effect: the name is not changed. This has the advantage of preventing flicker and the disadvantage of requiring an extra round trip to the server to find out the previous value. In practice this should never be a problem. The default is “true”.

scaleHeight (class ScaleHeight)

Scale line-height values by the resource value, which is limited to “0.9” to “1.5”. The default value is “1.0”,

While this resource applies to either bitmap or TrueType fonts, its main purpose is to help work around incompatible changes in the Xft library's font metrics. Xterm checks the font metrics to find what the library claims are the bounding boxes for each glyph (character). However, some of Xft's features (such as the autohinter) can cause the glyphs to be scaled larger than the bounding boxes, and be partly overwritten by the next row.

See useClipping for a related resource.

scoFunctionKeys (class ScoFunctionKeys)

Specifies whether or not SCO function key escape codes should be generated for function keys. The default is “false”, i.e., this feature is disabled.

The keyboardType resource is the preferred mechanism for selecting this mode.

sessionMgt (class SessionMgt)

If the value of this resource is “true”, xterm sets up session manager callbacks for XtNdieCallback and XtNsaveCallback. The default is “true”.

sunFunctionKeys (class SunFunctionKeys)

Specifies whether or not Sun function key escape codes should be generated for function keys. The default is “false”, i.e., this feature is disabled.

The keyboardType resource is the preferred mechanism for selecting this mode.

sunKeyboard (class SunKeyboard)

Xterm translates certain key symbols based on its assumptions about your keyboard. This resource specifies whether or not Sun/PC keyboard layout (i.e., the PC keyboard's numeric keypad together with 12 function keys) should be assumed rather than DEC VT220. This causes the keypad “+” to be mapped to “,”. and CTRL F1-F10 to F11-F20, depending on the setting of the ctrlFKeys resource, so xterm emulates a DEC VT220 more accurately. Otherwise (the default, with sunKeyboard set to “false”), xterm uses PC-style bindings for the function keys and keypad.

PC-style bindings use the Shift, Alt, Control and Meta keys as modifiers for function-keys and keypad (see Xterm Control Sequences for details). The PC-style bindings are analogous to PCTerm, but not the same thing. Normally these bindings do not conflict with the use of the Meta key as described for the eightBitInput resource. If they do, note that the PC-style bindings are evaluated first.

See also the keyboardType resource.

tcapFunctionKeys (class TcapFunctionKeys)

Specifies whether or not function key escape codes read from the termcap/terminfo entry corresponding to the TERM environment variable should be generated for function keys instead of those configured using sunKeyboard and keyboardType. The default is “false”, i.e., this feature is disabled.

The keyboardType resource is the preferred mechanism for selecting this mode.

termName (class TermName)

Specifies the terminal type name to be set in the TERM environment variable.

title (class Title)

Specifies a string that may be used by the window manager when displaying this application.

toolBar (class ToolBar)

Specifies whether or not the toolbar should be displayed. The default is “true”.

ttyModes (class TtyModes)

Specifies a string containing terminal setting keywords. Except where noted, they may be bound to characters. Other keywords set modes. Not all keywords are supported on a given system. Allowable keywords include:

Keyword	POSIX?	Notes
brk	no	CHAR may send an “interrupt” signal, as well as ending the input-line.
dsusp	no	CHAR will send a terminal “stop” signal after input is flushed.
eof	yes	CHAR will terminate input (i.e., an end of file).
eol	yes	CHAR will end the line.
eol2	no	alternate CHAR for ending the line.
erase	yes	CHAR will erase the last character typed.
erase2	no	alternate CHAR for erasing the last input-character.
flush	no	CHAR will cause output to be discarded until another flush character is typed.
intr	yes	CHAR will send an “interrupt” signal.
kill	yes	CHAR will erase the current line.
lnext	no	CHAR will enter the next character quoted.
quit	yes	CHAR will send a “quit” signal.
rprnt	no	CHAR will redraw the current line.
start	yes	CHAR will restart the output after stopping it.
status	no	CHAR will cause a system-generated status line to be printed.
stop	yes	CHAR will stop the output.
susp	yes	CHAR will send a terminal “stop” signal
swtch	no	CHAR will switch to a different shell layer.
tabs	yes	Mode disables tab-expansion.
-tabs	yes	Mode enables tab-expansion.
weras	no	CHAR will erase the last word typed.

Control characters may be specified as ^char (e.g., ^c or ^u) and ^? may be used to indicate delete (127). Use ^- to denote undef. Use \034 to represent ^\, since a literal backslash in an X resource escapes the next character.

This is very useful for overriding the default terminal settings without having to run stty(1) every time an xterm is started. Note, however, that the stty program on a given host may use different keywords; xterm's table is built in. The POSIX column in the table indicates which keywords are supported by a standard stty program.

If the ttyModes resource specifies a value for erase, that overrides the ptyInitialErase resource setting, i.e., xterm initializes the terminal to match that value.

useInsertMode (class UseInsertMode)

Force use of insert mode by adding appropriate entries to the TERMCAP environment variable. This is useful if the system termcap is broken. (This resource is ignored on most systems, because TERMCAP is not used). The default is “false”.

utmpDisplayId (class UtmpDisplayId)

Specifies whether or not xterm should try to record the display identifier (display number and screen number) as well as the hostname in the system utmp log file. The default is “true”.

utmpInhibit (class UtmpInhibit)

Specifies whether or not xterm should try to record the user's terminal in the system utmp log file. If true, xterm will not try. The default is “false”.

validShells (class ValidShells)

Augment (add to) the system's /etc/shells, when determining whether to set the “SHELL” environment variable when running a given program.

The resource value is a list of lines (separated by newlines). Each line holds one pathname. Xterm ignores any line beginning with “#” after trimming leading/trailing whitespace from each line.

The default is an empty string.

waitForMap (class WaitForMap)

Specifies whether or not xterm should wait for the initial window map before starting the subprocess. This is part of the ptyHandshake logic. When xterm is directed to wait in this fashion, it passes the terminal size from the display end of the pseudo-terminal to the terminal I/O connection, e.g., using the size according to the window manager. Otherwise, it uses the size as given in resource values or command-line option -geometry. The default is “false”.

zIconBeep (class ZIconBeep)

Same as -ziconbeep command line argument. If the value of this resource is non-zero, xterms that produce output while iconified will cause an XBell sound at the given volume and have “*** ” prepended to their icon titles. Most window managers will detect this change immediately, showing you which window has the output. (A similar feature was in x10 xterm.) The default is “false”.

zIconTitleFormat (class ZIconTitleFormat)

Allow customization of the string used in the zIconBeep feature. The default value is “*** %s”.

If the resource value contains a “%s”, then xterm inserts the icon title at that point rather than prepending the string to the icon title. (Only the first “%s” is used).

VT100 Widget Resources

The following resources are specified as part of the vt100 widget (class VT100). They are specified by patterns such as “XTerm.vt100.NAME”.

If your xterm is configured to support the “toolbar”, then those patterns need an extra level for the form-widget which holds the toolbar and vt100 widget. A wildcard between the top-level “XTerm” and the “vt100” widget makes the resource settings work for either, e.g., “XTerm*vt100.NAME”.

activeIcon (class ActiveIcon)

Specifies whether or not active icon windows are to be used when the xterm window is iconified, if this feature is compiled into xterm. The active icon is a miniature representation of the content of the window and will update as the content changes. Not all window managers necessarily support application icon windows. Some window managers will allow you to enter keystrokes into the active icon window. The default is “default”.

Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:

allowBoldFonts (class AllowBoldFonts)

When set to “false”, xterm will not use bold fonts. This overrides both the alwaysBoldMode and the boldMode resources.

allowC1Printable (class AllowC1Printable)

If true, overrides the mapping of C1 controls (codes 128–159) to make them be treated as if they were printable characters. Although this corresponds to no particular standard, some users insist it is a VT100. The default is “false”.

allowColorOps (class AllowColorOps)

Specifies whether control sequences that set/query the dynamic colors should be allowed. ANSI colors are unaffected by this resource setting. The default is “true”.

allowFontOps (class AllowFontOps)

Specifies whether control sequences that set/query the font should be allowed. The default is “true”.

allowMouseOps (class AllowMouseOps)

Specifies whether control sequences that enable xterm to send escape sequences to the host on mouse-clicks and movement. The default is “true”.

allowPasteControls (class AllowPasteControls)

If true, allow control characters such as BEL and CAN to be pasted. Formatting characters (tab, newline) are normally allowed, unless suppressed via the disallowedPasteControls resource. 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 and disallowedPasteControls resources. The default is “false”.

allowScrollLock (class AllowScrollLock)

Specifies whether control sequences that set/query the Scroll Lock key should be allowed, as well as whether the Scroll Lock key responds to user's keypress. The default is “false”.

When this feature is enabled, xterm will sense the state of the Scroll Lock key each time it acquires focus. Pressing the Scroll Lock key toggles xterm's internal state, as well as toggling the associated LED. While the Scroll Lock is active, xterm attempts to keep a viewport on the same set of lines. If the current viewport is scrolled past the limit set by the saveLines resource, then Scroll Lock has no further effect.

The reason for setting the default to “false” is to avoid user surprise. This key is generally unused in keyboard configurations, and has not acquired a standard meaning even when it is used in that manner. Consequently, users have assigned it for ad hoc purposes.

See also the autoScrollLock resource.

allowSendEvents (class AllowSendEvents)

Specifies whether or not synthetic key and button events (generated using the X protocol SendEvent request) should be interpreted or discarded. The default is “false” meaning they are discarded. Note that allowing such events would create a very large security hole, therefore enabling this resource forcefully disables the allowXXXOps resources. The default is “false”.

allowTcapOps (class AllowTcapOps)

Specifies whether control sequences that query the terminal's notion of its function-key strings, as termcap or terminfo capabilities should be allowed. The default is “true”.

A few programs, e.g., vim, use this feature to get an accurate description of the terminal's capabilities, independent of the termcap/terminfo setting:

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.

The default is “False”. Xterm provides a menu option for toggling this resource.

alternateScroll (class ScrollCond)

If “true”, the scroll-back and scroll-forw actions send cursor-up and -down keys when xterm is displaying the alternate screen. The default is “false”.

