tmate/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 0.9 release runs on OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux and OS X and may still
run on Solaris and AIX (although they 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.

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. As of 0.9, tmux attempts to autodetect a
UTF-8-capable terminal by checking the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG environment
variables. list-clients may be used to check if this is detected correctly; if
not, the -u command-line flag may 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.

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

This file and the CHANGES, FAQ and TODO files are licensed under the ISC
license. Files under examples/ remain copyright their authors unless otherwise
stated in the file but permission has been received to distribute them with
tmux. All other files have a license and copyright notice at their
start. Please contact me with any queries.

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

$Id: NOTES,v 1.50 2009-10-25 21:45:26 nicm Exp $