[SOLVED] Xterm and customizing?

F.Society · 08-28-2017, 03:29 PM

Hello people, I'm new to this forum as a friend just linked me and said they thought it might be helpful.

I'm fairly new to Linux but I pick up pretty fast.

I'm currently running Debian lxde.

Now, I've been using lxterminal and essentially testing out everything BUT xterm
solely based how how hideous(IMO) it looks "out of the box".

Now I'm not saying it needs to be breath-taking but currently its an eye soar.
I've tried to Google, and search about but I guess the bits that I'd found were too confusing for my level of xterm stupid.

I can understand in home directory there should be a ".Xresources" and thats about all I've taken away thus far.

How does one go about customizing this?

tl;dr - I've never used xterm, looks terrible (imo), how do I customize?

Any and all feedback appreciated.

Love and respect.

Shadow_7 · 08-28-2017, 04:38 PM

$ xterm -b 0 -bw 0 +sb -fg rgb:99/99/99 -bg rgb:00/00/00 -cr rgb:ff/ff/00 -fn -*-neep-medium-r-*-20-* -fb -*-neep-bold-r-*-20-* -geometry 80x25 &

You can do the .Xresources thing too, but you need to run xrdb to apply the changes. And then automate that process at the start of X if you want to set it and forget it.

Shadow_7 · 08-28-2017, 04:41 PM

You can also do urxvt (rxvt-unicode) with all the same parameters, except -bw is -w with rxvt. It has to do with the padding between the X decorations and the text. Set to 0 and you'll have maximum characters when going fullscreen.

IsaacKuo · 08-28-2017, 04:51 PM

Why do you care about xterm? If you want something extremely lightweight but also with some eye candy, consider rxvt. It features pseudo-transparency (which I actually prefer to true transparency, because it can be hard to read terminal text when it's on top of a window with other text).

F.Society · 08-28-2017, 04:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow_7

$ xterm -b 0 -bw 0 +sb -fg rgb:99/99/99 -bg rgb:00/00/00 -cr rgb:ff/ff/00 -fn -*-neep-medium-r-*-20-* -fb -*-neep-bold-r-*-20-* -geometry 80x25 &

You can do the .Xresources thing too, but you need to run xrdb to apply the changes. And then automate that process at the start of X if you want to set it and forget it.

Trying to wrap my mind around this all, when entering the above command nothing appears to happen except a new "xterm" opening

F.Society · 08-28-2017, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IsaacKuo

Why do you care about xterm? If you want something extremely lightweight but also with some eye candy, consider rxvt. It features pseudo-transparency (which I actually prefer to true transparency, because it can be hard to read terminal text when it's on top of a window with other text).

I'd actually be willing to give it a go, but like I said I'm new to linux. Does it come pre installed in debian lxde? If so where do I find this?

I was trying out xterm because a more experienced buddy seemed to be disgusted at my use of the stock lxterminal.

dejank · 08-28-2017, 05:13 PM

If you want to customize xterm do it with .Xresources. Here is example:

Code:

!----- xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

!
!----- XTerm settings           
!

xterm*loginShell:      true
xterm*vt100*geometry:  80x40
!xterm*renderFont:      true
!xterm*faceName:        Terminus
!xterm*faceSize:        10
xterm*font:            -*-terminus-medium-*-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1
xterm*font1:           -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed-*-13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1
xterm*font2:           -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-13-120-75-75-c-80-iso10646-1
xterm*font3:           -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-14-130-75-75-c-70-iso10646-1
xterm*font4:           -*-terminus-medium-*-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
xterm*font5:           -*-terminus-medium-*-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1
xterm*font6:           -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-18-120-100-100-c-90-iso10646-1 
xterm*allowBoldFonts:  false
xterm*dynamicColors:   true
xterm*cursorBlink:     true
xterm*utf8:            1
xterm*termName:        xterm-256color
xterm*saveLines:       4096
xterm*charClass:       33:48,36-47:48,58-59:48,61:48,63-64:48,95:48,126:48
xterm*on3Clicks:       regex ([[:alpha:]]+://)?([[:alnum:]!#+,./=?@_~-]|(%[[:xdigit:]][[:xdigit:]]))+
!next one will launch firefox when you highlight link and presh shift button 1 on mouse and highlight you can do with double click
xterm*VT100*translations: #override Shift <Btn1Up>: exec-formatted("firefox '%t'", PRIMARY)
xterm*visualBell:      true
xterm*bellIsUrgent:    true
xterm*scrollTtyOutput: false
xterm*scrollKey:       true
xterm*fastScroll:      true
xterm*cutNewline:      true
xterm*highlightSelection: true
xterm*eightBitInput:   false
xterm*backarrowKey:    false