The alternateScroll state can also be set using a control sequence.

alwaysBoldMode (class AlwaysBoldMode)

Specifies whether xterm should check if the normal and bold fonts are distinct before deciding whether to use overstriking to simulate bold fonts. If this resource is true, xterm does not make the check for distinct fonts when deciding how to handle the boldMode resource. The default is “false”.

boldMode	alwaysBoldMode	Comparison	Action
false	false	ignored	use font
false	true	ignored	use font
true	false	same	overstrike
true	false	different	use font
true	true	ignored	overstrike

As an alternative, setting the allowBoldFonts resource to false overrides both the alwaysBoldMode and the boldMode resources.

alwaysHighlight (class AlwaysHighlight)

Specifies whether or not xterm should always display a highlighted text cursor. By default (if this resource is false), a hollow text cursor is displayed whenever the pointer moves out of the window or the window loses the input focus. The default is “false”.

alwaysUseMods (class AlwaysUseMods)

Override the numLock resource, telling xterm to use the Alt and Meta modifiers to construct parameters for function key sequences even if those modifiers appear in the translations resource. Normally xterm checks if Alt or Meta is used in a translation that would conflict with function key modifiers, and will ignore these modifiers in that special case. The default is “false”.

answerbackString (class AnswerbackString)

Specifies the string that xterm sends in response to an ENQ (control/E) character from the host. The default is a blank string, i.e., “”. A hardware VT100 implements this feature as a setup option.

appcursorDefault (class AppcursorDefault)

If “true”, the cursor keys are initially in application mode. This is the same as the VT102 private DECCKM mode, The default is “false”.

appkeypadDefault (class AppkeypadDefault)

If “true”, the keypad keys are initially in application mode. The default is “false”.

assumeAllChars (class AssumeAllChars)

If “true”, this enables a special case in bitmap fonts to allow the font server to choose how to display missing glyphs. The default is “true”.

The reason for this resource is to help with certain quasi-automatically generated fonts (such as the ISO-10646-1 encoding of Terminus) which have incorrect font-metrics.

autoScrollLock (class AutoScrollLock)

If “true”, xterm will maintain its viewport of displayed lines whenever displaying scrollback, as if allowScrollLock were enabled and the Scroll Lock key had been pressed. The default is “false”. This feature is only useful if the scrollTtyOutput resource is set to “false”.

autoWrap (class AutoWrap)

Specifies whether or not auto-wraparound should be enabled. This is the same as the VT102 DECAWM. The default is “true”.

awaitInput (class AwaitInput)

Specifies whether or not xterm uses a 50 millisecond timeout to await input (i.e., to support the Xaw3d arrow scrollbar). The default is “false”.

backarrowKey (class BackarrowKey)

Specifies whether the backarrow key transmits a backspace (8) or delete (127) character. This corresponds to the DECBKM control sequence. A “true” value specifies backspace. The default is “True”. Pressing the control key toggles this behavior.

background (class Background)

Specifies the color to use for the background of the window. The default is “XtDefaultBackground”.

bellIsUrgent (class BellIsUrgent)

Specifies whether to set the Urgency hint for the window manager when making a bell sound. The default is “false”.

bellOnReset (class BellOnReset)

Specifies whether to sound a bell when doing a hard reset. The default is “true”.

bellSuppressTime (class BellSuppressTime)

Number of milliseconds after a bell command is sent during which additional bells will be suppressed. Default is 200. If set non-zero, additional bells will also be suppressed until the server reports that processing of the first bell has been completed; this feature is most useful with the visible bell.

boldColors (class ColorMode)

Specifies whether to combine bold attribute with colors like the IBM PC, i.e., map colors 0 through 7 to colors 8 through 15. These normally are the brighter versions of the first 8 colors, hence bold. The default is “true”.

boldFont (class BoldFont)

Specifies the name of the bold font to use instead of overstriking. There is no default for this resource.

This font must be the same height and width as the normal font, otherwise it is ignored. If only one of the normal or bold fonts is specified, it will be used as the normal font and the bold font will be produced by overstriking this font.

See also the discussion of boldMode and alwaysBoldMode resources.

boldMode (class BoldMode)

This specifies whether or not text with the bold attribute should be overstruck to simulate bold fonts if the resolved bold font is the same as the normal font. It may be desirable to disable bold fonts when color is being used for the bold attribute.

Note that xterm has one bold font which you may set explicitly. Xterm attempts to derive a bold font for the other font selections (font1 through font7). If it cannot find a bold font, it will use the normal font. In each case (whether the explicit resource or the derived font), if the normal and bold fonts are distinct, this resource has no effect. The default is “true”.

See the alwaysBoldMode resource which can modify the behavior of this resource.

Although xterm attempts to derive a bold font for other font selections, the font server may not cooperate. Since X11R6, bitmap fonts have been scaled. The font server claims to provide the bold font that xterm requests, but the result is not always readable. XFree86 introduced a feature which can be used to suppress the scaling. In the X server's configuration file (e.g., “/etc/X11/XFree86” or “/etc/X11/xorg.conf”), you can add “:unscaled” to the end of the directory specification for the “misc” fonts, which comprise the fixed-pitch fonts that are used by xterm. For example

FontPath	"/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"

would become

FontPath	"/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/:unscaled"

Depending on your configuration, the font server may have its own configuration file. The same “:unscaled” can be added to its configuration file at the end of the directory specification for “misc”.

The bitmap scaling feature is also used by xterm to implement VT102 double-width and double-height characters.

brokenLinuxOSC (class BrokenLinuxOSC)

If true, xterm applies a workaround to ignore malformed control sequences that a Linux script might send. Compare the palette control sequences documented in console_codes with ECMA-48. The default is “true”.

brokenSelections (class BrokenSelections)

If true, xterm in 8-bit mode will interpret STRING selections as carrying text in the current locale's encoding. Normally STRING selections carry ISO-8859-1 encoded text. Setting this resource to “true” violates the ICCCM; it may, however, be useful for interacting with some broken X clients. The default is “false”.

brokenStringTerm (class BrokenStringTerm)

provides a work-around for some ISDN routers which start an application control string without completing it. Set this to “true” if xterm appears to freeze when connecting. The default is “false”.

Xterm's state parser recognizes several types of control strings which can contain text, e.g.,

Each should end with a string-terminator (a special character which cannot appear in these strings). Ordinary control characters found within the string are not ignored; they are processed without interfering with the process of accumulating the control string's content. Xterm recognizes these controls in all modes, although some of the functions may be suppressed after parsing the control.

When enabled, this feature allows the user to exit from an unterminated control string when any of these ordinary control characters are found:

c132 (class C132)

Specifies whether or not the VT102 DECCOLM escape sequence, used to switch between 80 and 132 columns, should be honored. The default is “false”.

cacheDoublesize (class CacheDoublesize)

Tells whether to cache double-sized fonts by xterm. Set this to zero to disable double-sized fonts altogether.

cdXtraScroll (class CdXtraScroll)

Specifies whether xterm should scroll to a new page when clearing the whole screen. Like tiXtraScroll, the intent of this option is to provide a picture of the full-screen application's display on the scrollback before wiping out the text.

Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:

The default for this resource is “false”.

charClass (class CharClass)

Specifies comma-separated lists of character class bindings of the form

low[-high][:value].

These are used in determining which sets of characters should be treated the same when doing cut and paste. See the CHARACTER CLASSES section.

checksumExtension (class ChecksumExtension)

DEC VT420 and up support a control sequence DECRQCRA which reports the checksum of the characters in a rectangle. Xterm supports this, with extensions that can be configured with bits of the checksumExtension:

With the default value (0), xterm matches the behavior of DEC's terminals. To use all extensions, set all bits, “-1” for example.

cjkWidth (class CjkWidth)

Specifies whether xterm should follow the traditional East Asian width convention. When turned on, characters with East Asian Ambiguous (A) category in UTR 11 have a column width of 2. You may have to set this option to “true” if you have some old East Asian terminal based programs that assume that line-drawing characters have a column width of 2. If this resource is false, the mkWidth resource controls the choice between the system's wcwidth(3) and xterm's built-in tables. The default is “false”.

color0 (class Color0)

color1 (class Color1)

color2 (class Color2)

color3 (class Color3)

color4 (class Color4)

color5 (class Color5)

color6 (class Color6)

color7 (class Color7)

These specify the colors for the ISO-6429 extension. The defaults are, respectively, black, red3, green3, yellow3, a customizable dark blue, magenta3, cyan3, and gray90. The default shades of color are chosen to allow the colors 8–15 to be used as brighter versions.

color8 (class Color8)

color9 (class Color9)

color10 (class Color10)

color11 (class Color11)

color12 (class Color12)

color13 (class Color13)

color14 (class Color14)

color15 (class Color15)

These specify the colors for the ISO-6429 extension if the bold attribute is also enabled. The default resource values are respectively, gray50, red, green, yellow, a customized light blue, magenta, cyan, and white.

color16 (class Color16)

through

color255 (class Color255)

These specify the colors for the 256-color extension. The default resource values are for

Resources past color15 are available as a compile-time option. Due to a hardcoded limit in the X libraries on the total number of resources (to 400), the resources for 256-colors are omitted when wide-character support and luit are enabled. Besides inconsistent behavior if only part of the resources were allowed, determining the exact cutoff is difficult, and the X libraries tend to crash if the number of resources exceeds the limit. The color palette is still initialized to the same default values, and can be modified via control sequences.

On the other hand, the resource limit does permit including the entire range for 88-colors.

colorAttrMode (class ColorAttrMode)

Specifies whether colorBD, colorBL, colorRV, and colorUL should override ANSI colors. If not, these are displayed only when no ANSI colors have been set for the corresponding position. The default is “false”.

colorBD (class ColorBD)

This specifies the color to use to display bold characters if the “colorBDMode” resource is enabled. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”.

See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows combining bold and color.

colorBDMode (class ColorAttrMode)

Specifies whether characters with the bold attribute should be displayed in color or as bold characters. Note that setting colorMode off disables all colors, including bold. The default is “false”.

colorBL (class ColorBL)

This specifies the color to use to display blink characters if the “colorBLMode” resource is enabled. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”.

See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows combining underline and color.

colorBLMode (class ColorAttrMode)

Specifies whether characters with the blink attribute should be displayed in color. Note that setting colorMode off disables all colors, including this. The default is “false”.

colorIT (class ColorIT)

This specifies the color to use to display italic characters if the “colorITMode” resource is enabled. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”.

See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows combining attributes and color.

colorITMode (class ColorAttrMode)

Specifies whether characters with the italic attribute should be displayed in color or as italic characters. The default is “false”.

Note that:

colorInnerBorder (class ColorInnerBorder)

Normally, xterm fills the VT100 window's inner border using the background color.

If the colorInnerBorder resource is enabled, at startup xterm will compare the borderColor and the window's background color. If those are different, xterm will use the borderColor resource to fill the inner border. Otherwise, it will use the window's background color.

The default is “false”.

colorMode (class ColorMode)

Specifies whether or not recognition of ANSI (ISO-6429) color change escape sequences should be enabled. The default is “true”.

colorRV (class ColorRV)

This specifies the color to use to display reverse characters if the “colorRVMode” resource is enabled. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”.

