The perfect terminal....

btwxt · 2010-01-19 07:01:35

O great sages, please bestwo unto me the perfect terminal.

After using every terminal conceived from gnome-terminal to st, i still haven't found 'the one' that I will settle down and marry. This is due to a number of reasons, but I feel like my needs are not too outlandish. Yet it seems that right when I've found the perfect one there is something horribly wrong lurking underneath.

This is what I need and use daily:

dwm
irssi (alt + 1,2,3, etc )
finch
ssh
various other primarily-console-based programs
the ubiquitous "lightweight" feel on any application
true type fonts

This is what I'd like:

real transparency, but pseudo will (and does) suffice.
clickable links
full clipboard support.

I know the urxvt-lovers are going to sound off on this immediately so I'll make a disclaimer: I use urxvtd/c as my primary terminal. Yes, I like it. Yes, I know it has many of these features. It does, however, lack the ability to cooperate with xcompmgr in any way, and it doesn't work with finch, which is very important to me.

So my question is this: what terminal can I use? What will work with finch and irssi's Alt+1,2,3 window feature (this is the most important)? Xterm doesn't seem to support this feature, nor does it even have pseudo-transparency. Will I ever find true transparency in dwm? Basically, I want to dump urxvt because of the xcompmgr issue and some other things that annoy me, but I can't because of the console-tabbed browsing I've become accustomed to. What to do?

Any help is appreciated

sand_man · 2010-01-19 07:11:06

Give roxterm a go. Its vte based but its much lighter than gnome-terminal. I switched from urxvt long ago. I got sick of editing the Xdefaults file.

XFire · 2010-01-19 07:29:06

Sakura?

moljac024 · 2010-01-19 07:34:08

I don't know what you mean by urxvt not cooperating with xcompmgr?
It always worked fine for me, and it has real transparency that way, you just have to adjust the .Xdefaults file.

sHyLoCk · 2010-01-19 07:35:51

Sakura has gtk, I prefer urxvt and roxterm. Lxterminal is also pretty lightweight.

EDIT: Yeah, urxvt works here fine with xcompmgr. You just need to adjust your Xdefaults. See wiki for examples.

Last edited by sHyLoCk (2010-01-19 07:37:44)

hbekel · 2010-01-19 07:49:44

To make Alt+1,2 etc work in xterm,

XTerm*metaSendsEscape: True

should be all you need.

sand_man · 2010-01-19 08:16:22

roxterm does everything you were looking including the alt+1,2 stuff

Last edited by sand_man (2010-01-19 21:35:02)

.:B:. · 2010-01-19 08:32:58

Xfce's terminal works fine too, imho. Of course it will pull in a few Xfce dependencies.

jac · 2010-01-19 08:57:38

Also on the urxvt side of things, what doesn't work in finch? I use finch everyday just fine in urxvt. (Unless I'm missing features I never knew existed)

mythus · 2010-01-19 12:06:23

I personally like xfce's Terminal. I use it in JWM, and it supports transparency, color changes, back ground images, etc... It also runs fine with any console app I've tried. I haven't tried the Alt 1,2 thing though... so I can't comment there.

.:B:. · 2010-01-19 12:29:07

The one thing that irritates me with Terminal is that, from the moment you set xterm-256color as your variable, it seems to be unable to display bold. Yet I need xterm-256color to have the vim themes work - at all.

tomk · 2010-01-19 13:32:18

I run irssi in urxvt, and Alt+1,2,.. works fine by default - no.Xdefaults tweaking required.

nixpunk · 2010-01-19 13:42:13

Other than some refresh/redraw issues, Finch works fine for me in urxvt.

Aprz · 2010-01-19 14:01:37

Heh, what's happening when you try to use irssi and finch? I have a burning feeling that everytime you hit alt + {1, 2, 3, .., n} in irssi, you expect it to switch to window 1, 2, 3, .., n in irssi or when you hit alt + m in finch, you expect the to move the finch's windows, but instead urxvt fills the whole screen (monocle layout). If this is the case, it's dwm! The trick is to use esc instead of alt. So if you want to use the equivalent to alt + {1, 2, 3, ..., n} in whatever ncurse program, or alt + m, you would use esc + {1, 2, 3, ..., n} or esc + m. You could also edit config.h to change the shortcut keys for dwm to work around the programs you use and recompile dwm. I am hoping the problem is as simple as that. *cross fingers*

JohannesSM64 · 2010-01-19 14:22:43

Change Mod1Mask to Mod4Mask in dwm config.h to use Super (aka Windows key) instead of Alt as the dwm modkey. It's obligatory unless you want conflicts.
how does xcompmgr "not cooperate" with urxvt?

urxvt.background: rgba:0000/0000/0000/EEEE
urxvt.foreground: #A8A8A8

Last edited by JohannesSM64 (2010-01-19 14:25:48)

perbh · 2010-01-19 18:57:18

*lol* +1 for xfce's terminal here - and I use xfce anyway ... (and I abhor vim's colourization! - white on black for me)

