why i am abandoning xfce4-terminal

Skaperen · 2018-12-26 20:19:52

xfce4-terminal was suggested to me in another forum as a means to have individual windows have different attribute (such as font size and background color) using the settings as defaults, instead of a change one window causing the same change in all the others, even other workspaces (in the same user). but xfce4-terminal has its own problem that has turned out to be worse. i cannot see the character the cursor is on. i continued a while to see if i could get used to it. in a sense, i did. but the more i got used to it, the more i was making typing errors in my scripts, duplicating characters and omitting characters. gnome-terminal makes the cursor appear by flipping the text color and the background color. if i have time, i will try to modify xfce4-terminal to add such a feature, though someone else will likely need to add a setting in the settings interface to allow turning this on and off (unless i learn enough GUI programming in a language i have mostly quit using to be able to do it).

i assume very few people following or doing xfce(4) development do much work in text mode, on a regular basis, to use xfce4-terminal enough, to be hampered by this lack of feature. but it would seem to me that regular/frequent users would be, even though they might not see it. but, this has not driven me away from a light but powerful graphical desktop environment, especially one that can work over VNC (unity does not work well, i am told).

MountainDewManiac · 2018-12-26 20:42:06

Are you using an old version of Xfce's terminal application? Because mine does show where the cursor is at, even when it is moved into the middle of a line of text - by displaying a grayish square in that position (it isn't 100% opaque, so the user can still see the character (if there is one) occupying the same position.

Regards,
MDM

mint4all · 2018-12-26 21:04:06

Greetings!

With complete respect for your opinion & experience on this subject, have you looked over the apps' "Hidden Settings" (in Advanced Topics) @ https://docs.xfce.org/apps/terminal/advanced ? There is some flexibility re. your cursor-visibility after all ...

If it helps, here are 2 sets of app comparisons: @ https://opensource.com/life/17/10/top-t … -emulators and @ https://www.ubuntupit.com/linux-termina … -compared/

In many places/forums, there's been a long-running discussion of BoB ("Best of Breed") vs. basic apps. Obviously, xfce's terminal is pretty basic, but it has a few advantages, too: small footprint in an overall well-functioning DE-package (read: no memory leaks, consistent shortcuts, window-management etc.).

In any event, i hope this helps, and let us know what you'll be settling on..
Cheers, m4a

ToZ · 2018-12-26 21:04:24

Skaperen wrote:

xfce4-terminal was suggested to me in another forum as a means to have individual windows have different attribute (such as font size and background color) using the settings as defaults, instead of a change one window causing the same change in all the others, even other workspaces (in the same user).

Try using the "--disable-server" parameter, like:

xfce4-terminal --disable-server --show-scrollbar --color=red

..this will allow you to have separate attributes per window. See "man xfce4-terminal" or "xfce4-terminal --help" for a listing of all possible settings. In this scenario, don't use the Preferences dialog but rather set the config parameters in the command line.

i cannot see the character the cursor is on. i continued a while to see if i could get used to it. in a sense, i did. but the more i got used to it, the more i was making typing errors in my scripts, duplicating characters and omitting characters. gnome-terminal makes the cursor appear by flipping the text color and the background color.

My xfce4-terminal works like this out of the box. Which version of xfce4-terminal and which distro are you using? There must be a setting that is flipped for you.

i assume very few people following or doing xfce(4) development do much work in text mode, on a regular basis, to use xfce4-terminal enough, to be hampered by this lack of feature.

I'm don't believe this is a fair statement. A lot of people, including myself, do a considerable amount of development work using xfce4-terminal.

Skaperen · 2018-12-27 05:20:22

this is what i get on Ubuntu Xenial Xerus 16.04.5 LTS ...

lt2a/forums /home/forums 1> dpkg -l|gf xfce4-terminal
ii  xfce4-terminal                      0.6.3-2ubuntu1         amd64                  Xfce terminal emulator
lt2a/forums /home/forums 2>

if a newer version has a setting to allow seeing the character behind the cursor with full contrast, and that version is available as a backport for 16.04, that would seem to be the option to try. that or building from source (anyone around who is doing this on Linux?).

i already got '--disable-server' to work. and if it didn't, that would not be a cause to quit using it (i'd just be back to where i was if so).

ToZ wrote:

I'm don't believe this is a fair statement. A lot of people, including myself, do a considerable amount of development work using xfce4-terminal.

do you get to see what character is behind the cursor? if so, can you tell me the 6 digit hex colors of the cursor and the text (when the cursor is in the same position)., or a PNG (or GIF ... just no lossy compression) screenshot trimmed down to the cursor over a character?

Last edited by Skaperen (2018-12-27 05:22:05)

ToZ · 2018-12-27 13:56:04

I grabbed your terminalrc file from your other thread and this is what it looks like in ubuntu 16.04:

...I can see the character behind the cursor.

You can change the cursor colour at Preferences > Appearance > Cursor Color. In this next image, I selected a light blue to make it a little more visible:

Here is the default Xubuntu terminal setup (also uses a blue cursor colour):

The version of xfce4-terminal in 16.04 is still based on GTK2/vte2. It doesn't appear to be able to do proper inversion of the character. In the GTK3 versions of xfce4-terminal, using gtk3/vte3, it appears that it does:

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#1 2018-12-26 20:19:52

why i am abandoning xfce4-terminal

#2 2018-12-26 20:42:06

Re: why i am abandoning xfce4-terminal

#3 2018-12-26 21:04:06

Re: why i am abandoning xfce4-terminal

#4 2018-12-26 21:04:24

Re: why i am abandoning xfce4-terminal

#5 2018-12-27 05:20:22

Re: why i am abandoning xfce4-terminal

#6 2018-12-27 13:56:04

Re: why i am abandoning xfce4-terminal

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