See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows combining reverse and color.

colorRVMode (class ColorAttrMode)

Specifies whether characters with the reverse attribute should be displayed in color. Note that setting colorMode off disables all colors, including this. The default is “false”.

colorUL (class ColorUL)

This specifies the color to use to display underlined characters if the “colorULMode” resource is enabled. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”.

See also the veryBoldColors resource which allows combining underline and color.

colorULMode (class ColorAttrMode)

Specifies whether characters with the underline attribute should be displayed in color or as underlined characters. Note that setting colorMode off disables all colors, including underlining. The default is “false”.

combiningChars (class CombiningChars)

Specifies the number of wide-characters which can be stored in a cell to overstrike (combine) with the base character of the cell. This can be set to values in the range 0 to 5. The default is “2”.

ctrlFKeys (class CtrlFKeys)

In VT220 keyboard mode (see sunKeyboard resource), specifies the amount by which to shift F1-F12 given a control modifier (CTRL). This allows you to generate key symbols for F10-F20 on a Sun/PC keyboard. The default is “10”, which means that CTRL F1 generates the key symbol for F11.

curses (class Curses)

Specifies whether or not the last column bug in more(1) should be worked around. See the -cu option for details. The default is “false”.

cursorBar (class CursorBar)

Specifies whether to make the cursor a left-bar or a box, unless the cursorUnderLine resource is set. The default is “false”.

cursorBlink (class CursorBlink)

Specifies whether to make the cursor blink. Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:

The default is “false”.

cursorBlinkXOR (class CursorBlinkXOR)

Xterm uses two inputs to determine whether the cursor blinks:

The cursorBlinkXOR resource determines how those inputs are combined:

The default is “true”.

cursorColor (class CursorColor)

Specifies the color to use for the text cursor. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”. By default, xterm attempts to keep this color from being the same as the background color, since it draws the cursor by filling the background of a text cell. The same restriction applies to control sequences which may change this color.

Setting this resource overrides most of xterm's adjustments to cursor color. It will still use reverse-video to disallow some cases, such as a black cursor on a black background.

cursorOffTime (class CursorOffTime)

Specifies the duration of the “off” part of the cursor blink cycle-time in milliseconds. The same timer is used for text blinking. The default is “300”.

cursorOnTime (class CursorOnTime)

Specifies the duration of the “on” part of the cursor blink cycle-time, in milliseconds. The same timer is used for text blinking. The default is “600”.

cursorUnderLine (class CursorUnderLine)

Specifies whether to make the cursor underlined or a box. If unset (false), the cursorBar resource may set the cursor shape. The default is “false”.

cutNewline (class CutNewline)

If “false”, triple clicking to select a line does not include the newline at the end of the line. If “true”, the Newline is selected. The default is “true”.

cutToBeginningOfLine (class CutToBeginningOfLine)

If “false”, triple clicking to select a line selects only from the current word forward. If “true”, the entire line is selected. The default is “true”.

decGraphicsID (class DecGraphicsID)

Allows a way to combine the graphics feature from certain DEC terminals (125, 240, 241, 330, 340 or 382) with other emulation levels which did not provide the graphics feature. As in decTerminalID, leading non-digit characters are ignored, e.g., “vt340” and “340” are the same.

If the resource value is nonzero, xterm uses that emulation level when initializing the drawing region and decoding control sequences to draw graphics.

The default is “0”.

decTerminalID (class DecTerminalID)

Specifies the emulation level (100=VT100, 220=VT220, etc.), used to determine the type of response to a DA control sequence. Leading non-digit characters are ignored, e.g., “vt100” and “100” are the same. The default is “420”.

defaultString (class DefaultString)

Specify the character (or string) which xterm will substitute when pasted text includes a character which cannot be represented in the current encoding. For instance, pasting UTF-8 text into a display of ISO-8859-1 characters will only be able to display codes 0–255, while UTF-8 text can include Unicode values above 255. The default is “#” (a single pound sign).

If the undisplayable text would be double-width, xterm will add a space after the “#” character, to give roughly the same layout on the screen as the original text.

deleteIsDEL (class DeleteIsDEL)

Specifies what the Delete key on the editing keypad should send when pressed. The resource value is a string, evaluated as a boolean after startup. Xterm uses it in conjunction with the keyboardType resource:

The default is “Maybe”. The resource is allowed to be a non-boolean “maybe” so that the popup menu Delete is DEL entry does not override the keyboard type.

directColor (class DirectColor)

Specifies whether to handle direct-color control sequences using the X server's available colors, or to approximate those using a color map with 256 entries. A “true” value enables the former. The default is “true”.

disallowedColorOps (class DisallowedColorOps)

Specify which features will be disabled if allowColorOps is false. This is a comma-separated list of names. The default value is

The names are listed below. Xterm ignores capitalization, but they are shown in mixed-case for clarity.

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.

disallowedMouseOps (class DisallowedMouseOps)

Specify which features will be disabled if allowMouseOps is false. This is a comma-separated list of names. The default value is “*” which matches all names. The names are listed below. Xterm ignores capitalization, but they are shown in mixed-case for clarity.

disallowedPasteControls (class DisallowedPasteControls)

Use this resource to disallow pasting specific C0 control characters when the allowPasteControls resource is false (i.e., the default). This resource defines the set of control characters which cannot be pasted, converting each into a space. Other C0 controls are pasted without change.

The resource value is a comma-separated list of names. Xterm ignores capitalization. The default value is

BS,DEL,ENQ,EOT,ESC,NUL,STTY

The names are listed below:

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.

disallowedWindowOps (class DisallowedWindowOps)

Specify which features will be disabled if allowWindowOps is false. This is a comma-separated list of names, or (for the controls adapted from dtterm the operation number). The default value is

20,21,SetXprop,SetSelection
(i.e., all except a few “dangerous” operations are allowed).

The names are listed below. Xterm ignores capitalization, but they are shown in mixed-case for clarity. Where a number can be used as an alternative, it is given in parentheses after the name.

dynamicColors (class DynamicColors)

Specifies whether or not escape sequences to change colors assigned to different attributes are recognized.

eightBitControl (class EightBitControl)

Specifies whether or not control sequences sent by the terminal should be eight-bit characters or escape sequences. The default is “false”.

eightBitInput (class EightBitInput)

If “true”, Meta characters (a single-byte character combined with the Meta modifier key) input from the keyboard are presented as a single character, modified according to the eightBitMeta resource. If “false”, Meta characters are converted into a two-character sequence with the character itself preceded by ESC. The default is “true”.

The metaSendsEscape and altSendsEscape resources may override this feature. Generally keyboards do not have a key labeled “Meta”, but “Alt” keys are common, and they are conventionally used for “Meta”. If they were synonymous, it would have been reasonable to name this resource “altSendsEscape”, reversing its sense. For more background on this, see the meta(3x) function in curses.

Note that the Alt key is not necessarily the same as the Meta modifier. The xmodmap utility lists your key modifiers. X defines modifiers for shift, (caps) lock and control, as well as 5 additional modifiers which are generally used to configure key modifiers. Xterm inspects the same information to find the modifier associated with either Meta key (left or right), and uses that key as the Meta modifier. It also looks for the NumLock key, to recognize the modifier which is associated with that.

If your xmodmap configuration uses the same keycodes for Alt- and Meta-keys, xterm will only see the Alt-key definitions, since those are tested before Meta-keys. NumLock is tested first. It is important to keep these keys distinct; otherwise some of xterm's functionality is not available.

The eightBitInput resource is tested at startup time. If “true”, the xterm tries to put the terminal into 8-bit mode. If “false”, on startup, xterm tries to put the terminal into 7-bit mode. For some configurations this is unsuccessful; failure is ignored. After startup, xterm does not change the terminal between 8-bit and 7-bit mode.

As originally implemented in X11, the resource value did not change after startup. However (since patch #216 in 2006) xterm can modify eightBitInput after startup via a control sequence. The corresponding terminfo capabilities smm (set meta mode) and rmm (reset meta mode) have been recognized by bash for some time. Interestingly enough, bash's notion of “meta mode” differs from the standard definition (in the terminfo manual), which describes the change to the eighth bit of a character. It happens that bash views “meta mode” as the ESC character that xterm puts before a character when a special meta key is pressed. bash's early documentation talks about the ESC character and ignores the eighth bit.

eightBitMeta (class EightBitMeta)

This controls the way xterm modifies the eighth bit of a single-byte key when the eightBitInput resource is set. The default is “locale”.

The resource value is a string, evaluated as a boolean after startup.

Except for the never choice, xterm honors the terminfo capabilities smm (set meta mode) and rmm (reset meta mode), allowing the feature to be turned on or off dynamically.

If eightBitMeta is enabled when the locale uses UTF-8, xterm encodes the value as UTF-8 (since patch #183 in 2003).

eightBitOutput (class EightBitOutput)

Specifies whether or not eight-bit characters sent from the host should be accepted as is or stripped when printed. The default is “true”, which means that they are accepted as is.

eightBitSelectTypes (class EightBitSelectTypes)

Override xterm's default selection target list (see SELECT/PASTE) for selections in normal (ISO-8859-1) mode. The default is an empty string, i.e., “”, which does not override anything.

eraseSavedLines (class EraseSavedLines)

Specifies whether or not to allow xterm extended ED/DECSED control sequences to erase the saved-line buffer. The default is “true”.

faceName (class FaceName)

Specify the pattern for scalable fonts selected from the FreeType library if support for that library was compiled into xterm. There is no default value.

One or more fonts can be specified, separated by commas. If prefixed with “x:” or “x11:” the specification applies to the XLFD font resource. A “xft:” prefix is accepted but unnecessary since a missing prefix for faceName means that it will be used for TrueType. For example,

XTerm*faceName: x:fixed,xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

Two TrueType fonts can be specified in this way. The first is the primary font; the second acts as a manual override to the fontconfig fontset.

If no faceName resource is specified, or if there is no match for both TrueType normal and bold fonts, xterm uses the XLFD (bitmap) font and related resources.

It is possible to select suitable bitmap fonts using a script such as this:

#!/bin/sh
FONT=`xfontsel -print`
test -n "$FONT" && xfd -fn "$FONT"

However (even though xfd accepts a “-fa” option to denote FreeType fonts), xfontsel has not been similarly extended. As a workaround, you may try

fc-list :scalable=true:spacing=mono: family

to find a list of scalable fixed-pitch fonts which may be used for the faceName resource value.

faceNameDoublesize (class FaceNameDoublesize)

Specify a double-width scalable font for cases where an application requires this, e.g., in CJK applications. There is no default value.

Like the faceName resource, this allows one or more comma-separated font specifications to be applied to the wide TrueType or XLFD fonts.

