Chris's Wiki :: blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulators Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulators?atomcommentsDWiki2011-03-08T00:14:23ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulators.By Chris Siebenmann on /blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulatorstag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulators:682b7e8e3cb9f8edc98eaf7964eb2ec57bafb8c3Chris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>I'm sure that xterm works fine for utf-8 and so on in general, but my
current xterm configuration of fonts and so on doesn't. Since I would
need to come up with a new xterm configuration for utf-8, and I don't
use utf-8 all that often, I've opted for the simple approach. Plus,
it's useful to see how the modern Gnome world works every so often.</p>
<p>(At least on my machines, uxterm by itself isn't quite sufficient;
it doesn't switch xterm to using a modern Freetype-based full Unicode
font.)</p>
</div>2011-03-08T00:14:23ZFrom 91.215.79.80 on /blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulatorstag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulators:3120a64be19dea265949d2df9af57d2cce320cceFrom 91.215.79.80<div class="wikitext"><p>Yes, xterm works just fine with Unicode when started with the <code>uxterm</code> wrapper (and in some distros xterm is patched to switch its X resource class from <code>XTerm</code> to <code>UXTerm</code> when an UTF-8 locale is detected).</p>
<p>There is also rxvt-unicode, but its <code>TERM=rxvt-unicode-256color</code> is often a problem when connecting to older systems.</p>
<p>Another useful xterm feature when working with switches and other devices is that the “Backarrow Key (BS/DEL)” and “Delete is DEL” options are IMHO easier to change for a running window than in gnome-terminal (no need to open a settings window), and this is often needed because some switches want ^H for backspace. Although this is not very important if you use a separate launcher with required options for each switch.</p>
<p>And the only good implementation of alternate screen switching is in the <code>pterm</code> terminal emulator found in PuTTY — when switching to the alternate screen, it shifts the normal screen contents into the scrollback buffer (so that it is available for copying while working in the fullscreen program), and on returning to the normal screen it just scrolls those lines back to the visible screen (not leaving any garbage in scrollback). No other terminal emulator seems to be able to do that properly (either the last screenful is covered by the alternate screen and not accessible, or the content shifted to the scrollback buffer just stays there and accumulates with every screen switch).</p>
<p>-- Sergey Vlasov</p>
</div>2011-03-07T10:41:46ZFrom 72.14.228.129 on /blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulatorstag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/OnTerminalEmulators:604deac3981bd1dc882c3a7397fe06bc2f4be15bFrom 72.14.228.129<div class="wikitext"><p>On modern systems, "xterm" ships with a "uxterm" wrapper which sets the Class so that xterm will pick up appropriate defaults and be utf-8ish.</p>
<p>I have a config which predates that (I think) and just makes xterm be UTF-8 by default, amongst several other things. The relevant bits of my "XTerm" file (in an <code>$XAPPLRESDIR</code> directory) are:</p>
<pre>
*VT100*eightBitInput: true
*wideChars: true
*locale: true
*utf8: 1
*vt100Graphics: true
</pre>
<p>-Phil</p>
</div>2011-03-07T06:55:22Z