RXVT

This week’s tool: RXVT

RXvt is an X-Windows alternative to XTerm. However, that’s not where or why I use it. RXvt is my prefereed shell window on Windows systems. I get it from the Cygwin Unix compatability distribution. (It’s not part of the default install set.)

(Incidentally, I’ve come to the point where I always do a full installation of Cygwin. To quote Rick B: “Hey man, disk space is free”.)

Useful features:

• mouse only highlight-is-copy a la X-Windows
• Shift-click to paste
• completely resizable in both width and height
• Reads your ~/.Xdefaults for customizations (the appropriate section from mine is included at the bottom)
• can copy/paste long lines

Drawbacks:

• It’s a Cygwin tool, so acts kinda cygwin like. However, you can use Windows command shell inside it and still see the features I listed above
• Depends on the cygwin installation, which is large and awkward.
• has some refresh oddities dealing with editing lines which wrap that I haven’t figured out yet.

Here’s the relevant lines from my ~/.Xdefaultsfile. (I like green on black, somewhat small font.)

<pre> /* * How about rxvt? * */

 /* rxvt*font:		-misc-fixed-medium-r-*-*-*-*-75-75-*-*-*-* */
 rxvt*jumpScroll:	true
 rxvt*saveLines:	1024
 rxvt*scrollBar:	on
 rxvt*scrollKey:	true
 rxvt*background:	black
 rxvt*cursorColor:	red
 rxvt*borderColor:	gold
 rxvt*foreground:	dark sea green
 rxvt*pointerColor:	white
 rxvt*backspacekey:     ^?

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