If the application uses double-wide characters and this resource is not given, xterm will use a scaled version of the font given by faceName.

faceSize (class FaceSize)

Specify the pointsize for fonts selected from the FreeType library if support for that library was compiled into xterm. The default is “8.0” On the VT Fonts menu, this corresponds to the Default entry.

Although the default is “8.0”, this may not be the same as the pointsize for the default bitmap font, i.e., that assigned with the -fn option, or the font resource. The default value of faceSize is chosen to match the size of the “fixed” font, making switching between bitmap and TrueType fonts via the font menu give comparable sizes for the window. If your -fn option uses a different pointsize, you might want to adjust the faceSize resource to match.

You can specify the pointsize for TrueType fonts selected with the other size-related menu entries such as Medium, Huge, etc., by using one of the following resource values. If you do not specify a value, they default to “0.0”, which causes xterm to use the ratio of font sizes from the corresponding bitmap font resources to obtain a TrueType pointsize.

If all of the faceSize resources are set, then xterm will use this information to determine the next smaller/larger TrueType font for the larger-vt-font() and smaller-vt-font() actions. If any are not set, xterm will use only the areas of the bitmap fonts.

faceSize1 (class FaceSize1)

Specifies the pointsize of the first alternative font.

faceSize2 (class FaceSize2)

Specifies the pointsize of the second alternative font.

faceSize3 (class FaceSize3)

Specifies the pointsize of the third alternative font.

faceSize4 (class FaceSize4)

Specifies the pointsize of the fourth alternative font.

faceSize5 (class FaceSize5)

Specifies the pointsize of the fifth alternative font.

faceSize6 (class FaceSize6)

Specifies the pointsize of the sixth alternative font.

faceSize7 (class FaceSize7)

Specifies the pointsize of the seventh alternative font.

faintIsRelative (class FaintIsRelative)

Faint colors are derived from the current text color, e.g., the ANSI colors, by scaling the red, green and blue components. Use this resource to specify whether that is done relative to the current background color, or as an absolute value. The default is “false”.

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. Likewise, screen refreshes for related actions, e.g., carriage returns, are suppressed.

For instance, cat'ing a large file to the screen normally results in a large number of screen refreshes. By suppressing the corresponding refreshes, scrolling speed improves.

The default is “true”.

font (class Font)

Specifies the name of the normal font. The default is “fixed”.

See the discussion of the locale resource, which describes how this font may be overridden.

NOTE: some resource files use patterns such as

*font: fixed

which are overly broad, affecting both

xterm.vt100.font

and

xterm.vt100.utf8Fonts.font

which is probably not what you intended.

font1 (class Font1)

Specifies the name of the first alternative font, corresponding to “Unreadable” in the standard menu.

font2 (class Font2)

Specifies the name of the second alternative font, corresponding to “Tiny” in the standard menu.

font3 (class Font3)

Specifies the name of the third alternative font, corresponding to “Small” in the standard menu.

font4 (class Font4)

Specifies the name of the fourth alternative font, corresponding to “Medium” in the standard menu.

font5 (class Font5)

Specifies the name of the fifth alternative font, corresponding to “Large” in the standard menu.

font6 (class Font6)

Specifies the name of the sixth alternative font, corresponding to “Huge” in the standard menu.

font7 (class Font7)

Specifies the name of the seventh alternative font, corresponding to “Enormous” in the standard menu.

fontDoublesize (class FontDoublesize)

Specifies whether xterm should attempt to use font scaling to draw double-sized characters. Some older font servers cannot do this properly, will return misleading font metrics. The default is “true”. If disabled, xterm will simulate double-sized characters by drawing normal characters with spaces between them.

fontWarnings (class FontWarnings)

Specify whether xterm should report an error if it fails to load a font:

The default is “1”.

forceBoxChars (class ForceBoxChars)

Specifies whether xterm should assume the normal and bold fonts have VT100 line-drawing characters:

If “false”, xterm checks for missing glyphs in the font and makes line-drawing characters directly as needed. If “true”, xterm assumes the font does not contain the line-drawing characters, and draws them directly. The default is “false”.

The VT100 line-drawing character set (also known as the DEC Special Character and Line Drawing Set) is shown in this table. It includes a few special characters which are not used for drawing lines:

Cell	Unicode	Description
0	U+25AE	black vertical rectangle
1	U+25C6	black diamond
2	U+2592	medium shade
3	U+2409	symbol for horizontal tabulation
4	U+240C	symbol for form feed
5	U+240D	symbol for carriage return
6	U+240A	symbol for line feed
7	U+00B0	degree sign
8	U+00B1	plus-minus sign
9	U+2424	symbol for newline
10	U+240B	symbol for vertical tabulation
11	U+2518	box drawings light up and left
12	U+2510	box drawings light down and left
13	U+250C	box drawings light down and right
14	U+2514	box drawings light up and right
15	U+253C	box drawings light vertical and horizontal
16	U+23BA	box drawings scan 1
17	U+23BB	box drawings scan 3
18	U+2500	box drawings light horizontal
19	U+23BC	box drawings scan 7
20	U+23BD	box drawings scan 9
21	U+251C	box drawings light vertical and right
22	U+2524	box drawings light vertical and left
23	U+2534	box drawings light up and horizontal
24	U+252C	box drawings light down and horizontal
25	U+2502	box drawings light vertical
26	U+2264	less-than or equal to
27	U+2265	greater-than or equal to
28	U+03C0	greek small letter pi
29	U+2260	not equal to
30	U+00A3	pound sign
31	U+00B7	middle dot

forcePackedFont (class ForcePackedFont)

Specifies whether xterm should use the maximum or minimum glyph width when displaying using a bitmap font. Use the maximum width to help with proportional fonts. The default is “true”, denoting the minimum width.

forceXftHeight (class ForceXftHeight)

Specifies whether xterm should use the given font metrics for TrueType fonts, or amend the ascent/descent to total no more than the given font-height. This optional feature is used to work around inconsistencies in FreeType's rounding computation. The default is “false”, denoting the given metrics.

foreground (class Foreground)

Specifies the color to use for displaying text in the window. Setting the class name instead of the instance name is an easy way to have everything that would normally appear in the text color change color. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”.

formatOtherKeys (class FormatOtherKeys)

Overrides the format of the escape sequence used to report modified keys with the modifyOtherKeys resource.

freeBoldBox (class FreeBoldBox)

Specifies whether xterm should assume the bounding boxes for normal and bold fonts are compatible. If “false”, xterm compares them and will reject choices of bold fonts that do not match the size of the normal font. The default is “false”, which means that the comparison is performed.

geometry (class Geometry)

Specifies the preferred size and position of the VTxxx window. There is no default for this resource.

highlightColor (class HighlightColor)

Specifies the color to use for the background of selected (highlighted) text. If not specified (i.e., matching the default foreground), reverse video is used. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”.

highlightColorMode (class HighlightColorMode)

Specifies whether xterm should use highlightTextColor and highlightColor to override the reversed foreground/background colors in a selection. The default is unspecified: at startup, xterm checks if those resources are set to something other than the default foreground and background colors. Setting this resource disables the check.

The following table shows the interaction of the highlighting resources, abbreviated as shown to fit in this page:

HCM	HR	HBG	HFG	Highlight
false	false	default	default	bg/fg
false	false	default	set	bg/fg
false	false	set	default	fg/HBG
false	false	set	set	fg/HBG
false	true	default	default	bg/fg
false	true	default	set	bg/fg
false	true	set	default	fg/HBG
false	true	set	set	fg/HBG
true	false	default	default	bg/fg
true	false	default	set	HFG/fg
true	false	set	default	bg/HBG
true	false	set	set	HFG/HBG
true	true	default	default	bg/fg
true	true	default	set	HFG/fg
true	true	set	default	fg/HBG
true	true	set	set	HFG/HBG
default	false	default	default	bg/fg
default	false	default	set	bg/fg
default	false	set	default	fg/HBG
default	false	set	set	HFG/HBG
default	true	default	default	bg/fg
default	true	default	set	bg/fg
default	true	set	default	fg/HBG
default	true	set	set	HFG/HBG

highlightReverse (class HighlightReverse)

Specifies whether xterm should reverse the selection foreground and background colors when selecting text with reverse-video attribute. This applies only to the highlightColor and highlightTextColor resources, e.g., to match the color scheme of xwsh. If “true”, xterm reverses the colors, If “false”, xterm does not reverse colors, The default is “true”.

highlightSelection (class HighlightSelection)

Tells xterm whether to highlight all of the selected positions, or only the selected text:

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”.

incrementalGraphics (class IncrementalGraphics)

When displaying SIXEL graphics, refresh the screen after processing each cell. The default is “false”.

indicatorFormat (class IndicatorFormat)

When displaying the status line using the indicator mode (i.e., selecting DECSSDT line type 1), format the status using this resource.

The default value of the resource displays the version of xterm, the cursor position and the time/date:

“%{version%}  %{position%}  %{unixtime%}”

If a “%” marker does not match any of the three special tokens used in the default resource setting, xterm uses strftime(3) to interpret it.

initialFont (class InitialFont)

Specifies which of the VT100 fonts to use initially. Values are the same as for the set-vt-font action. The default is “d”, i.e., “default”.

inputMethod (class InputMethod)

Tells xterm which type of input method to use. There is no default method.

internalBorder (class BorderWidth)

Specifies the number of pixels between the characters and the window border. The default is “2”.

italicULMode (class ColorAttrMode)

Specifies whether characters with the underline attribute should be displayed in an italic font or as underlined characters. It is implemented only for TrueType fonts.

jumpScroll (class JumpScroll)

Specifies whether or not jump scroll should be used. This corresponds to the VT102 DECSCLM private mode. The default is “true”. See fastScroll for a variation.

keepClipboard (class KeepClipboard)

Specifies whether xterm will reuse the selection data which it copied to the clipboard rather than asking the clipboard for its current contents when told to provide the selection. The default is “false”.

If compiled into xterm, the menu entry Keep Clipboard allows you to change this at runtime.

keepSelection (class KeepSelection)

Specifies whether xterm will keep the selection even after the selected area was touched by some output to the terminal. The default is “true”.

The menu entry Keep Selection allows you to change this at runtime.

keyboardDialect (class KeyboardDialect)

Specifies the initial keyboard dialect, as well as the default value when the terminal is reset. The value given is the same as the final character in the control sequences which change character sets. The default is “B”, which corresponds to US ASCII.

limitFontsets (class LimitFontsets)

Limits the number of TrueType fallback fonts (i.e., fontset) which can be tested. The default is “50”. No more than “255” will be scanned.

This limits the number of fallback fonts which xterm uses to display characters. Because TrueType fonts typically are small, xterm may open several fonts for good coverage, and may open additional fonts to obtain information. You can see which font-files xterm opens by setting the environment variable XFT_DEBUG to 3. The Xft library and xterm write this debugging trace to the standard output.