Last edited by perbh (2010-01-19 18:58:34)

mythus · 2010-01-19 19:53:28

perbh wrote:

*lol* +1 for xfce's terminal here - and I use xfce anyway ... (and I abhor vim's colourization! - white on black for me)

Hahaha, yes I prefer the white on black to with perhaps a dark image or mild transparency.. both of which XFCE Terminal does good with. I may be weak but I tend to use nano over vim so I don't deal with vim's theming and the need for a -256color varible so I really conulding comment on it's effect on displaying bold.. but I am puzzled why it would do that. Bold by definition is simply a heavier typeset, it should show up somehow despite your theme or what varrible you want to use. Maybe this is an unknown bug?

btwxt · 2010-01-19 20:16:39

Wow I didn't expect this many responses

sand_man and XFire - I've tried those two in the past and am really not a fan of vte terminals in general. Although I've been known to use terminator perhaps more than I should (I'm pretty anti-GNOME anything)

hbekel: Thank you! that works nicely. Seems as if xterm is a front-runner for me again.

B and mythus: I'm not a fan of the Xfce menubar or the dependencies it pulls, but it is nice, and worth another look.

jac and nixpunk: My arrow keys don't work properly in finch. I've seen the help floating around about exporting TERM in .bash_profile, but I never could get it to work. And also, isn't exporting the value $TERM bad?

tomk: irssi works fine for me in urxvt as well, including alt+1,2, etc.

Aprz and JohannesSM64: unfortunately this isn't the problem. I use Mod4Key as my meta in dwm (gotta love using the Windows key for THAT!) The problem only arises in xterm. But hbekel fixed the issue with his XTerm*metaSendsEscape: True tip.

moljac024 and sHyLoCk: Whenever i run xcompmgr with urxvt, the terminals go blank. I'm sure it's just a tweak in the .Xdefaults file then. I'd like to discontinue use of urxvt if possible, though.

Now my only question is this: Is there any way to get TRUE transparency in dwm with xterm? I'd like to use xterm exclusively if possible becuase of the easy config in .Xdefaults and the stock-standard feel of it. So yes, I'm weird. But I can't be the only one with these hopes and dreams.

In Openbox, the devilspie trick works nicely on any program I wished to provide transparency via transset(-df). In dwm, devilspie doesn't work. Anyone have any tips and tricks?

Thank you all for your help, I appreciate it

hbekel · 2010-01-21 22:34:33

btwxt wrote:

In Openbox, the devilspie trick works nicely on any program I wished to provide transparency via transset(-df). In dwm, devilspie doesn't work. Anyone have any tips and tricks?

I assume you want to run transset-df on the xterm window when you launch it? You might simply add

transset-df -a 0.5 &>/dev/null

to your .bashrc

btwxt · 2010-01-22 03:37:19

hbekel: thank you so much. works like a charm. if you have time could you explain to me why /dev/null is used? i appreciate your help.

willxtreme · 2010-01-22 03:52:06

tilda drop down terminal FTW!

I use white on black
level of transparency 40
height 50%
width 100%
keybind F12

pacman -S tilda

Last edited by willxtreme (2010-01-22 03:59:59)

Ronin-Sage · 2010-01-22 06:08:50

There's also the apparently little-known LilyTerm. It's slightly less configurable than ROXTerm, not as refined, but it's just as light(of course, with such terminal emulators, and maybe this is just my setup, right clicking for some reason causes a memory usage spike--without exception).

hbekel · 2010-01-22 10:02:09

btwxt wrote:

if you have time could you explain to me why /dev/null is used? i appreciate your help.

Appending "&> /dev/null" to a command will redirect both stdout and stderr (i.e. any output the command might produce) to /dev/null (nirvana), thus effectively discarding it. In this case, it simply prevents the "Set Property to 0.5" message from transset-df to be printed in your terminal.

Note that the &> syntax is fairly new in bash, so you'll often see the old idiom ">/dev/null 2>&1" (which essentially does the same thing)

ninian · 2010-01-22 21:26:23

Ronin-Sage wrote:

There's also the apparently little-known LilyTerm. It's slightly less configurable than ROXTerm, not as refined, but it's just as light(of course, with such terminal emulators, and maybe this is just my setup, right clicking for some reason causes a memory usage spike--without exception).

Thanks for bringing this terminal to my attention - had somehow overlooked it before.
It is very good indeed and is, as claimed, light on resources (1/3 the RAM of Terminator, my usual terminal).
Also, I like its configuration file. All in all, I think I will be using this as my default terminal from now on!
Thanks again.

btwxt · 2010-02-07 07:30:14

hbekel: thanks for the explanation. makes perfect sense!

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-19 07:01:35

The perfect terminal....

#2 2010-01-19 07:11:06

Re: The perfect terminal....

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