This is modified, alternative tabbed extension for well known urxvt-unicode terminal emulator

• Possibility to add named tabs, through the X resources, which run specified command or another shell (zsh/fish/ash/csh/ksh…). Without any configuration only default shell is available under default (Shift+Down) shortcut.

  

• Fast navigation to first ten tabs (if available) with shortcut Ctrl+[num], where num can be 0 to 9. CTRL+0 will switch to tenth tab.

• Numbers in tabs can be switched off in by setting resource:URxvt.tabbedalt.tab-numbers: false

• Integrated activity indicator with additional features like colors and different characters instead of simply asterisk depending on time.

  

• Integrated tab renaming from stepb. Default under Shift+UP, then type some text and press RETURN for accept or ESC for cancel.

• Added ability to configure own shortcuts using standard keysym urxvt option. See below for examples.

• Autohide tab when there is only one tab at the moment.

• Ability to assign hotkey to jump to last tab.

• Configurable confirm dialog for closing urxvt window, when there is more than one tab opened or there is an process still running.

Copy tabbedalt into ~/.urxvt/ext directory.

Add these to your ~/.Xdefaults:

! Perl extension config
URxvt.perl-ext: tabbedalt

And that's it. On some systems, there might be a need to reload X resources:

$ xrdb ~/.Xdefaults

For quickinstall and run urxvt, tabbedalt can be installed using following command:

$ curl --create-dirs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gryf/tabbedalt/master/tabbedalt -o ~/.urxvt/ext/tabbedalt
$ urxvt -pe tabbedalt

or even without "installing" at all:

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gryf/tabbedalt/master/tabbedalt -o /tmp/tabbedalt
$ URXVT_PERL_LIB=/tmp urxvt -pe tabbedalt

There are several additional things you can set contrary to the original tabbed extension.

You can disable [NEW] button, just to save the space. Just add following line to yours ~/.Xdefaults file:

URxvt.tabbedalt.new-button: false

You can change all of the colors regarding tabs appearance. Here are defaults:

URxvt.tabbedalt.tabbar-fg: 15
URxvt.tabbedalt.tabbar-bg: 8
URxvt.tabbedalt.tab-fg: 8
URxvt.tabbedalt.tab-bg: 0
URxvt.tabbedalt.active-fg: 1
URxvt.tabbedalt.actives-fg: 5
URxvt.tabbedalt.actived-fg: 4

Tabs can change colors depending on the activity of terminal under certain tab. Colors can be defined as described in section above. You can change the time for either group of activity:

URxvt.tabbedalt.tabbar-timeouts: 16:.:8:::4:+

The value can should be read as colon separated fields. In this case it would be read as:

• 16 with symbol .
• 8 with symbol :
• 4 with symbol +

Numeric values means amount of seconds, on which three group of activity will be triggered. Those group are:

• Inactive for at least 16 seconds
• Inactive for at least 8 seconds
• Inactive for at least 4 seconds

Activity of the tab is always represented by asterisk sign (*).

You can change those values but bear in mind, that first group should have timeout in seconds set higher, than middle one. You can also change symbols for those groups.

Tab activity can be disabled by setting:

URxvt.tabbedalt.disable-activity: true

If you happen to see fonts flickering on the terminal, you might want to set this resource to true:

URxvt.tabbedalt.stop-flickering: true

It is false by default, and it will affect how refreshing of the tabs and windows is done. I was experienced it mostly on Intel graphics, with bitmap fonts, but your mileage may vary.

You can turn off tab numbers and leave only name of the tab. Handy to save the space:

URxvt.tabbedalt.tab-numbers: false

By default tab bar would be visible even with only one tab. To hide tab bar, when there is a single tab, the following resource need to be set to true:

URxvt.tabbedalt.autohide: true

There are several actions, which tabbedalt supports:

• new_tab - for tab creation
• rename_tab - for tab title renaming
• prev_tab - for jumping to previous tab
• next_tab - for jumping to next tab
• move_tab_left - for moving tab to the left
• move_tab_right - for moving tab to the right
• jump_to_tab - for quickly jump into specific tab

See next sections for examples. This feature was adapted from tabbedex.

