Working with Scrollbars (Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition)

5.11. Working with Scrollbars

The scrollbar is a favorite xterm feature, particularly among those whose terminals lacked the ability to scroll backwards. Using the scrollbar, you can re-examine the output or error from a command, select previous text to supply in another command line or to paste into a file, or to hide your current screen from a nosy coworker.

There are many ways to start up the scrollbar. You can specify the -sb option on the command line:

% xterm -sb &
% rxvt -sb &

or you can set the scrollBar resource (Section 6.5) to true:

XTerm*scrollBar:    true  ...for xterm or rxvt
Rxvt*scrollBar:            true  ...for rxvt

or for an xterm window that's already running, you can call up the VT Options menu (Section 5.17) by holding down the CTRL key and the center mouse button or by selecting Enable Scrollbar. These menus are not supported by rxvt.

A scrollbar appears on the left side of the xterm window, as shown in Figure 5-1.

Figure 5-1. xterm window with scrollbar

--LM and SJC