Working with xterm and Friends (Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition)

5.9. Working with xterm and Friends

xterm is by far the most commonly used X client, although more and more people are switching from xterm to similar or related programs, such as rxvt -- which is a lightweight xterm derivative without the Tektronix terminal emulation support. Regardless, the most commonly used clients are largely derivatives of xterm, so we're devoting the rest of this section to this single client and its family.

xterm[20] gives you a window containing your standard shell prompt (as specified in your /etc/passwd entry). You can use this window to run any command-line-oriented Unix program or to start additional X applications.

[20]When we refer, throughout the rest of the chapter, to xterm, we're often referring to xterm proper, as well as rxvt and other related terminal programs.

The uncustomized xterm window should be sufficient for many users' needs. Certainly you can do anything in a vanilla xterm window that you can from a character-based terminal. But xterm also has special features you can use, and since you spend so much time in xterm, you might as well use them.

The rest of this chapter gives you a set of tricks and tips about using xterm, including the following:

Specifying and using a scrollbar (Section 5.11).
Copying and pasting text selections (Section 5.13).
Modifying text-selection behavior (Section 5.14).
Printing the current directory in the xterm titlebar (Section 5.15).
Dynamically changing fonts and other features (Section 5.17, Section 5.18).

NOTE: The articles in this chapter use terms that you may want defined:

A pointer, or pointing device, is a piece of hardware designed for navigating a screen. Most people use a mouse as their pointer, but there are also trackballs, touchpads, and others.

The best pointer to use with X has three buttons. When we refer to the first button or button 1, we mean the button you click with your index finger. For right-handed people, this is usually the left button on a mouse. But the X client xmodmap (Section 6.1) lets left-handed users swap mouse buttons to make the rightmost button the "first."

Even though the actual image on the screen is called a cursor, throughout this chapter we refer to "moving the pointer" to avoid confusion with the standard text cursor that can appear in an xterm window.

--LM, VQ, and SJC