Set this to “0” to disable fallbacks entirely.

limitFontHeight (class LimitFontHeight)

When scaling a TrueType font to provide the parts for a double-high character, xterm compares the scaled font with the original to ensure that it is taller.

The default is “10” (percent).

limitFontWidth (class LimitFontWidth)

When looking for fallback fonts, xterm checks to see that the the character to be displayed is the same width as the primary font. If a character extends outside the font's bounding box, xterm will clip it, to fit.

This resource controls the amount by which the character can extend outside its bounding box before xterm looks further for a better font.

This resource is also used in scaling TrueType fonts for double-wide characters, like limitFontHeight for double-wide characters.

The default is “10” (percent).

limitResize (class LimitResize)

Limits resizing of the screen via control sequence to a given multiple of the display dimensions. The default is “1”.

limitResponse (class LimitResponse)

Limits the buffer-size used when xterm replies to various control sequences. The default is “1024”. The minimum value is “256”.

locale (class Locale)

Specifies how to use luit(1), an encoding converter between UTF-8 and locale encodings. The resource value (ignoring case) may be:

Any other value, e.g., “UTF-8” or “ISO8859-2”, is assumed to be an encoding name; luit will be invoked to support the encoding. The actual list of supported encodings depends on luit. The default is “medium”.

Regardless of your locale and encoding, you need an ISO-10646-1 font to display the result. Your configuration may not include this font, or locale-support by xterm may not be needed.

At startup, xterm uses a mechanism equivalent to the load-vt-fonts(utf8Fonts, Utf8Fonts) action to load font name subresources of the VT100 widget. That is, resource patterns such as “*vt100.utf8Fonts.font” will be loaded, and (if this resource is enabled), override the normal fonts. If no subresources are found, the normal fonts such as “*vt100.font”, etc., are used.

For instance, you could have this in your resource file:

*VT100.font: 12x24
*VT100.utf8Fonts.font:9x15

When started with a UTF-8 locale, xterm would use 9x15, but allow you to switch to the 12x24 font using the menu entry “UTF-8 Fonts”.

The resource files distributed with xterm use ISO-10646-1 fonts, but do not rely on them unless you are using the locale mechanism.

localeFilter (class LocaleFilter)

Specifies the file name for the encoding converter from/to locale encodings and UTF-8 which is used with the -lc option or locale resource. The help message shown by “xterm -help” lists the default value, which depends on your system configuration.

If the encoding converter requires command-line parameters, you can add those after the command, e.g.,

*localeFilter: xterm-filter -p

Alternatively, you may put those parameters within a shell script to execute the converter, and set this resource to point to the shell script.

When using a locale-filter, e.g., with the -e option, or the shell, xterm first tries passing control via that filter. If it fails, xterm will retry without the locale-filter. Xterm warns about the failure before retrying.

logFile (class Logfile)

Specify the name for xterm's log file. If no name is specified, xterm will generate a name when logging is enabled, as described in the -l option.

logInhibit (class LogInhibit)

If “true”, prevent the logging feature from being enabled, whether by the command-line option -l, or the menu entry Log to File. The default is “false”.

logging (class Logging)

If “true”, (and if logInhibit is not set) enable the logging feature. This resource is set/updated by the -l option and the menu entry Log to File. The default is “false”.

loginShell (class LoginShell)

Specifies whether or not the shell to be run in the window should be started as a login shell. The default is “false”.

marginBell (class MarginBell)

Specifies whether or not the bell should be rung when the user types near the right margin. The default is “false”.

maxGraphicSize (class MaxGraphicSize)

If xterm is configured to support ReGIS or SIXEL graphics, this resource controls the maximum size of a graph which can be displayed.

The default is “1000x1000” (given as width by height).

If the resource is “auto” then xterm will use the decGraphicsID resource (or decTerminalID if that is not set):

Result	decGraphicsID
768x400	125
800x460	240
800x460	241
800x480	330
800x480	340
860x750	382
800x480	other

maxStringParse (class MaxStringParse)

Xterm's state parser recognizes several types of control strings which can contain text, e.g.,

Xterm reads these strings, accumulating them into a buffer until they are properly terminated. At that point, xterm interprets the strings. If they happen to be DCS commands to draw ReGIS images, these strings may be large, in the hundreds of kilobytes. A few OSC commands may be as large as 10 kilobytes.

This resource sets a limit on the size of the buffer used for these strings. The default is “600000” based on the features which are configured for xterm. Control strings which require larger buffer size are ignored.

metaSendsEscape (class MetaSendsEscape)

Tells xterm what to do with input-characters modified by Meta:

The default is “False”.

mkSamplePass (class MkSamplePass)

If mkSampleSize is nonzero, and mkWidth (and cjkWidth) are false, on startup xterm compares its built-in tables to the system's wide character width data to decide if it will use the system's data. It tests the first mkSampleSize character values, and allows up to mkSamplePass mismatches before the test fails. The default (for the allowed number of mismatches) is 655 (one percent of the default value for mkSampleSize).

mkSampleSize (class MkSampleSize)

With mkSamplePass, this specifies a startup test used for initializing wide character width calculations. The default (number of characters to check) is 65536.

mkWidth (class MkWidth)

Specifies whether xterm should use a built-in version of the wide character width calculation. See also the cjkWidth resource which can override this. The default is “false”.

Here is a summary of the resources which control the choice of wide character width calculation:

cjkWidth	mkWidth	Action
false	false	use system tables subject to mkSamplePass
false	true	use built-in tables
true	false	use built-in CJK tables
true	true	use built-in CJK tables

To disable mkWidth, and use the system's tables, set both mkSampleSize and mkSamplePass to “0”. Doing that may make xterm more consistent with applications running in xterm, but may omit some font glyphs whose width correctly differs from the system's character tables.

modifyCursorKeys (class ModifyCursorKeys)

Tells how to handle the special case where Control-, Shift-, Alt- or Meta-modifiers are used to add a parameter to the escape sequence returned by a cursor-key. The default is “2”:

modifyFunctionKeys (class ModifyFunctionKeys)

Tells how to handle the special case where Control-, Shift-, Alt- or Meta-modifiers are used to add a parameter to the escape sequence returned by a (numbered) function-key. The default is “2”. The resource values are similar to modifyCursorKeys:

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:

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”:

modifyOtherKeys (class ModifyOtherKeys)

Like modifyCursorKeys, tells xterm to construct an escape sequence for ordinary (i.e., “other”) keys (such as “2”) when modified by Shift-, Control-, Alt- or Meta-modifiers. This feature does not apply to special keys, i.e., cursor-, keypad-, function- or control-keys which are labeled on your keyboard. Those have key symbols which XKB identifies uniquely.

For example, this feature does not apply to special control-keys (e.g., Escape, Tab, Enter, Backspace) Other control keys (e.g., Control-I, Control-M, Control-H) may send escape sequences when this feature is enabled.

The default is “0”:

The Xterm FAQ has an extended discussion of this feature, with examples:

multiClickTime (class MultiClickTime)

Specifies the maximum time in milliseconds between multi-click select events. The default is “250” milliseconds.

multiScroll (class MultiScroll)

Specifies whether or not scrolling should be done asynchronously. The default is “false”.

nMarginBell (class Column)

Specifies the number of characters from the right margin at which the margin bell should be rung, when enabled by the marginBell resource. The default is “10”.

nameKeymap (class NameKeymap)

See the discussion of the keymap() action.

nextEventDelay (class NextEventDelay)

Specifies a delay time in milliseconds before checking for new X events. The default is “1”.

numColorRegisters (class NumColorRegisters)

If xterm is configured to support ReGIS or SIXEL graphics, this specifies the number of color-registers which are available.

If this resource is not specified, xterm uses a value determined by the decTerminalID resource:

Result	decTerminalID
4	125
4	240
4	241
4	330
16	340
2	382
1024	other

numLock (class NumLock)

If “true”, xterm checks if NumLock is used as a modifier (see xmodmap(1)). If so, this modifier is used to simplify the logic when implementing special NumLock for the sunKeyboard resource. Also (when sunKeyboard is false), similar logic is used to find the modifier associated with the left and right Alt keys. The default is “true”.

oldXtermFKeys (class OldXtermFKeys)

If “true”, xterm will use old-style (X11R5) escape sequences for function keys F1 to F4, for compatibility with X Consortium xterm. Otherwise, it uses the VT100 codes for PF1 to PF4. The default is “false”.

Setting this resource has the same effect as setting the keyboardType to legacy. The keyboardType resource is the preferred mechanism for selecting this mode.

The old-style escape sequences resemble VT220 keys, but appear to have been invented for xterm in X11R4.

on2Clicks (class On2Clicks)

on3Clicks (class On3Clicks)

on4Clicks (class On4Clicks)

on5Clicks (class On5Clicks)

Specify selection behavior in response to multiple mouse clicks. A single mouse click is always interpreted as described in the Selection Functions section (see POINTER USAGE). Multiple mouse clicks (using the button which activates the select-start action) are interpreted according to the resource values of on2Clicks, etc. The resource value can be one of these:

The default values for on2Clicks and on3Clicks are “word” and “line”, respectively. There is no default value for on4Clicks or on5Clicks, making those inactive. On startup, xterm determines the maximum number of clicks by the onXClicks resource values which are set.

openIm (class OpenIm)

Tells xterm whether to open the input method at startup. The default is “true”.

pointerColor (class PointerColor)

Specifies the foreground color of the pointer. The default is “XtDefaultForeground”.

pointerColorBackground (class PointerColorBackground)

Specifies the background color of the pointer. The default is “XtDefaultBackground”.

pointerFont (class PointerFont)

Specifies the font to be used for the pointer. The shapes specified by pointerShape are glyphs in this font. The resource value default is cursor.

pointerMode (class PointerMode)

Specifies when the pointer may be hidden as the user types. It will be redisplayed if the user moves the mouse, or clicks one of its buttons.

pointerShape (class Cursor)

Specifies the name of the shape of the pointer. The default is “xterm”.

Other shapes can be selected. Here is a list of the “core” (i.e., standard) names extracted from <X11/cursorfont.h>:

If you are using a cursor theme, expect it to provide about a third of those names, while adding others.

popOnBell (class PopOnBell)

Specifies whether the window would be raised when Control-G is received. The default is “false”.

If the window is iconified, this has no effect. However, the zIconBeep resource provides you with the ability to see which iconified windows have sounded a bell.

precompose (class Precompose)

Tells xterm whether to precompose UTF-8 data into Normalization Form C, which combines commonly-used accents onto base characters. If it does not do this, accents are left as separate characters. The default is “true”.

preeditType (class PreeditType)

Tells xterm which types of preedit (preconversion) string to display. The default is “OverTheSpot,Root”.

preferLatin1 (class PreferLatin1)

Tells xterm whether to use DEC Supplemental Graphic, or ISO Latin-1 for the user-preferred supplemental set (UPSS) when initializing character sets. The former is the documented setting for hardware terminals, but the latter is expected by most users. The default is “true” (ISO Latin-1).

