Provided by: xtermcontrol_3.8-6_amd64 
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
The valid keyword/value combinations are:
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
All three resources can usually be enabled for the current xterm session via a menu; ctrl+rightclick and
look for menu item names like 'Allow Window Ops'. To set these resource values persistently you can add
the following to either your local ~/.Xdefaults file, or to a system-wide resource file like
/etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm:
*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>
xtermcontrol 3.8 May 27, 2022 XTERMCONTROL(1)