NAME¶

xtermcontrol - dynamic control of XFree86 xterm properties.

SYNOPSIS¶

xtermcontrol [OPTIONS]...

DESCRIPTION¶

xtermcontrol makes it easy to change colors, title, font and geometry of a running XFree86 xterm(1), as well as to report the current settings of the aforementioned properties.

Window manipulations de-/iconify, raise/lower, maximize/restore and reset are also supported.

To complete the feature set; xtermcontrol lets advanced users issue any xterm control sequence of their choosing.

OPTIONS¶

--fg=COLOR

Set foreground color (see also COLOR NAMES).

--bg=COLOR

Set background color.

--colorN=COLOR

Set N'th [0-255] color to COLOR, e.g. --color88=COLOR.

--highlight=COLOR

Set highlight color.

--cursor=COLOR

Set cursor color.

--mouse-fg=COLOR

Set mouse pointer foreground color.

--mouse-bg=COLOR

Set mouse pointer background color.

--font=FONT

Set font name (see also FONT NAMES). Alternatively it is possible to specify a fontmenu index as ´#[0-6]´ or navigate the fontmenu by relative sizes as ´#+N´ or ´#-N´, where N is an optional integer.

--title=STRING

Set window title. Note that mechanisms like the bash(1) PROMPT_COMMAND may overwrite the title.

--geometry=WIDTHxHEIGHT+XOFF+YOFF

Set size and/or position. Through its control sequences the xterm only recognize positive XOFF and YOFF offsets, which are pixels relative to the upper left hand corner of the display. xtermcontrol is therefore unable to handle negative offsets as described in the X(7x) GEOMETRY SPECIFICATIONS and therefore truncates negative values to zero.

--get-fg

Report foreground color.

--get-bg

Report background color.

--get-colorN

Report N'th [0-255] color, e.g. --get-color88.

--get-highlight

Report highlight color.

--get-cursor

Report cursor color.

--get-mouse-fg

Report mouse pointer foreground color.

--get-mouse-bg

Report mouse pointer background color.

--get-font

Report font.

--get-title

Report window title.

--get-geometry

Report size and position. The size of the text area is reported in characters and the position is reported in pixels relative to the upper left hand corner of the display.

--maximize

Maximize window.

--restore

Restore maximized window.

--iconify

Iconify window.

--de-iconify

De-iconify window.

--raise

Raise window.

--lower

Lower window.

--reset

Full reset.

--raw=CTLSEQS

Issue raw control sequence (see also XTERM CONTROL SEQUENCES).

--file=FILE

Source a configuration FILE (see also CONFIGURATION).

--force, -f

Skip TERM environment variable check.

--verbose, -v

Print verbose reports.

--help, -h

Print help message and exit.

--version

Print the version number and exit.

CONFIGURATION¶

The default configuration file ~/.xtermcontrol is sourced if xtermcontrol is run without options or if specifically requested, e.g. 'xtermcontrol --file=~/.xtermcontrol'.

Each line in a configuration file is either a comment or contains an attribute. Attributes consist of a keyword and an associated value:

      keyword = value # comment

      foreground="COLOR"


      background="COLOR"


      highlight="COLOR"


      cursor="COLOR"


      mouse-foreground="COLOR"


      mouse-background="COLOR"


      geometry="WIDTHxHEIGHT+XOFF+YOFF"


      font="FONT"


      color0="COLOR"


      color1="COLOR"


      color2="COLOR"


      color3="COLOR"


      color4="COLOR"


      color5="COLOR"


      color6="COLOR"


      color7="COLOR"


      color8="COLOR"


      color9="COLOR"


      color10="COLOR"


      color11="COLOR"


      color12="COLOR"


      color13="COLOR"


      color14="COLOR"


      color15="COLOR"

Whitespace is ignored in attributes unless within a quoted value. The character ´#´ is taken to begin a comment. Each ´#´ and all remaining characters on that line is ignored.

FONT NAMES¶

xtermcontrol accepts any X(7x) FONT NAMES. Font names like ´-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-m-60-iso8859-1´ are very cumbersome to write, so it is convenient to make use of aliases, e.g. ´fixed´ or ´8x13´, if present in fonts.alias files of the font directories.

COLOR NAMES¶

xtermcontrol accepts any X(7x) COLOR NAMES. Basically this means that colors are specified by name or rgb value, e.g. ´blue´, ´rgb:0000/0000/FFFF´ or ´#00F´. Colors are typically reported by the xterm in a device-dependent numerical form, e.g. ´rgb:0000/0000/FFFF´. Note that old syntax rgb values should always be quoted to avoid ´#´ being interpreted as the beginning of a comment by the shell (see also FILES).

XTERM CONTROL SEQUENCES¶

The secret behind xtermcontrol is xterm control sequences. All the possible (there are a plethora of them) control sequences are documented in ctlseqs.txt, found in the xterm(1) distribution (see also FILES).

MACOS TERMINAL.APP¶

The macOS Terminal.app emulates an extended set of the VTxxx series commands, closely resembling dtterm. Therefore the following subset of xtermcontrol options works as expected:

      --title


      --geometry


      --get-geometry


      --maximize


      --restore


      --iconify


      --de-iconify


      --raise


      --lower


      --reset

Color names are ignored, but device-dependent numerical form and rgb values works as expected for the following subset of xtermcontrol options (see also COLOR NAMES):

      --fg


      --get-fg


      --bg


      --get-bg


      --cursor


      --get-cursor


      --mouse-fg


      --get-mouse-fg


      --mouse-bg


      --get-mouse-bg

TROUBLESHOOTING¶

If read/write permissions on the tty's are changed so that special group membership is required to be able to write to the pseudo terminal, the easiest workaround is to install xtermcontrol setuid root.

Xterm(1) has three resources, allowWindowOps, allowTitleOps, and allowFontOps, that enables or disables special operations which xtermcontrol relies on. If any of these resources are set (or defaults) to 'false' xtermcontrol may hang. The resources corresponds to xtermcontrol options as:

   allowWindowOps:


      --raise


      --lower


      --restore


      --maximize


      --iconify


      --de-iconify


      --get-title


      --geometry


      --get-geometry


   allowTitleOps:


      --title


   allowFontOps:


      --font


      --get-font

   *VT100.allowWindowOps: true


   *VT100.allowTitleOps: true


   *VT100.allowFontOps: true

FILES¶

<XRoot>/X11/rgb.txt

Default rgb color name file location.

ctlseqs.txt

Xterm control sequences documentation. Distributed with xterm from http://dickey.his.com/xterm/

SEE ALSO¶

xterm(1), X(7x)

COPYRIGHT¶

Copyright © 2002-2022 Jess Thrysoee <jess@thrysoee.dk>