tmux/NOTES

Welcome to tmux!

tmux is a "terminal multiplexer", it enables a number of terminals (or windows)
to be accessed and controlled from a single terminal. tmux is intended to be a
simple, modern, BSD-licensed alternative to programs such as GNU screen.

This 0.8 release runs on OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux and OS X and may still run on
Solaris (although it hasn't been tested in a while). It is usable, although
there remain a number of missing features and some remaining bugs are expected.

If upgrading from 0.5, PLEASE NOTE the following configuration file changes: it
is now required to pass the -g flag to set-option or set-window-option to set
global options; remain-by-default and utf8-default are now gone, use global
window options (set-window-option -g) instead.

tmux consists of a server part and multiple clients. The server is created when
required and runs continuously unless killed by the user. Clients access the
server through a socket in /tmp. Multiple sessions may be created on a single
server and attached to a number of clients. Each session may then have a number
of windows and windows may be linked to a number of sessions. Commands are
available to create, rename and destroy windows and sessions; to attach and
detach sessions from client terminals; to set configuration options; to split
windows into several simultaneously displayed panes; and to bind and unbind
command keys (invoked preceded by a prefix key, by default ctrl-b). Please see
the tmux(1) man page for further information.

The following is a summary of major features implemented in this version:

- Basic multiplexing, window switching, attaching and detaching.
- Window listing and renaming.
- Key binding.
- Handling of client terminal resize.
- Terminal emulation sufficient to handle most curses applications.
- A optional status line (enabled by default).
- Window history and copy and paste.
- Support for VT100 line drawing characters.
- A large command set.
- Vertical window splitting and layout.
- Automatic server locking on inactivity.
- A configuration file.
- UTF-8 support.

And major missing features:

- No support for programs changing termios(4) settings or other tty(4) ioctls.

A more extensive, but rough, todo list is included in the TODO file.

tmux also depends on several features of the client terminal (TERM), if these
are missing it may refuse to run, or not behave correctly. Known working are
TERM=screen (tmux in screen), xterm, xterm-color and rxvt. Note that TERM=xterm
does not support colour on OpenBSD. screen ignores this, tmux does not: use
xterm-color or rxvt for colour.

tmux supports UTF-8. To use it, the utf8 option must be set on each window;
this may be turned on for all windows by setting it as a global option, see
tmux(1) and the FAQ file. In addition, when starting tmux or attaching to an
existing session from a UTF-8-capable terminal, the -u flag must be specified.

A Vim syntax file is available in the examples directory. To install it:

- Drop the file in the syntax directory in your runtimepath (such as
  ~/.vim/syntax/tmux.vim).
- Make the filetype recognisable by adding the following to filetype.vim
  in your runtimepath (~/.vim/filetype.vim):

	augroup filetypedetect
		au BufNewFile,BufRead .tmux.conf*,tmux.conf* setf tmux
	augroup END

- Switch on syntax highlighting by adding "syntax enable" to your vimrc file.

For debugging, running tmux with -v or -vv will generate server and client log
files in the current directory.

The CVS HEAD version of tmux often has additional features from the release
versions; if interested, testing it is encouraged. It can be obtained by
anonymous CVS from SourceForge:

	$ cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@tmux.cvs.sf.net:/cvsroot/tmux co tmux

If running CVS HEAD, please note it is development code and there may be bugs
and undocumented features; please read the CHANGES file for information.

tmux mailing lists are available; visit:

	https://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=200378

Bug reports, feature suggestions and especially code contributions are most
welcome. Please send by email to:

	nicm@users.sf.net

-- Nicholas Marriott <nicm@users.sf.net>

$Id: NOTES,v 1.46 2009-04-21 20:57:10 nicm Exp $