URXVTConfig

A graphical user interface tool for configuration of the rxvt-unicode terminal emulator.

How-to

• File

  • New: Resets all configuration options to the default values.
  • Load from custom file: Loads a specifiable configuration file.
  • Load from Xdefaults: Same as above, loads ~/.Xdefaults.
  • Load from Xresources: Same as above, loads ~/.Xresources.
  • Save to custom file: Saves currently selected options to a custom file.
  • Save to Xdefaults: Same as above, saves to ~/.Xdefaults.
  • Save to Xresources: Same as above, saves to ~/.Xresources.
  • Colors from file: Generates a color scheme using an image, refer to “Colors from file” further down below.
  • Quit: Rather selfexplanatory.

• Presets

  • Select one of premade and shamelessly borrowed color schemes!

• User Presets

  • Choose Preset: Select one from your saved themes, refer to “Custom Themes” further down below.
  • Save Preset: Saves currently selected colors to the preset database.

• Help

  • Help: Sends you to view this file.
  • About: Displays a tiny window with general information.

Dependencies

qt5 - For the GUI.

imagemagick - For generating color schemes from files.

fontconfig and libXft - For font selection.

It also requires rxvt-unicode to be built with “xft” support.
If you do not know what this means, don’t worry about it.

How do I get it

• Arch

We’re on the AUR now, use your favorite AUR helper.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/urxvtconfig

This will build from the latest commit on the “master” branch.

• Gentoo

urxvtconfig is part of the main portage tree.

https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/x11-misc/urxvtconfig

Sync your portage and emerge --ask --verbose x11-misc/urxvtconfig

• Void

urxvtconfig is part of the main repository.

xbps-install -S urxvtconfig

• Other distributions

As time passes, I will try to get this into as many repositories as I can, for now, just grab the latest release.

I highly recommend to build it yourself as described just below:

Build it yourself

Requires qt5 (qmake) and is highly encouraged.

$ git clone https://github.com/daedreth/URXVTConfig.git
$ cd URXVTConfig
$ qmake -qt=qt5 source/URXVTConfig.pro
$ make
$ sudo make install

If qmake does not appear to be working, you have to specify the full path to the qmake executable.

/usr/lib64/qt5/bin/qmake source/URXVTConfig.pro

Colors from file

If you have imagemagick installed, you can attempt to generate a nicely looking theme from an image.

The way this works is, we extract enough colors without duplicates and apply, you are obviously free to modify them once generated.

Custom themes

You can easily save and load custom themes.

Create the following file to get started: ~/.config/urxvtconfig/presets.db.

You can save your selected colors under a specific name to use at a later time, or load from the file.

It goes without saying that it’s possible to manually edit the file in order to add or remove presets, the syntax for a preset is as follows:
(make sure each one is on a new line)

Theme Name: <foreground>,<background>,<cursorColor>,<16 other colors>

Where the colors are HTML color codes, separated by commas. (HEX)
Save a configuration and manually edit the file to see exactly how that works.

The name may contain spaces and special characters, the only character it can not contain is a colon :.

Configuration

You can modify the way URXVTConfig works by creating and editing a configuration file.

By default, the file it is looking for upon launch is ~/.config/urxvtconfig/config.

The syntax and possible options so far are:

no_warnings: true | false - If set to true, we will stop nagging about installing third party plugins and a few other annoying warnings.

no_backups: true | false - If set to true, we will stop asking if you’d like to create a backup each time you save your configuration.

As this project grows, I will be adding more configuration options if necessary.

Troubleshooting

• I saved the changes, encountered no error message and URXVT still didn’t change, what do?

  • Make sure your “USER” environmental variable has not been altered.

• I keep running into an error message about “not having permissions” to write to the file.

  • Run chown -R <username>:<usergroup> /home/<username> as root to fix that.
  • This will restore permissions to your “home” directory.

• My old configuration is not read properly!

  • Reset to default values and save to ensure functionality. This tool has a very low tolerance for syntax that doesn’t conform to it’s settings.

• Why is my transparency not working?

  • Your composite manager may be disabled. Try fake transparency.

• I enabled certain plugins and they do nothing!

  • Install them via your distributions package manager (ex.g urxvt-perls).

Contribution guidelines

This is a rather basic project, pull requests are welcome.
Issues will be resolved as fast as possible.

The code is to remain as simple to modify and as readable as only possible.

License

This file is part of URXVTConfig.

URXVTConfig is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

URXVTConfig is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with URXVTConfig.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Credits

• The QTeam, for a framework that isn’t horrible.
• Jesskas, for motivation.
• Seriel, for creating the PKGBUILD.