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.

The default is “1”.

printFileImmediate (class PrintFileImmediate)

When the print-immediate action is invoked, xterm prints the screen contents directly to a file. Set this resource to the prefix of the filename (a timestamp will be appended to the actual name).

The default is an empty string, i.e., “”, However, when the print-immediate action is invoked, if the string is empty, then “XTerm” is used.

printFileOnXError (class PrintFileOnXError)

If xterm exits with an X error, e.g., your connection is broken when the server crashes, it can be told to write the contents of the screen to a file. To enable the feature, set this resource to the prefix of the filename (a timestamp will be appended to the actual name).

The default is an empty string, i.e., “”, which disables this feature. However, when the print-on-error action is invoked, if the string is empty, then “XTermError” is used.

These error codes are handled: ERROR_XERROR, ERROR_XIOERROR and ERROR_ICEERROR.

printModeImmediate (class PrintModeImmediate)

When the print-immediate action is invoked, xterm prints the screen contents directly to a file. You can use the printModeImmediate resource to tell it to use escape sequences to reconstruct the video attributes and colors. This uses the same values as the printAttributes resource. The default is “0”.

printModeOnXError (class PrintModeOnXError)

Xterm implements the printFileOnXError feature using the printer feature, although the output is written directly to a file. You can use the printModeOnXError resource to tell it to use escape sequences to reconstruct the video attributes and colors. This uses the same values as the printAttributes resource. The default is “0”.

printOptsImmediate (class PrintOptsImmediate)

Specify the range of text which is printed to a file when the print-immediate action is invoked.

The default is “9”, which selects the current visible screen plus saved lines, with no special case for the alternated screen.

printOptsOnXError (class PrintOptsOnXError)

Specify the range of text which is printed to a file when the print-on-error action is invoked. The resource value is interpreted the same as in printOptsImmediate.

The default is “9”, which selects the current visible screen plus saved lines, with no special case for the alternated screen.

printerAutoClose (class PrinterAutoClose)

If “true”, xterm will close the printer (a pipe) when the application switches the printer offline with a Media Copy command. The default is “false”.

printerCommand (class PrinterCommand)

Specifies a shell command to which xterm will open a pipe when the first MC (Media Copy) command is initiated. The default is an empty string, i.e., “”. If the resource value is given as an empty string, the printer is disabled.

printerControlMode (class PrinterControlMode)

Specifies the printer control mode. A “1” selects autoprint mode, which causes xterm to print a line from the screen when

Autoprint mode is overridden by printer controller mode (a “2”), which causes all of the output to be directed to the printer. The default is “0”.

printerExtent (class PrinterExtent)

Controls whether a print page function will print the entire page (true), or only the portion within the scrolling margins (false). The default is “false”.

printerFormFeed (class PrinterFormFeed)

Controls whether a form feed is sent to the printer at the end of a print page function. The default is “false”.

printerNewLine (class PrinterNewLine)

Controls whether a newline is sent to the printer at the end of a print page function. The default is “true”.

privateColorRegisters (class PrivateColorRegisters)

If xterm is configured to support ReGIS or SIXEL graphics, this controls whether xterm allocates separate color registers for each sixel device control string, e.g., for DECGCI. If not true, color registers are allocated only once, when the terminal is reset, and color changes in any graphic affect all graphics. The default is “true”.

quietGrab (class QuietGrab)

Controls whether the cursor is repainted when NotifyGrab and NotifyUngrab event types are received during change of focus. The default is “false”.

regisDefaultFont (class RegisDefaultFont)

If xterm is configured to support ReGIS graphics, this resource tells xterm which font to use if the ReGIS data does not specify one. No default value is specified; xterm accepts a TrueType font specification as in the faceName resource.

If no value is specified, xterm draws a bitmap indicating a missing character.

regisScreenSize (class RegisScreenSize)

If xterm is configured to support ReGIS graphics, this resource tells xterm the default size (in pixels) for these graphics, which also sets the default coordinate space to [0,0] (upper-left) and [width,height] (lower-right).

The application using ReGIS may use the “A” option of the “S” command to adjust the coordinate space or change the addressable portion of the screen.

Xterm accepts a special resource value “auto”, which tells xterm to use the decGraphicsID and decTerminalID resources to set the default size based on the hardware terminal's limits. Those limits are the same as for the maxGraphicSize resource.

The default is “auto”.

renderFont (class RenderFont)

If xterm is built with the Xft library, this controls whether the faceName resource is used. The default is “default”.

The resource values are strings, evaluated as booleans after startup.

resizeByPixel (class ResizeByPixel)

Set this “true” to disable hints to the window manager that request resizing by character rather than pixels.

Most window managers provide visual feedback showing the size of a window as you resize it, using these hints. When you maximize xterm, it disables those hints to allow the window manager to make better use of fractional rows or columns. Setting this resource disables the hints all the time.

The default is “false”.

resizeGravity (class ResizeGravity)

Affects the behavior when the window is resized to be taller or shorter. NorthWest specifies that the top line of text on the screen stay fixed. If the window is made shorter, lines are dropped from the bottom; if the window is made taller, blank lines are added at the bottom. This is compatible with the behavior in X11R4. SouthWest (the default) specifies that the bottom line of text on the screen stay fixed. If the window is made taller, additional saved lines will be scrolled down onto the screen; if the window is made shorter, lines will be scrolled off the top of the screen, and the top saved lines will be dropped.

retryInputMethod (class RetryInputMethod)

Tells xterm how many times to retry, in case the input-method server is not responding. This is a different issue than unsupported preedit type, etc. You may encounter retries if your X configuration (and its libraries) are missing pieces. Setting this resource to zero “0” will cancel the retrying. The default is “3”.

reverseVideo (class ReverseVideo)

Specifies whether or not reverse video should be simulated. The default is “false”.

There are several aspects to reverse video in xterm:

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:

reverseWrap (class ReverseWrap)

Specifies whether or not reverse-wraparound should be enabled. This corresponds to xterm's private mode 45. The default is “false”.

rightScrollBar (class RightScrollBar)

Specifies whether or not the scrollbar should be displayed on the right rather than the left. The default is “false”.

saveLines (class SaveLines)

Specifies the number of lines to save beyond the top of the screen when a scrollbar is turned on. The default is “1024”.

scrollBar (class ScrollBar)

Specifies whether or not the scrollbar should be displayed. The default is “false”.

scrollBarBorder (class ScrollBarBorder)

Specifies the width of the scrollbar border. Note that this is drawn to overlap the border of the xterm window. Modifying the scrollbar's border affects only the line between the VT100 widget and the scrollbar. The default value is 1.

scrollKey (class ScrollCond)

Specifies whether or not pressing a key should automatically cause the scrollbar to go to the bottom of the scrolling region. This corresponds to xterm's private mode 1011. The default is “false”.

scrollLines (class ScrollLines)

Specifies the number of lines that the scroll-back and scroll-forw actions should use as a default. The default value is 1.

scrollTtyOutput (class ScrollCond)

Specifies whether or not output to the terminal should automatically cause the scrollbar to go to the bottom of the scrolling region. The default is “true”.

selectToClipboard (class SelectToClipboard)

Tells xterm whether to use the PRIMARY or CLIPBOARD for SELECT tokens in the selection mechanism. The set-select action can change this at runtime, allowing the user to work with programs that handle only one of these mechanisms. The default is “false”, which tells it to use PRIMARY.

shiftEscape (class ShiftEscape)

Xterm uses the translations resource to determine how to invoke actions for selecting and copying text using the pointer (e.g., a mouse). It also provides a mouse protocol which can be used by applications running in an xterm to detect mouse button clicks.

The mouse protocol causes xterm to send special escape sequences which allow an application to determine if modifiers (i.e., one or more of shift, control, alt, and meta) were used.

Xterm provides this mouse protocol by interpreting button- and motion-events in the functions which the translations resource calls for selecting and copying text:

While the mouse protocol is active, xterm reserves most of the mouse button events for sending special escape sequences to the application. Xterm normally allows you to use the shift-key to temporarily override this mouse protocol, permitting the selection and copying actions to be used.

The shiftEscape resource setting allows you to tell xterm whether to use the shift-key in this way (i.e., overriding the mouse protocol). Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:

Xterm interprets a control sequence which can change this setting between “true” and “false”. The default is “false”.

shiftFonts (class ShiftFonts)

Specifies whether to enable the actions larger-vt-font() and smaller-vt-font(), which are normally bound to the shifted KP_Add and KP_Subtract. The default is “true”.

showBlinkAsBold (class ShowBlinkAsBold)

Tells xterm whether to display text with blink-attribute the same as bold. If xterm has not been configured to support blinking text, the default is “true”, which corresponds to older versions of xterm, otherwise the default is “false”.

showMissingGlyphs (class ShowMissingGlyphs)

Tells xterm whether to display a box outlining places where a character has been used that the font does not represent. The default is “true”.

showWrapMarks (class ShowWrapMarks)

For debugging xterm and applications that may manipulate the wrapped-line flag by writing text at the right margin, show a mark on the right inner-border of the window. The mark shows which lines have the flag set.

signalInhibit (class SignalInhibit)

Specifies whether or not the entries in the Main Options menu for sending signals to xterm should be disallowed. The default is “false”.

sixelScrolling (class SixelScrolling)

If xterm is configured to support SIXEL graphics, this resource tells it whether to scroll up one line at a time when sixels would be written past the bottom line on the window. The default is “true” which enables scrolling.

Sixel scrolling is the opposite of DEC Sixel Display Mode (DECSDM): when one is on, the other is off.

sixelScrollsRight (class SixelScrollsRight)

If xterm is configured to support SIXEL graphics, this resource tells it whether to scroll to the right as needed to keep the current position visible rather than truncate the plot on the on the right. The default is “false” which disables scrolling.

tekGeometry (class Geometry)

Specifies the preferred size and position of the Tektronix window. There is no default for this resource.

tekInhibit (class TekInhibit)

Specifies whether or not the escape sequence to enter Tektronix mode should be ignored. The default is “false”.

tekSmall (class TekSmall)

Specifies whether or not the Tektronix mode window should start in its smallest size if no explicit geometry is given. This is useful when running xterm on displays with small screens. The default is “false”.

tekStartup (class TekStartup)

Specifies whether or not xterm should start up in Tektronix mode. The default is “false”.

tiXtraScroll (class TiXtraScroll)

Specifies whether xterm should scroll to a new page when processing the ti or te termcap strings, 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.

Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:

The default for this resource is “false”.

titeInhibit (class TiteInhibit)

Originally specified whether or not xterm should remove ti and te termcap entries (used to switch between alternate screens on startup of many screen-oriented programs) from the TERMCAP string.

TERMCAP is used rarely now, but xterm supports the feature on modern systems:

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:

translations (class Translations)

Specifies the key and button bindings for menus, selections, “programmed strings”, etc. The translations resource, which provides much of xterm's configurability, is a feature of the X Toolkit Intrinsics library (Xt). See the Actions section.

trimSelection (class TrimSelection)

If you set highlightSelection, you can see the text which is selected, including any trailing spaces. Clearing the screen (or a line) resets it to a state containing no spaces. Some lines may contain trailing spaces when an application writes them to the screen. However, you may not wish to paste lines with trailing spaces. If this resource is true, xterm will trim trailing spaces from text which is selected. It does not affect spaces which result in a wrapped line, nor will it trim the trailing newline from your selection. The default is “false”.

underLine (class UnderLine)

This specifies whether or not text with the underline attribute should be underlined. It may be desirable to disable underlining when color is being used for the underline attribute. The default is “true”.

useBorderClipping (class UseBorderClipping)

Tell xterm whether to apply clipping when useClipping is false. Unlike useClipping, this simply limits text to keep it within the window borders, e.g., as a refinement to the scaleHeight workaround. The default is “false”.

useClipping (class UseClipping)

Tell xterm whether to use clipping to keep from producing dots outside the text drawing area. Originally used to work around for overstriking effects, this is also needed to work with some incorrectly-sized fonts. The default is “true”.

utf8 (class Utf8)

This specifies whether xterm will run in UTF-8 mode. If you set this resource, xterm also sets the wideChars resource as a side-effect. The resource can be set via the menu entry “UTF-8 Encoding”. The default is “default”.

Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:

If you want to set the value of utf8, it should be in this range. Other nonzero values are treated the same as “1”, i.e., UTF-8 mode is initially on, and escape sequences for turning UTF-8 mode on/off are allowed.

utf8Fonts (class Utf8Fonts)

See the discussion of the locale resource. This specifies whether xterm will use UTF-8 fonts specified via resource patterns such as “*vt100.utf8Fonts.font” or normal (ISO-8859-1) fonts via patterns such as “*vt100.font”. The resource can be set via the menu entry “UTF-8 Fonts”. The default is “default”.

Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:

utf8Latin1 (class Utf8Latin1)

If true, allow an ISO-8859-1 normal font to be combined with an ISO-10646-1 font if the latter is given via the -fw option or its corresponding resource value. The default is “false”.

utf8SelectTypes (class Utf8SelectTypes)

Override xterm's default selection target list (see SELECT/PASTE) for selections in wide-character (UTF-8) mode. The default is an empty string, i.e., “”, which does not override anything.

utf8Title (class Utf8Title)

Applications can set xterm's title by writing a control sequence. Normally this control sequence follows the VT220 convention, which encodes the string in ISO-8859-1 and allows for an 8-bit string terminator. If xterm is started in a UTF-8 locale, it translates the ISO-8859-1 string to UTF-8 to work with the X libraries which assume the string is UTF-8.

However, some users may wish to write a title string encoded in UTF-8. The window manager is responsible for drawing window titles. Some window managers (not all) support UTF-8 encoding of window titles. Set this resource to “true” to also set UTF-8 encoded title strings using the EWMH properties.

This feature is available as a menu entry, since it is related to the particular applications you are running within xterm. You can also use a control sequence (see the discussion of “Title Modes” in Xterm Control Sequences), to set an equivalent flag (which can also be set using the titleModes resource).

Xterm accepts either a keyword (ignoring case) or the number shown in parentheses:

The default is “default”.

utf8Weblike (class Utf8Weblike)

Provide an alternate error-handling scheme for ill-formed UTF-8 as recommended in a W3C document. The Unicode standard does not require this for conformance. Some additional information can be found here:

The default is “false”.

veryBoldColors (class VeryBoldColors)

Specifies whether to combine video attributes with colors specified by colorBD, colorBL, colorIT, colorRV, and colorUL. The resource value is the sum of values for each attribute:

1 for reverse,
2 for underline,
4 for bold,
8 for blink, and
512 for italic

The default is “0”.

visualBell (class VisualBell)

Specifies whether or not a visible bell (i.e., flashing) should be used instead of an audible bell when Control-G is received. The default is “false”, which tells xterm to use an audible bell.

visualBellDelay (class VisualBellDelay)

Number of milliseconds to delay when displaying a visual bell. Default is 100. If set to zero, no visual bell is displayed. This is useful for very slow displays, e.g., an LCD display on a laptop.

visualBellLine (class VisualBellLine)

Specifies whether to flash only the current line when displaying a visual bell rather than flashing the entire screen: The default is “false”, which tells xterm to flash the entire screen.

vt100Graphics (class VT100Graphics)

This specifies whether xterm will interpret VT100 graphic character escape sequences while in UTF-8 mode. This feature also applies to code-pages (e.g., for VT320 and VT520) and National Replacement Character Sets (VT220 and up), but not US-ASCII (the initially selected character set), to avoid conflict with UTF-8. The default is “true”, to provide support for various legacy applications.

wideBoldFont (class WideBoldFont)

This option specifies the font to be used for displaying bold wide text. By default, it will attempt to use a font twice as wide as the font that will be used to draw bold text. If no double-width font is found, it will improvise, by stretching the bold font.

wideChars (class WideChars)

Specifies if xterm should respond to control sequences that process 16-bit characters. The default is “false”.

wideFont (class WideFont)

This option specifies the font to be used for displaying wide text. By default, it will attempt to use a font twice as wide as the font that will be used to draw normal text. If no double-width font is found, it will improvise, by stretching the normal font.

xftMaxGlyphMemory (class XftMaxGlyphMemory)

Set the Xft library's limit on glyph memory (typically 4Mb). When it reaches this limit, it discards “randomly chosen” glyphs to make room for new ones. The default is “0” to use Xft's default value.

xftMaxUnrefFonts (class XftMaxUnrefFonts)

Set the Xft library's limit on fonts which have been loaded (typically 16), e.g., matching patterns for fallback searches, but are not actually used. The default is “0” to use Xft's default value.

xftTrackMemUsage (class XftTrackMemUsage)

Enables glyph memory tracking (introduced in Xft 2.3.5), which allows Xft to efficiently discard obsolete data when running short of memory. The default is “false”.

ximFont (class XimFont)

This option specifies the font to be used for displaying the preedit string in the “OverTheSpot” input method.

In “OverTheSpot” preedit type, the preedit (preconversion) string is displayed at the position of the cursor. It is the XIM server's responsibility to display the preedit string. The XIM client must inform the XIM server of the cursor position. For best results, the preedit string must be displayed with a proper font. Therefore, xterm informs the XIM server of the proper font. The font is be supplied by a "fontset", whose default value is “*”. This matches every font, the X library automatically chooses fonts with proper charsets. The ximFont resource is provided to override this default font setting.

Tek4014 Widget Resources

The following resources are specified as part of the tek4014 widget (class Tek4014). These are specified by patterns such as “XTerm.tek4014.NAME”:

font2 (class Font)

Specifies font number 2 to use in the Tektronix window.

font3 (class Font)

Specifies font number 3 to use in the Tektronix window.

fontLarge (class Font)

Specifies the large font to use in the Tektronix window.

fontSmall (class Font)

Specifies the small font to use in the Tektronix window.

ginTerminator (class GinTerminator)

Specifies what character(s) should follow a GIN report or status report. The possibilities are “none”, which sends no terminating characters, “CRonly”, which sends CR, and “CR&EOT”, which sends both CR and EOT. The default is “none”.

height (class Height)

Specifies the height of the Tektronix window in pixels.

initialFont (class InitialFont)

Specifies which of the four Tektronix fonts to use initially. Values are the same as for the set-tek-text action. The default is “large”.

width (class Width)

Specifies the width of the Tektronix window in pixels.

Menu Resources

The resources that may be specified for the various menus are described in the documentation for the Athena SimpleMenu widget. The name and classes of the entries in each of the menus are listed below. Resources named “lineN” where N is a number are separators with class SmeLine.

As with all X resource-based widgets, the labels mentioned are customary defaults for the application.

The Main Options menu (widget name mainMenu) has the following entries:

toolbar (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-toolbar(toggle) action.

securekbd (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the secure() action.

allowsends (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the allow-send-events(toggle) action.

redraw (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the redraw() action.

logging (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the logging(toggle) action.

print-immediate (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the print-immediate() action.

print-on-error (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the print-on-error() action.

print (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the print() action.

print-redir (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the print-redir() action.

dump-html (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the dump-html() action.

dump-svg (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the dump-svg() action.

8-bit-control (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-8-bit-control(toggle) action.

backarrow key (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-backarrow(toggle) action.

num-lock (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-num-lock(toggle) action.

alt-esc (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the alt-sends-escape(toggle) action.

meta-esc (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the meta-sends-escape(toggle) action.

delete-is-del (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the delete-is-del(toggle) action.

oldFunctionKeys (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-old-function-keys(toggle) action.

hpFunctionKeys (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-hp-function-keys(toggle) action.

scoFunctionKeys (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-sco-function-keys(toggle) action.

sunFunctionKeys (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-sun-function-keys(toggle) action.

sunKeyboard (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the sunKeyboard(toggle) action.

suspend (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the send-signal(tstp) action on systems that support job control.

continue (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the send-signal(cont) action on systems that support job control.

interrupt (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the send-signal(int) action.

hangup (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the send-signal(hup) action.

terminate (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the send-signal(term) action.

kill (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the send-signal(kill) action.

quit (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the quit() action.

The VT Options menu (widget name vtMenu) has the following entries:

scrollbar (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-scrollbar(toggle) action.

jumpscroll (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-jumpscroll(toggle) action.

reversevideo (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-reverse-video(toggle) action.

autowrap (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-autowrap(toggle) action.

reversewrap (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-reversewrap(toggle) action.

autolinefeed (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-autolinefeed(toggle) action.

appcursor (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-appcursor(toggle) action.

appkeypad (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-appkeypad(toggle) action.

scrollkey (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-scroll-on-key(toggle) action.

scrollttyoutput (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-scroll-on-tty-output(toggle) action.

allow132 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-allow132(toggle) action.

cursesemul (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-cursesemul(toggle) action.

keepSelection (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-keep-selection(toggle) action.

selectToClipboard (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-keep-clipboard(toggle) action.

visualbell (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-visual-bell(toggle) action.

bellIsUrgent (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-bellIsUrgent(toggle) action.

poponbell (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-pop-on-bell(toggle) action.

cursorblink (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-cursorblink(toggle) action.

titeInhibit (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-titeInhibit(toggle) action.

activeicon (class SmeBSB)

This entry toggles active icons on and off if this feature was compiled into xterm. It is enabled only if xterm was started with the command line option +ai or the activeIcon resource is set to “true”.

softreset (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the soft-reset() action.

hardreset (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the hard-reset() action.

clearsavedlines (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the clear-saved-lines() action.

tekshow (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-visibility(tek,toggle) action.

tekmode (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-terminal-type(tek) action.

vthide (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-visibility(vt,off) action.

altscreen (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-altscreen(toggle) action.

sixelScrolling (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-sixel-scrolling(toggle) action.

privateColorRegisters (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-private-colors(toggle) action.