By setting:

URxvt.tabbedalt.disable-default-keys: true

you can completely remove default keystrokes for creating and navigating tabs. In fact, if this resource is set to false (default), than tabbedalt will create several keysyms mapped to the actions:

• Shift-Down: new_tab - create tab
• Shift-Up: rename_tab - for tab title renaming
• Shift-Left: prev_tab - for jumping to previous tab
• Shift-Right: next_tab - for jumping to next tab
• Shift-Left: move_tab_left - for moving tab to the left
• Control-Right: move_tab_right - for moving tab to the right
• Control-1..0: jump_to_tab - for quickly jumping into first tenth tabs

It might be wise to define own shortcuts before disabling default keys.

1. new_tab

   This action can have up to two arguments separated by colon, in a form:

   URxvt.keysym.desired-keys: tabbedalt:new_tab:tab-title:tab-command
   

   In this case for desired-keys shortcut there would be new tab created with title set to tab-title, and command which tab run as tab-command, for example:

   URxvt.keysym.Control-t: tabbedalt:new_tab:htop:htop
   

   where pressing control+t it will run new tab with title htop and command htop.

   Both title and command may be omitted. If so, default title shell will be used in absence of title, and default shell will be run on missing command.

2. jump_to_tab

   In this action, there is only one argument expected - number of the tab, i.e.:

   URxvt.keysym.Control-1: tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:1
   URxvt.keysym.Control-2: tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:2
   …
   URxvt.keysym.Control-0: tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:0
   

   Note, that tabs are indexed from 1, and tab 10th is numbered as 0.

3. The rest

   Al the rest of the actions (moving, jumping and renaming) are without argument. For example renaming will look like this:

   URxvt.keysym.Control-r: tabbedalt:rename_tab
   

There is a possibility to tell tabbedalt to use jump_to_tab action to jump to the last (rightmost) tab, instead of 10th. It can be done by setting resource:

URxvt.tabbedalt.zero-jump-last: true

so whatever keysym is assigned to tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:0 will select last tab, regardless if current number of tabs is more or less than 10. There is still a way for selecting 10th tab, i.e.:

URxvt.tabbedalt.zero-jump-last: true

URxvt.keysym.Control-F1: tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:1
URxvt.keysym.Control-F2: tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:2
…
URxvt.keysym.Control-F10: tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:10
URxvt.keysym.Control-F11: tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:11
URxvt.keysym.Control-F12: tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:12
URxvt.keysym.Control-0: tabbedalt:jump_to_tab:0

In the example above, there are mapping for jump to tabs 1 - 12 using function keys, and Control+0 to jump whatever last tab is.

When working with tabs, sometimes user accidentally could close the window, and loose all the applications run on the tabs. There might be multiple tabs open, or just one with running process on it (i.e. some editor), where closing window by accident could result in data loss. To prevent this, there are two additional resources that can be set. First one, disabled by default is:

URxvt.tabbedalt.confirm-quit: false

When set to true it will either execute a message program or will display an urxvt overlay with the dialog directly on current tab. Note that overlay dialog will expect the user to either press:

• y or enter key to close the window
• n or escape key to deny closing it

Second one is to provide X dialog program:

URxvt.tabbedalt.confirm-program:

It might be whatever X program, which can accept text as an argument, and can provide dialog which:

• have two buttons (i.e. yes/no, ok/cancel) where first will exit dialog with 0 exit code and the latter will exit with whatever other number,
• destroying the dialog also emit exit code higher than 0.

So, for example standard xmessage can be used:

URxvt.tabbedalt.confirm-program: xmessage -buttons ok:0,cancel:1

or zenity:

URxvt.tabbedalt.confirm-program: zenity --question --title 'Close window' --text

or kdialog:

URxvt.tabbedalt.confirm-program: kdialog --title 'Close window' --yesno

or… any other dialog programs which fulfill the above criteria.

Let's assume, that one want to add three kind of custom shells:

• simple one (default shell in the system),
• midnight commander,
• root (namely - su command)

A way to do this is to associate keystroke for it in .Xdefaults using urxvts keysym option, and the actions described above:

URxvt.keysym.Control-Shift-N: tabbedalt:new_tab:shell
URxvt.keysym.Control-Shift-R: tabbedalt:new_tab:root:su -
URxvt.keysym.Control-Shift-M: tabbedalt:new_tab:mc:mc

Resource values are colon separated values, which are in order:

• plugin name:command, which in this case of creating new tab will be tabbedalt:new_tab.
• title of the tab, it could be anything but the colon.
• optional command. If omitted, default shell will be launched.

On runtime, tabs can be renamed using (by default) Shift+Up - now you can type name for the tab. Return accept change, ESC cancels it. This feature was taken from stepb tabbedx repository.