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 0.6 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.

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; 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. Without
  known issues are: emacs, irssi, mutt, ncmpc (resize problems are present in
  both tmux and screen), vim and various tools and games in the OpenBSD base
  system.
- 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.
- Automatic server locking on inactivity.
- A configuration file.

And major missing features:

- Proper mouse support.
- 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.

There are the following known issues:

- cons25 on the FreeBSD console doesn't support scroll region (cs) (or lies
  about support, I'm not totally clear which). This is a pity but emulating cs
  is nontrivial and as most modern vt220-based software terminals support it,
  currently there are better things to work one. Diffs or ideas how to cleanly
  emulate cs are welcome.

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.

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

	nicm@users.sf.net

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

$Id: NOTES,v 1.39 2009-01-14 22:51:24 nicm Exp $