st a simple X terminal

st is a simple terminal implementation for X.

What is wrong with xterm?

xterm is bloated and unmaintainable. Here’s an excerpt from the README:

                Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here


This is undoubtedly the most ugly program in the distribution.  It was one of
the first "serious" programs ported, and still has a lot of historical baggage.
Ideally, there would be a general tty widget and then vt102 and tek4014 
subwidgets so that they could be used in other programs.  We are trying to 
clean things up as we go, but there is still a lot of work to do.

Needless to say things have not changed, it’s still ugly. It has over 65K lines of code and emulates obscure and obsolete terminals you will never need. The popular alternative, rxvt has only 32K lines of code. This is just too much for something as simple as a terminal emulator; it’s yet another example of code complexity.

Current state

See the “goals” section for a list of features that will (or won’t) be implemented.

256 colors
most VT10x escape sequences
utf8
X11 copy/paste

Configuration

The configuration is done in config.h (like in dwm). You can define:

TERM
fonts
default colors
special key

line drawing characters. The VT100 name is used as an index in the gfx array. From terminfo(5):

Line Graphics

   Many  terminals have alternate character sets useful for forms-drawing.
   Terminfo and curses build in support for the  drawing  characters  sup-
   ported  by  the VT100, with some characters from the AT&T 4410v1 added.
   This alternate character set may be specified by the acsc capability.


            Glyph                  ACS                Ascii          VT100
             Name                  Name               Default        Name
   UK pound sign                   ACS_STERLING       f              }
   arrow pointing down             ACS_DARROW         v              .
   arrow pointing left             ACS_LARROW         <              ,
   arrow pointing right            ACS_RARROW         >              +
   arrow pointing up               ACS_UARROW         ^              -
   board of squares                ACS_BOARD          #              h
   bullet                          ACS_BULLET         o              ~
   checker board (stipple)         ACS_CKBOARD        :              a
   degree symbol                   ACS_DEGREE         \              f
   diamond                         ACS_DIAMOND        +              `
   greater-than-or-equal-to        ACS_GEQUAL         >              z
   greek pi                        ACS_PI             *              {
   horizontal line                 ACS_HLINE          -              q
   lantern symbol                  ACS_LANTERN        #              i
   large plus or crossover         ACS_PLUS           +              n
   less-than-or-equal-to           ACS_LEQUAL         <              y
   lower left corner               ACS_LLCORNER       +              m
   lower right corner              ACS_LRCORNER       +              j
   not-equal                       ACS_NEQUAL         !              |
   plus/minus                      ACS_PLMINUS        #              g
   scan line 1                     ACS_S1             ~              o
   scan line 3                     ACS_S3             -              p
   scan line 7                     ACS_S7             -              r
   scan line 9                     ACS_S9             _              s
   solid square block              ACS_BLOCK          #              0
   tee pointing down               ACS_TTEE           +              w
   tee pointing left               ACS_RTEE           +              u
   tee pointing right              ACS_LTEE           +              t
   tee pointing up                 ACS_BTEE           +              v
   upper left corner               ACS_ULCORNER       +              l
   upper right corner              ACS_URCORNER       +              k
   vertical line                   ACS_VLINE          |              x

Common Problems

1. random program complains that st is unknown/not recognised/unsupported/whatever!

It means that st doesn’t have any terminfo entry on your system. Chances are you did not make install. If you just want to test it without installing it, you can manualy run tic -s st.info in st dir. It will compile st.info into a fully working local terminfo description. You can delete it when you're done.

2. Nothing works, and nothing is said about an unknown terminal!

Some programs just assume they're running in xterm i.e. they don’t rely on terminfo. What you see is the current state of the “xterm compliance”.
Some programs don’t complain about the lacking st description and default to another terminal. In that case see 1.

3. I get some weird glitches/visual bug on random program!

Try lauching it with a different TERM: $ TERM=xterm myapp. toe(1) will give you a list of available terminals, but you'll most likely switch between xterm, st or st-256color. The default value for TERM can be changed in config.h (TNAME).

If all else fails, send an email to a contributor/ML explaining your problem in detail.

Download

st 0.1.1 (2011-04-02)
tip tarball: http://hg.suckless.org/st/archive/tip.tar.gz
MIT/X Consortium license

Development

st is actively developed. You can browse its source code repository or get a copy using Mercurial with the following command:

hg clone http://hg.suckless.org/st

Contributors

Anselm R. Garbe
Aurélien Aptel (active developer)
Devin J. Pohly (lots of patches :)