The VT Fonts menu (widget name fontMenu) has the following entries:

fontdefault (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(d) action, setting the font using the font (default) resource, e.g., “Default” in the menu.

font1 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(1) action, setting the font using the font1 resource, e.g., “Unreadable” in the menu.

font2 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(2) action, setting the font using the font2 resource, e.g., “Tiny” in the menu.

font3 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(3) action, setting the font using the font3 resource, e.g., “Small” in the menu.

font4 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(4) action, letting the font using the font4 resource, e.g., “Medium” in the menu.

font5 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(5) action, letting the font using the font5 resource, e.g., “Large” in the menu.

font6 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(6) action, letting the font using the font6 resource, e.g., “Huge” in the menu.

font7 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(7) action, letting the font using the font7 resource, e.g., “Enormous” in the menu.

fontescape (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(e) action.

fontsel (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-vt-font(s) action.

allow-bold-fonts (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the allow-bold-fonts(toggle) action.

font-linedrawing (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-font-linedrawing(s) action.

font-packed (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-font-packed(s) action.

font-doublesize (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-font-doublesize(s) action.

render-font (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-render-font(s) action.

utf8-fonts (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-utf8-fonts(s) action.

utf8-mode (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-utf8-mode(s) action.

utf8-title (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-utf8-title(s) action.

allow-color-ops (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the allow-color-ops(toggle) action.

allow-font-ops (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the allow-font-ops(toggle) action.

allow-tcap-ops (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the allow-tcap-ops(toggle) action.

allow-title-ops (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the allow-title-ops(toggle) action.

allow-window-ops (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the allow-window-ops(toggle) action.

The Tek Options menu (widget name tekMenu) has the following entries:

tektextlarge (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-tek-text(large) action.

tektext2 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-tek-text(2) action.

tektext3 (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-tek-text(3) action.

tektextsmall (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-tek-text(small) action.

tekpage (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the tek-page() action.

tekreset (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the tek-reset() action.

tekcopy (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the tek-copy() action.

vtshow (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-visibility(vt,toggle) action.

vtmode (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-terminal-type(vt) action.

tekhide (class SmeBSB)

This entry invokes the set-visibility(tek,toggle) action.

Scrollbar Resources

The following resources are useful when specified for the Athena Scrollbar widget:

background (class Background)

Specifies the color to use for the background of the scrollbar.

foreground (class Foreground)

Specifies the color to use for the foreground of the scrollbar.

thickness (class Thickness)

Specifies the width in pixels of the scrollbar (default: 14).

This may be overridden by the width resource.

thumb (class Thumb)

The default “thumb” pixmap used for the scrollbar is a simple checkerboard pattern alternating pixels for foreground and background color.

width (class Width)

Specifies the width in pixels of the scrollbar (default: 0).

The widget checks the width resource first, using the thickness value if the width is zero.

Selection Functions

By default, the selection functions are invoked when the pointer buttons are used with no modifiers, and when they are used with the “shift” key. The “shift” key is special, because xterm uses that to ensure that selection functions are still available when it is programmed to send escape sequences in one of the mouse modes (see Xterm Control Sequences, as well as the resource disallowedMouseOps).

At startup, xterm inspects the translations resource to see which pointer buttons may be used in this way, and remembers these buttons when deciding whether to send escape sequences or perform selection when those buttons are used with the “shift” modifier. Other pointer buttons, e.g., typically those sent for wheel mouse events, are not affected.

The assignment of the functions described below to keys and buttons may be changed through the resource database; see Actions below.

Pointer button one (usually left)

is used to save text into the cut buffer:

~Meta <Btn1Down>:select-start()

Move the cursor to beginning of the text, and then hold the button down while moving the cursor to the end of the region and releasing the button. The selected text is highlighted and is saved in the global cut buffer and made the selection when the button is released:

<BtnUp>:select-end(SELECT, CUT_BUFFER0) \n

Normally (but see the discussion of on2Clicks, etc):

Multiple-click is determined by the time from button up to button down, so you can change the selection unit in the middle of a selection. Logical words and lines selected by double- or triple-clicking may wrap across more than one screen line if lines were wrapped by xterm itself rather than by the application running in the window. If the key/button bindings specify that an X selection is to be made, xterm will leave the selected text highlighted for as long as it is the selection owner.

Pointer button two (usually middle)

“types” (pastes) the text from the given selection, if any, otherwise from the cut buffer, inserting it as keyboard input:

~Ctrl ~Meta <Btn2Up>:insert-selection(SELECT, CUT_BUFFER0)

Pointer button three (usually right)

extends the current selection.

~Ctrl ~Meta <Btn3Down>:start-extend()

(Without loss of generality, you can swap “right” and “left” everywhere in the rest of this paragraph.) If pressed while closer to the right edge of the selection than the left, it extends/contracts the right edge of the selection. If you contract the selection past the left edge of the selection, xterm assumes you really meant the left edge, restores the original selection, then extends/contracts the left edge of the selection. Extension starts in the selection unit mode that the last selection or extension was performed in; you can multiple-click to cycle through them.

By cutting and pasting pieces of text without trailing new lines, you can take text from several places in different windows and form a command to the shell, for example, or take output from a program and insert it into your favorite editor. Since cut buffers are globally shared among different applications, you may regard each as a “file” whose contents you know. The terminal emulator and other text programs should be treating it as if it were a text file, i.e., the text is delimited by new lines.

Scrolling

The scroll region displays the position and amount of text currently showing in the window (highlighted) relative to the amount of text actually saved. As more text is saved (up to the maximum), the size of the highlighted area decreases.

Clicking button one with the pointer in the scroll region moves the adjacent line to the top of the display window.

Clicking button three moves the top line of the display window down to the pointer position.

Clicking button two moves the display to a position in the saved text that corresponds to the pointer's position in the scrollbar.

Tektronix Pointer

Unlike the VTxxx window, the Tektronix window does not allow the copying of text. It does allow Tektronix GIN mode, and in this mode the cursor will change from an arrow to a cross. Pressing any key will send that key and the current coordinate of the cross cursor. Pressing button one, two, or three will return the letters “l”, “m”, and “r”, respectively. If the “shift” key is pressed when a pointer button is pressed, the corresponding upper case letter is sent. To distinguish a pointer button from a key, the high bit of the character is set (but this is bit is normally stripped unless the terminal mode is RAW; see tty(4) for details).

PRIMARY

When configured to use the primary selection (the default), xterm can provide the selection data in ways which help to retain character encoding information as it is pasted.

The PRIMARY token is a standard X feature, documented in the ICCCM (Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual), which states

A user “selects” text on xterm, which highlights the selected text. A subsequent “paste” to another client forwards a request to the client owning the selection. If xterm owns the primary selection, it makes the data available in the form of one or more “selection targets”. If it does not own the primary selection, e.g., if it has released it or another client has asserted ownership, it relies on cut-buffers to pass the data. But cut-buffers handle only ISO-8859-1 data (officially - some clients ignore the rules).

CLIPBOARD

When configured to use the clipboard (using the selectToClipboard resource), the problem with persistence of ownership is bypassed. Otherwise, there is no difference regarding the data which can be passed via selection.

The selectToClipboard resource is a compromise, allowing CLIPBOARD to be treated almost like PRIMARY, unlike the ICCCM, which describes CLIPBOARD in different terms than PRIMARY or SECONDARY. Its lengthy explanation begins with the essential points:

SELECT

However, many applications use CLIPBOARD in imitation of other windowing systems. The selectToClipboard resource (and corresponding menu entry Select to Clipboard) introduce the SELECT token (known only to xterm) which chooses between the PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD tokens.

Without using this feature, one can use workarounds such as the xclip program to show the contents of the X clipboard within an xterm window.

SECONDARY

This is used less often than PRIMARY or CLIPBOARD. According to the ICCCM, it is used

• As the second argument to commands taking two arguments (for example, “exchange primary and secondary selections”)
• As a means of obtaining data when there is a primary selection and the user does not want to disturb it

Selection Targets

The different types of data which are passed depend on what the receiving client asks for. These are termed selection targets.

When asking for the selection data, xterm tries the following types in this order:

The middle two (TEXT and COMPOUND_TEXT) are added if xterm is configured with the i18nSelections resource set to “true”.

UTF8_STRING is preferred (therefore first in the list) since xterm stores text as Unicode data when running in wide-character mode, and no translation is needed. On the other hand, TEXT and COMPOUND_TEXT may require translation. If the translation is incomplete, they will insert X's “defaultString” whose value cannot be set, and may simply be empty. Xterm's defaultString resource specifies the string to use for incomplete translations of the UTF8_STRING.

You can alter the types which xterm tries using the eightBitSelectTypes or utf8SelectTypes resources. For instance, you might have some specific locale setting which does not use UTF-8 encoding. The resource value is a comma-separated list of the selection targets, which consist of the names shown. You can use the special name I18N to denote the optional inclusion of TEXT and COMPOUND_TEXT. The names are matched ignoring case, and can be abbreviated. The default list can be expressed in several ways, e.g.,

UTF8_STRING,I18N,STRING
utf8,i18n,string
u,i,s

Mouse Protocol

Applications can send escape sequences to xterm to cause it to send escape sequences back to the computer when you press a pointer button, or even (depending on which escape sequence) send escape sequences back to the computer as you move the pointer.

These escape sequences and the responses, called the mouse protocol, are documented in XTerm Control Sequences. They do not appear in the actions invoked by the translations resource because the resource does not change while you run xterm, whereas applications can change the mouse prototol (i.e., enable, disable, use different modes).

However, the mouse protocol is interpreted within the actions that are usually associated with the pointer buttons. Xterm ignores the mouse protocol in the insert-selection action if the shift-key is pressed at the same time. It also modifies a few other actions if the shift-key is pressed, e.g., suppressing the response with the pointer position, though not eliminating changes to the selected text.

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 VTxxx and Tektronix windows. There are several sections:

Commands for managing X events:

Commands for capturing output: