Re: [Usability]gnome-terminal 2.x woes

[David Lazaro <dlazaro acm org>]

On Sat, 2003-03-08 at 14:11, Jim Stewart wrote:
> Please direct me to the appropriate list if this is not it.

GNOME Terminal doesn't have its own mailing list, so you could have used
gnome-list gnome org as a first step.  I'm sure that most people there
could have answered your questions.

This mailing list is for the discussion of usability (and maybe visual
design) matters in the context of the GNOME desktop.

> I'm a long-time gnome user, and I've recently upgraded to a bunch of gnome2
> apps.  So far my experience has been relatively frustrating.  I really like
> the new appearance, but configuration has proved to be difficult at best.

Has it been difficult because you expected it to work like GNOME 1?

> My biggest complaint is about fonts.  In gnome-terminal 1.x, I could simply
> enter the font name that I wanted to use.  I'm a big fan of the oldschool
> basic fonts, namely 9x15 and 7x14.  Before, I could just enter "9x15" and get
> my font, or run "gnome-terminal --font 9x15".  That doesn't work anymore.  Now
> I have to select fonts from the built-in font chooser GUI, and my 9x15 font is
> nowhere to be found.  In fact, even though I have about 10 zillion fonts
> installed on my sytem, only a very small number are available via the GUI, and
> I don't like any of them.

GNOME 2 uses fontconfig as its font selection mechanism so GNOME 2 apps
are seeing a different font set than GNOME 1 and other "pure" X apps.

You can have a look at http://nexp.cs.pdx.edu/fontconfig/ to see how
this works and the benefits of the change.

> I realize that a font chooser is much more user friendly, but the fact that I
> can't just do "--font 9x15" and get my font, or enter it into an input box at
> least (as an option, while retaining the font chooser) is not very
> user-friendly to people who know what the font is that they want.

You can configure profiles for this.  After you have configured your
profiles you can write:

   $ gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=PROFILENAME

or

   $ gnome-terminal --tab-with-profile=PROFILENAME

and a new window or tab will pop up with all your preferences for that
profile, i.e. icon, font, command, etc.

> Another gnome-terminal issue I have is that I couldn't figure out how to set
> the browser it used when you open URLs.  I finally found the setting in
> gnome-control-center, but since the only thing this affects, for me, is
> gnome-terminal, I hadn't noticed even looked there before.

You are right ;-).  The app-defaults and MIME types are currently  being
reengineered.  You can have a look at the spec proposals at
http://www.freedesktop.org/ if you want.

Hope this helps you.

Regards,

David.