Frequently Asked Questions

When I first start xterm/urxvt/rxvt containing an instance of Vim, I see text and layout corruption. What gives?

Vim is not handling terminal resizes correctly. You can fix the problem by starting your xterm with the “-wf” option, like so:

xterm -wf -e vim

Alternatively, you can just cycle through your layouts a few times, which usually seems to fix it.

How do I know which modifier specification maps to which key?

To see a list of modifier names and their matching keys, use the xmodmap command. On my system, the output looks like this:

$ xmodmap
xmodmap:  up to 3 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock        Caps_Lock (0x9)
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x69)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Alt_R (0x6c),  Meta_L (0xcd)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3
mod4        Super_L (0xce),  Hyper_L (0xcf)
mod5        ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c),  Mode_switch (0xcb)

My “pointer mouse cursor” isn’t the one I expect it to be!

Qtile should set the default cursor to left_ptr, you must install xcb-util-cursor if you want support for themed cursors.