Tempus Themes for RXVT-Unicode (urxvt)

DEPRECATION NOTICE — MOVED TO GITLAB.

Urxvt saves colour values in either of two places. The most common use case is within the ~/.Xresources. The other is by sourcing an Xcolors file. This document will walk you through the process.

We use the command line

Start by cloning the tempus-themes-urxvt repo and entering it (unless you prefer copy-pasting, in which case adapt accordingly):

git clone https://github.com/protesilaos/tempus-themes-urxvt.git --depth 1 && cd tempus-themes-urxvt

Adding colours to Xresources

Now you want to append the content of the theme to your .Xresources. You need to append it, otherwise you will overwrite its contents. As such, run the following command, substituting [SCHEME-NAME] with the one you want:

cat [SCHEME-NAME] >> ~/.Xresources

For example, if you want tempus_winter:

cat tempus_winter.Xcolors >> ~/.Xresources

It is important to note the use of >>. It is the command that appends the content to the file. Be careful if you are typing this. A single > will overwrite the file's contents.

Sourcing colours from the Xresources

The other approach to having colour values for urxvt is to source an Xcolors file from within the .Xresources. The file can be located anywhere.

For the purposes of this tutorial, it is assumed you have created a hidden directory ~/.urxvt-themes/ from where the Xcolors will be sourced. Execute the commands on the lines below that do not start with a # (those are just comments):

# Create hidden directory for urxvt Xcolors
# Hidden directories start with a dot `.`
mkdir ~/.urxvt-themes

# Copy desired theme to that directory
# Using tempus_winter as an example
cp tempus_winter.Xcolors ~/.urxvt-themes/

Then source that file from within the .Xresources with the following line (note that comments in .Xresources start with a !, not an #):

#include </home/YOUR-USERNAME/.urxvt-themes/tempus_winter.Xcolors>

Almost done

Whatever method you use, do not forget to reload the configurations, with the command xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources (may need to close all terminals and re-open them).

Enjoy!

Additional resources

For all available ports, refer to the main Tempus themes repo.

Contributing

All contributions should be submitted to the Tempus themes generator. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

GNU General Public License Version 3. See LICENSE.

Meta

The Tempus themes project consists of a number of repositories. It is maintained with a set of scripts and utilities, stored in the tempus-themes-utils.

All theme files are created with the Tempus themes generator. See the generator CONTRIBUTING.md.

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