Rxvt (acronym for our extended virtual terminal) is a

terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...

for the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

, and in the form of a

Cygwin Cygwin ( ) is a free and open-source Unix-like environment and command-line interface (CLI) for Microsoft Windows. The project also provides a software repository containing open-source packages. Cygwin allows source code for Unix-like operati ...

port, for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

History

Rxvt was originally written by Rob Nation and later extensively modified by Mark Olesen, who took over maintenance for several years. It is intended to be a slimmed-down alternate for

xterm xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System. It allows users to run programs which require a command-line interface. If no particular program is specified, xterm runs the user's Unix shell, shell. An X display device, dis ...

, omitting some of its little-used features, like

Tektronix 4014 The Tektronix 4010 series was a family of text-and-graphics computer terminals based on storage-tube technology created by Tektronix. Several members of the family were introduced during the 1970s, the best known being the 11-inch 4010 and 19-in ...

emulation and

toolkit A toolkit is an assembly of tools; set of basic building units for user interfaces. The word toolkit may refer to: * Abstract Window Toolkit * Accessibility Toolkit * Adventure Game Toolkit * B-Toolkit * Cheminformatics toolkits * Dojo Toolk ...

-style configurability. The latter refers to the Xt resource mechanism, e.g., for binding keys. Rxvt is an extended version of the older xvt terminal emulator by John Bovey of the

University of Kent The University of Kent (formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury, abbreviated as UKC) is a Collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom. The university was granted its roya ...

. The name originally stood for "Rob's xvt" (with XVT stands for 'X Virtual Terminal'), but was later re-dubbed "our xvt" (pronounced like the letters r-x-v-t).

Features

Urxvt-vim-modemu-panda-bitstreamverasansmono

Aside from features such as those controlled by resource files, rxvt's terminal emulation differs from

in two important ways: *It emulates a

VT102 The VT100 is a video terminal, introduced in August 1978 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was one of the first terminals to support ANSI escape codes for cursor control and other tasks, and added a number of extended codes for special ...

, rather than a

VT220 The VT200 series is a family of computer terminals introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in November 1983. The VT220 was the basic version, a text-only version with multi-lingual capabilities. The VT240 added monochrome ReGIS vecto ...

. That means that it handles 8-bit data differently, does not implement the C1 controls that xterm does. xterm does implement a switch "-k8" to suppress that functionality; rxvt does not provide an option to emulate a VT220. *The strings sent for function keys are different. xterm sends strings that are encoded using the same rules as the ANSI/ISO escape sequences. Rxvt's do not, though they provide comparable flexibility in this area. Newer versions of rxvt have primitive support for

pseudo-transparency ''Pseudo-transparency'' is a term used for X Window System clients that simulate the appearance of translucency or transparency by manipulating the same pixmap that has been drawn on the root window, or by instructing the X Server that the Backgr ...

. The rxvt distribution also includes an analog clock program called rclock. Very old distributions included a copy of vttest, but dropped that in 1996 with version 2.18.

Forks

* aterm (from rxvt 2.4.8) created for use with the

AfterStep AfterStep is a stacking window manager for the X Window System. The goal of AfterStep's development is to provide for flexibility of desktop configuration, improved aesthetics and efficient use of system resources, and was used in such distributi ...

window manager (no longer maintained) * Eterm (from rxvt 2.21) created for use with

Enlightenment Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to: Age of Enlightenment * Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...

* mrxvt (from rxvt 2.7.11) created for multiple tabs and additional features (latest version released in 2008-09-10) * urxvt (rxvt-unicode) (from rxvt 2.7.11)urxvt(1) - Linux man page
/ref> * Wterm,
/ref> designed for

NeXTSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...

style

window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of window (computing), windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They ...

s such as

Window Maker GNUstep is a free software implementation of the Cocoa (formerly OpenStep) Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project. GNUste ...

Wterm - The Lightweight Feature-Rich Terminal Emulator for X
/ref>

References

External links

* {{Terminal emulators X Window programs Free terminal emulators

History

Features

Forks

See also

References

External links