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Configure RXVT

Posted October 20th, 2008 by mingwadmin

TODO: Formatting is off.

  • The default rxvt font size is too small. How do I enlarge it?
    • Open C:\MSYS\1.0\msys.bat with a text editor and search for a line containing "80x25". Then replace it with:
       rem The following should be all one line.
 start rxvt -backspacekey ^H -sl 2500 -fg grey90 -bg black -sr -fn "Courier-bold-20" 
   -tn msys -geometry 80x25 -e /bin/sh --login -i
    • You can change the Courier font above with your favorite one. Note that using TrueType fonts (such as Courier New or Lucida Console) will result in sluggish performance under Windows XP.
  • Why don't the Home and End keys work in rxvt and vim?
    • This is because rxvt's terminal emulation uses different escape codes for these two keys. This sample ~/.inputrc file solves this issue:
            set completion-query-items 100
      set completion-ignore-case on
      set show-all-if-ambiguous off

      set input-meta on
      set output-meta on
      set convert-meta off
      set bell-style none

      "\e[2~": paste-from-clipboard
      "\e[3~": delete-char
      "\e[5~": beginning-of-history
      "\e[6~": end-of-history
      "\e[7~": beginning-of-line
      "\e[8~": end-of-line
    • Also, you need to set up your ~/.vimrc to enable the Home/End keys in ViM:
            set nocompatible
      set backspace=2
      syntax on

      map  <Esc>[7~ <Home>
      map  <Esc>[8~ <End>

      imap <Esc>[7~ <Home>
      imap <Esc>[8~ <End>
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Re: Configure RXVT

On October 29th, 2008 oyster says:

what is the true name of ~~ in "~~/.inputrc"

My msys is installed in H:\mingw\msys; I can find h:\mingw\msys\bin\rxvt.exe

I have tried to put ".inputrc" in "H:\mingw\msys\bin\" and "H:\mingw\msys\etc\", but none works :(

Re: Configure RXVT

keith's picture
On November 24th, 2008 keith says:

"~~" is an artifact from the original phpWiki source for this page. phpWiki uses "~" as a formatting escape, so everywhere you see two of them together, the intent was to display only one. The new MediaWiki format doesn't use "~" this way, so you see two, where only one is intended -- that is probably what the "formatting is off" comment was intended to signify.

"~~/.inputrc" should have read "~/.inputrc", which is shorthand for "$HOME/.inputrc"; similarly for "~/.vimrc"

I've corrected this anomaly in the page source. You need to revisit your "~/.inputrc" and "~/.vimrc", and

for file in ~/.inputrc ~/.vimrc
do sed 's/~~/~/g' $file > $file.tmp
   mv -f $file.tmp $file
done

Re: Configure RXVT

On October 29th, 2008 oyster says:

now I put it as H:\mingw\msys\home\MY\.inputrc
now HOME insert [7~, and END insert [8~, strange

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