rxvt-unicode, commonly known as urxvt, is a color VT102 terminal emulator

Terminal emulator

A terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture....

 for the X Window System

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

. It was written by Marc Lehmann, who forked

Fork (software development)

In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...

 it from rxvt

Rxvt

rxvt is a terminal emulator for the X Window System , originally written by Rob Nation and later extensively modified by Mark Olesen, who took over maintenance for several years...

 in November 2003. Stability, internationalization

Internationalization and localization

In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...

, the capability to display different fonts and locales simultaneously and support for Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 are its primary focuses,

Another goal of the project is to be resource-friendly like rxvt

Rxvt

rxvt is a terminal emulator for the X Window System , originally written by Rob Nation and later extensively modified by Mark Olesen, who took over maintenance for several years...

. Even though it has features such as transparency

Transparency (computing)

Any change in a computing system, such as new feature or new component, is transparent if the system after change adheres to previous external interface as much as possible while changing its internal behaviour. The purpose is to shield from change all systems on the other end of the interface...

, Perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

 extensions, and support for Xft

Xft

Xft, the X FreeType interface library, is a free computer program library written by Keith Packard. As of version 2.1, it is licensed under a quasi-BSD license....

 fonts, it can still be configured to be lean and efficient, according to the author. Furthermore, it has a daemon

Daemon (computer software)

In Unix and other multitasking computer operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user...

 mode that reduces memory usage and loading time when using multiple terminals.

After aterm was merged into rxvt-unicode, it is now the preferred terminal emulator for the AfterStep

AfterStep

AfterStep is a stacking window manager for the X Window System. The goal of AfterStep's development is to provide for flexibility of desktop configuration, improved aesthetics and efficient use of system resources, and was used in such distributions as MachTen...

 window manager.

See also

• List of terminal emulators
• aterm
  Aterm
  aterm is the AfterStep terminal emulator for the X Window System. Based on rxvt 2.4.8 , aterm is a color VT100 terminal emulator that supports basic pseudo-transparency....
  
  
• mrxvt
  Mrxvt
  The mrxvt program is a terminal emulator for X Window System. It provides DEC VT102 compatible terminals.mrxvt is based on rxvt version 2.7.11 CVS , and features most of functionality of rxvt, with a few major enhancements...
  
  
• rxvt
  Rxvt
  rxvt is a terminal emulator for the X Window System , originally written by Rob Nation and later extensively modified by Mark Olesen, who took over maintenance for several years...
  
  
• xterm
  Xterm
  In computing, xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System. A user can have many different invocations of xterm running at once on the same display, each of which provides independent input/output for the process running in it .xterm originated prior to the X Window System...