== How to turn off _gnome-terminal_'s cursor blinking

For the purposes of turning off the [[irritating blinking cursor
FC4FirstIrritations]], there are three generations of _gnome-terminal_
(so far; the Gnome people may yet change their minds again), each of
them with a different way to do this. So it goes like this:

* in the original version of _gnome-terminal_, there is a direct preference
  for this; in the General tab of each profile there is a 'Cursor blinks'
  option.

* in the intermediate version of _gnome-terminal_, there is no option
  in _gnome-terminal_ to control this; you have to turn it off by
  turning off a general Gnome setting. In the General tab of the
  Keyboard preferences (System {{C:rarr}} Preferences {{C:rarr}}
  Keyboard), turn off 'Cursor blinks in text fields'.

  (Yes, this is obscure. Apparently terminals are 'text fields' nowadays,
  at least to Gnome.)

  This has the side effect of disabling blinking cursors everywhere
  in Gnome, including in your web browser. Since I spend a lot more
  time in _gnome-terminal_ than filling in forms in my browser and
  I absolutely hate blinking cursors in terminal windows, this is a
  tradeoff that I reluctantly live with.

* in the modern version of _gnome-terminal_, there is a hidden 
  [[gconf setting http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/]] that controls this
  if you don't want to turn off the Gnome-wide setting.  Fire up
  [[_gconf-editor_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gconf-editor]],
  navigate to apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default, and set the
  ((cursor_blink_mode)) key to have the value of '_off_'.  If you
  have any other profiles, you will have to create and set this key
  in them as well.

  (It probably will be inherited by any new profile that you create
  after making this change, but I haven't tested this; all of my
  profiles are old.)

In terms of what distribution has what version of
_gnome-terminal_: Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 6.06 LTS have the original
version, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has the intermediate version, and Fedora 10 has
the modern version. Only the original version pays attention to the
preference it sets; the other two versions silently ignore it.

(See [[this Gnome bug http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=342921]]
and its links for the history. [[This Ubuntu bug
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/188732]]
has more than enough comments that summarize my view on the whole
situation.)