urxvt and ~/.Xdefaults

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 11:18:36PM -0500, Michael V. De Palatis wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I have decided to go back to using urxvt (a.k.a. rxvt-unicode) as my
> default X terminal. However, I have hit some snags. If I try to use
> update-alternatives to set urxvt as my default terminal, starting
> either "x-terminal-emulator" or "rxvt-unicode" at the command line
> results in a terminal that has not respected my options in
> ~/.Xdefaults. This does *not*, however, happen if I start it as
> "urxvt".

What's the output of "namei `which x-terminal-emulator`" (and similarly
for rxvt-unicode)?

I installed it, and rxvt-unicode is a symlink for urxvt, so I'm guessing
that's not it...

> After doing a bit of reading, it turns out that this is some crazy
> Debian issue because the maintainer decided that he doesn't think that
> this is "flexible" enough and uses a completely different method that
> apparently reads a global configuration file (see
> /usr/share/source/rxvt-unicode/README.Debian). However, this doesn't
> really tell me what I have to do to change this, in my opinion, stupid
> behavior.

Huh... I can't find anything to that effect in the debian README. In
fact, it spends some good time explaining how to use the XResources.
You are using URxvt rather than rxvt, to name the client in your
.Xresources file? (I'm guessing you are, since it's working with urxvt).

What version are you installing? I'm using edgy for testing purposes, so
I probably have a newer version (7.7). You /might/ try downloading the
edgy version from

  http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/r/rxvt-unicode/rxvt-unicode_7.7-4_i386.deb

(this is edgy's, so use at your risk). If you're not using i386, or need
other options, look at the containing directory.

I note that the source package for my version has a file in
debian/patches named "old-debian-nonsense.patch", and wonder if it's
related... it removes text from the upstream FAQ that complains about
the significant functionality changes made in Debian sarge, and
directing the user to download the original urxvt before sending
complaints to the original author. I'm guessing this text is being
removed by the patch because it no longer applies... :-)

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer...
http://micah.cowan.name/