Is rxvt the best terminal/console

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stewjack
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Is rxvt the best terminal/console

#1 Post by stewjack »

I installed Puppy quite easily. I installed FireFox and XMMS and imported my windows bookmarks for the Fox, plus some mp3 and podcasts or XMMS. In general things are going great.

I am having trouble installing RealPlayer10GOLD.bin, but a better terminal/ or console? comes first.

Note: I don't know what the difference is between a terminal and a console.

I have limited experience typing in bash commands, but I think I have used Midnight Commander before. I know could copy and paste command strings. Midnight Commander and Aterm seem to have been available in the past. I hope everybody isn't using rxtv!

Please tell me here is something better. :wink:
Last edited by stewjack on Thu 30 Nov 2006, 22:41, edited 1 time in total.
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Gn2
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#2 Post by Gn2 »

There are many GUI CLI "shells"
A one time inter-active use, command line parser:
"Virtual consoles" > emulating a "dumb" terminal (tty)

All have own usability features, limitations.
E.G. KDE consoles, "window" CLI shells > A-term, E-term, etc etc
"Shelling" itself - means to "shell" > " enter into": out of desktop into a CLI environment.

"Best" is dependent on user's own preferences, task requirement.
As you noted, MC is very powerful - has "built-in" CLI & utilities.

Best of all - understanding Bash and How to Cfg any O/System need.

There are unlimited on-line tutorials - many may be downloaded.

HTH

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Pizzasgood
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#3 Post by Pizzasgood »

What's wrong with RXVT? Once you change the colors to black and gray, or maybe stick a subtle image in the background, it isn't so bad looking.

The only things I've noticed in other ones are tabs and transparency. Nathan said something about compiling a newer RXVT with transparency. I can see where tabs might be handy for other people, but they'd just take up screen space with me. I prefer seeing both windows at the same time.

Not that I'm not open to change. One of the things on my to-do list for Pizzapup is to try out some other terminals and see which one I prefer.
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rarsa
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#4 Post by rarsa »

Terminal/Console/shell are used interchangeably even when they are semantically different

Terminal: The end point. In this case it means that it is the latest point in the interface between the user and the computer. The term was more relevant when the computer was somewhere else than the terminal.

Console: Was the whole furniture holding and including the terminal. You may see why they are using interchangeably.

Shell: Is the program that runs inside the terminal with which you interact.

The correct term for aterm, rxvt. mrxvt, etc. is Terminal emulator but really, if you use any of the previous terms most people will understand what you mean.

I use mrxvt. I do like tabs, they help me keep my workspace less cluttered. and if I need side by side windows, I just open another one.

You mentioned that you miss the cut and paste from midnigth commander. In rxvt and mrxvt you can copy by selecting the lines with the mouse and pressing C while keeping the Ctrl key pressed.

You can paste commands that you copy from somewhere else by pressing Insert while keeping the shift key pressed.

Really I don't see much difference between terminal emulators. The main difference is the frills. Transparency, colour handling, keyboard shortcuts. and pretty much all that is very personal so one person favourite is another's nightmare.
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MU
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#5 Post by MU »

UTF support might be an issue.
If I use de_DE.UTF-8, I can see no äöü in rxvt.
But Xterm copied over from Mandriva LE2006 can display them.
It is no alternative though, as I have to hit a key twice to show them.

Maybe a settings-issue, still looking for a good utf-8 capable terminal.

Mark

GuestToo
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#6 Post by GuestToo »

aterm can display äöü (but i don't think it is using utf8) ... and pseudo transparency works properly, and there is no ctrl+D bug (pressing ctrl+D in an rxvt window shuts it down very slowly ... strace shows a lot of errors ... it may be the kernel version)

and aterm is about the same size as rxvt

screenshot: http://i16.tinypic.com/30kylas.png

i made an aterm dotpup package, but the forum attachments are not working properly

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#7 Post by GuestToo »

though rxvt can display äöü too

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MU
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#8 Post by MU »

rxvt also displays äöü, as long as
LANG=de_DE

but not with
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

I have aterm on another machine, will try tomorrow.
Going asleep now.

Thanks, Mark

stewjack
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#9 Post by stewjack »

rarsa wrote: You mentioned that you miss the cut and paste from midnight commander. In rxvt and mrxvt you can copy by selecting the lines with the mouse and pressing C while keeping the Ctrl key pressed.

You can paste commands that you copy from somewhere else by pressing Insert while keeping the shift key pressed.

.
Thank you! That information is very helpful. I think MC had those actions as menu items.

It took me about another hour but RealPlayer 10 is installed. I still am not certain what the problem was, but I may have been outside the path? The nly command that I could find to return my directory location was ls. I'm sure that there is a better way! Once again I remember MC returning that information automatically. :?

Also the installer suggested an install directory, and it didn't like the fact that I tried to type the same directory before hitting enter.

Thanks to everybody. :)

Jack
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MU
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#10 Post by MU »

http://packages.debian.org/stable/x11/xterm

This works with locale set to de_DE.UTF-8
It internally resets to C, and displays äöü correct.
So it is not required to use a wrapperscript disabling UTF, what could be problematic for launched applications.
I also copied
/etc/X11/app-defaults/Xterm, and changed one line:

Code: Select all

!*VT100.utf8Fonts.font:	-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1
*VT100.utf8Fonts.font:	-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-70-*-*
And you need to
ln -s /usr/X11R7/lib/libXaw95.so.7.0 /usr/lib/libXaw.so.7
There is already /usr/X11R7/lib/libXaw.so.7, but Xterm ignores it.

Now I must test, if all options are compatible with rxvt, then I'll replace it for Muppy. Or write a wrapper.

Mark

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MU
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#11 Post by MU »

ok, xterm does not like --geometry

Writing a wrapper using the bash did not work, so I made one in Puppybasic.

the xterm binary must be moved to /usr/bin/rxvt-xterm/rxvt

Then create this script /usr/bin/rxvt

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/puppybasic

  i=3
  args=""
  while command(i) !=""
  args &= command(i) & " "
  i+=1
  wend
  args=trim(args)

'print args


args = replace(args,  "--geometry" , "-geometry" )


'print args

shell("exec /usr/bin/rxvt-xterm/rxvt " & args)
PSI now works (uses it for wget).

screenshot:
Image

Mark

vientito
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#12 Post by vientito »

mlterm can handle multilingual input and display... i mean multilingual, not just european alphabet based languages.

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