urxvt terminal: change the way it looks

[bigpup]

Most Puppies have the urxvt terminal as the default terminal.

In a terminal

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urxvtcontrol

Should now see a settings control window.
If you do not like the way it looks.
There are settings you can easily change.
.

Screenshot.jpg (41.5 KiB) Viewed 339 times

[ravensrest]

Thanks, Bigpup. I have always just edited .Xdefaults directly, but this is so much nicer and more convenient.
BS

[wdx12]

I'm able to play with urxvt but can't seem to change dark blue dir selection.
see attached.

My problem is changing directory listing (dark blue) to something brighter?
Can't see Dark Blue (dirs) in Urxvt.

Using fossapup64. Linux 5.4.53

Maybe manual edits of .Xdefaults file?

DirColorsHow.png (128.59 KiB) Viewed 1187 times

[williwaw]

Maybe manual edits of .Xdefaults file?

yes, does your puppy have graphics > gcolorsel

makes it easy to find new colors that work with your preferred background

[user1111]

This is a snippet out of my ~/.Xdefaults for colours. I didn't like them so they're all commented out (which requires a ! at the start of each line in .Xdefaults that is to be 'commented out'). Basically they're all red/green/blue values, so for example for full on red it would be #ff0000 (hex values)

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!*xterm*color0: 			#2e3436
!*xterm*color1: 			#cc0000
!*xterm*color2: 			#4e9a06
!*xterm*color3: 			#c4a000
!*xterm*color4: 			#3465a4
!*xterm*color5: 			#75507b
!*xterm*color6: 			#0b939b
!*xterm*color7: 			#d3d7cf
!*xterm*color8: 			#555753
!*xterm*color9: 			#ef2929
!*xterm*color10: 			#8ae234
!*xterm*color11: 			#fce94f
!*xterm*color12: 			#729fcf
!*xterm*color13: 			#ad7fa8
!*xterm*color14: 			#00f5e9
!*xterm*color15: 			#eeeeec

Personally I don't use urxvt, prefer sakura, tilda or even standard xterm instead. In sakura for instance you can right click and select the Options and Palette choice (out of linux, rxvt ... etc choices). Nice to be able to flip the palette like that relatively easily. sakura and tilda are also good for when a url is displayed, you can hover over it and click to invoke the default browser. urxvt can do the same, but requires additional settings to do that.

[step]

With a little planning ahead, using the ~/.Xresources file isn't too bad because it supports including another file. So one can keep several color theme files in a folder, and include the preferred theme from ~/.Xresources then run xrdb -load ~/.Xresources to affect the changes for all new terminal windows. For example, my ~/.Xresources includes these two lines

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#include "/root/dotfiles/xresources/default-color.xterm.xdefaults"
#include "/root/dotfiles/xresources/default-color.urxvt.xdefaults"

File default-color.xterm.xdefaults (a symbolic link to an actual color theme file) holds
(note: this is the light theme I like, you don't have to like it)

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xterm*cursorColor: #5F00AF
xterm*pointerColor: #000000
xterm*pointerColor2: #000000
! Paper Color Theme {{{
! See corresponding theme in URxvt section
xterm*scrollColor: #5F00AF
xterm*foreground: #4D4D4C
xterm*background: #EEEEEE
! black
xterm*color0: #EDEDED
xterm*color8: #969694
! red
xterm*color1: #D7005F
xterm*color9: #D7005F
! green
xterm*color2: #718C00
xterm*color10: #718C00
! yellow / orange
xterm*color3: #D75F00
xterm*color11: #D75F00
! blue
xterm*color4: #4271AE
xterm*color12: #4271AE
! magenta
xterm*color5: #5F00AF
xterm*color13: #5F00AF
! cyan
xterm*color6: #3E999F
xterm*color14: #3E999F
! white
xterm*color7: #4D4D4C
xterm*color15: #F5F5F5
! }}}

And file default-color.urxvt.xdefaults (a symbolic link to an actual color theme file) holds

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URxvt.cursorColor: #5F00AF
URxvt.pointerColor: #000000
URxvt.pointerColor2: #000000
URxvt.scrollColor: #5F00AF
! Paper Color Theme {{{
URxvt.foreground: #4D4D4C
URxvt.background: #EEEEEE
! black
URxvt.color0: #EDEDED
URxvt.color8: #969694
! red
URxvt.color1: #D7005F
URxvt.color9: #D7005F
! green
URxvt.color2: #718C00
URxvt.color10: #718C00
! yellow / orange
URxvt.color3: #D75F00
URxvt.color11: #D75F00
! blue
URxvt.color4: #4271AE
URxvt.color12: #4271AE
! magenta
URxvt.color5: #5F00AF
URxvt.color13: #5F00AF
! cyan
URxvt.color6: #3E999F
URxvt.color14: #3E999F
! white
URxvt.color7: #4D4D4C
URxvt.color15: #F5F5F5
! }}}

If you google for "xterm theme" or "urxvt theme" you will find many predefined themes. Just copy the theme you like to a new file, #include the new file in your ~/.Xdefaults, and run xrdb as explained above.

[step]

@wdx12, your problem (changing the blue dir color to something brighter) can be solved also without changing terminal colors. The most direct solution is to change the value of environment variable LS_COLORS in your shell configuration files. By tweaking LS_COLORS settings you could achieve something like the image below.

LS_COLORS.png (253.34 KiB) Viewed 1131 times

Disclosure: the image above is the first one of its kind that I found on github--I'm not affiliated nor endorsing the source repository but a glance will give you an overview of the task ahead.

To see the current value of LS_COLORS run dircolors in your terminal. Run dircolors --print-database to get an annotated list of the available color settings. Write the new value of LS_COLORS to ~/.bashrc --if bash is your shell, which most likely is-- $HOME/.shinit for other bourne shells, or to your shell profile file for all shells --reboot needed for this one.