Re: gnome-terminal delete/backspace mess

[Kenny Graunke <kenny whitecape org>]

<quote who="Havoc Pennington">

> 
> Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com> writes: 
> > If you do not want to use a terminal with settable preferences, there
> > is always `rxvt', `xterm' and `Eterm'. 
> 
> I want to use a terminal with some preferences but without
> crack-smoking preferences that confuse and frighten me. ;-)
> 
> xterm actually has these same two settings, they are just hard to find
> (on alt-middleclick or something).
> 
> I like the command-line-option idea that Jeff had. I am happy to let
> those who feel these options are useful have them in some way, as long
> as I don't have to see it...

I completely agree. I have no clue what those do, except that I could try
and mess around with them if my backspace key somehow doesn't work. And they
usually haven't helped me. A command line option would be fine; those
clearly should apply to only one terminal.

> BTW, if we want to lengthen this thread a bit - Owen brought up the
> issue of what exactly the scope of the g-t preferences is. I have some
> bug reports where people say they "lose their g-t preferences" from
> time to time. I think it has something to do with preferences being
> per-session or per-terminal-class or something. What is the theory of
> how this works so I can at least explain it to people?

(Standard Disclaimer: This is only my understanding of how things work, I
 reserve the right to be completely wrong, overcomplicating things, or
 otherwise make some dumb mistake.)

Say I:

- Open two terminals, Terminal A and Terminal B.
- Open the preferences dialog from Terminal A
- Change the Fore/Background Color to Green on Black (from White on Black)

Then this change only affects Terminal A, but not B.

Now, there are three ways I can open a new terminal, Terminal C...
(1) Click on my panel launcher (which runs "NO_XALF gnome-terminal
    --use-factory --start-factory-server", apparently)

    This properly uses the new settings from the preferences dialog that I
    opened from Terminal A.

(2) Right click in Terminal A and select "New terminal"

    This also obtains the new settings.

(3) Right click in Terminal B and select "New terminal"

    This inherits Terminal B's settings.

Assume I picked #1, the panel launcher. Now, I want to close all my
terminals. I can close them in any order I want.

If I close Terminal B last, then Terminal B's settings (the old ones) will be
saved and used next time I launch a terminal. If I close Terminal A or C last
(the ones with the new settings), then their settings (the new ones) will be
used  next time I launch a terminal.

Confusing, huh? Realistically, these are global settings. Changing a setting
should change *all* of the terminals' settings. Otherwise it's very
confusing - there is no indication of which terminal the preferences dialog
is going to affect, and trying to explain all the interrelationships is too
complicated. If it's hard to explain, it probably needs fixing. ;-)

Perhaps people would like a way to change one terminal's settings - this could
help with the delete options as well. Those aren't global settings; these are.
Of course, you can use command line options for terminal-specific
"configuration."

And while we're at it, the preferences dialog's title is "gnome-terminal";
it should be "Preferences - GNOME Terminal".

Thanks,

Kenny

> Havoc