! Solarized color scheme for the X Window System
!
! http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized


! Common

#define S_yellow        #b58900
#define S_orange        #cb4b16
#define S_red           #dc322f
#define S_magenta       #d33682
#define S_violet        #6c71c4
#define S_blue          #268bd2
#define S_cyan          #2aa198
#define S_green         #859900


! Dark

#define S_base03        #002b36
#define S_base02        #073642
#define S_base01        #586e75
#define S_base00        #657b83
#define S_base0         #839496
#define S_base1         #93a1a1
#define S_base2         #eee8d5
#define S_base3         #fdf6e3


! Light

!#define S_base03        #fdf6e3
!#define S_base02        #eee8d5
!#define S_base01        #93a1a1
!#define S_base00        #839496
!#define S_base0         #657b83
!#define S_base1         #586e75
!#define S_base2         #073642
!#define S_base3         #002b36


! To only apply colors to your terminal, for example, prefix
! the color assignment statement with its name. Example:
!
! URxvt*background:            S_base03

xterm*background:              S_base03
xterm*foreground:              S_base0
xterm*cursorColor:             S_base1
xterm*pointerColorBackground:  S_base01
xterm*pointerColorForeground:  S_base1

! black dark/light
xterm*color0:                  S_base02
xterm*color8:                  S_base03

! red dark/light
xterm*color1:                  S_red
xterm*color9:                  S_orange

! green dark/light
xterm*color2:                  S_green
xterm*color10:                 S_base01

! yellow dark/light
xterm*color3:                  S_yellow
xterm*color11:                 S_base00

! blue dark/light
xterm*color4:                  S_blue
xterm*color12:                 S_base0

! magenta dark/light
xterm*color5:                  S_magenta
xterm*color13:                 S_violet

! cyan dark/light
xterm*color6:                  S_cyan
xterm*color14:                 S_base1

! white dark/light
xterm*color7:                  S_base2
xterm*color15:                 S_base3

Also, to all those rxvt-unicode lovers posting, get over yourselves, xterm is way better :P Also, at start of that file is command you should execute if you want to have your .Xresources settings applied to any new instances of xterm. It is xrdb one.

F.Society · 08-28-2017, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dejank

If you want to customize xterm do it with .Xresources. Here is example:

Code:

*Snip to save space*

Also, to all those rxvt-unicode lovers posting, get over yourselves, xterm is way better :P Also, at start of that file is command you should execute if you want to have your .Xresources settings applied to any new instances of xterm. It is xrdb one.

Nice, This actually changed some things up.

How would one enable things like transparency and further expand.
Is there a place online like a man pages that would list all features with explanations?

and what is all this I hear about rxvt as well? (Please bear in mind I'm still learning,so the more 4 year old like the explination the better)

Cheers!

dejank · 08-28-2017, 05:51 PM

xterm does not do transparency by itself and I'm very happy it does not. I do not like transparency, and all those that talk about light on resource terminals and then enable transparency that is resource hog always make me smile. As for online resources, man page ( one you get when you do man xterm in your terminal ) is pretty much self explanatory, or at least I've found it to be. If you want more resources, there are many tutorials on how to customize various aspects of xterm, just google subject and read. One of things you should know, is that some of on the fly changes you can do by pressing ctrl key with combination of mouse clicks. All 3 mouse clicks will bring you different menus. As far as rxvt goes, it is in fact rxvt-unicode, or more often knows as urxvt ( rxvt itself is rarely used these days, and is unmaintained, I think ). I've always found it to be inferior in many aspects to xterm, but you might find it better for you. It can be customized, but some things that are simple to do in xterm, require perl plugins in urxvt, like for example copy to clipboard. Also, urxvt has bad solutions for spacing of some fonts, compared to xterm. On other hand, urxvt do have bit better unicode support, but it is not something that matters to me.

dejank · 08-28-2017, 06:14 PM

Oh, as a quick way to get transparency in xterm, if you really want it, you can use transset command. There are ways to make it kind of permanent by adding it to your .bashrc. Do man transset in your terminal for quick intro, or google it for more examples.

Shadow_7 · 08-28-2017, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by F.Society

Trying to wrap my mind around this all, when entering the above command nothing appears to happen except a new "xterm" opening

What exactly are you expecting to change? On my system xterm defaults to a white background with black text and a scrollbar. There's a TERM environment variable which you can change for mildly different colors. Otherwise there's dircolors and $LS_COLORS that determine various colors when you use standard commands with the color attribute.

$ ls --color=auto

$ sudo apt-get install xfonts-jmk
(to get the neep fonts in debian)

$ xset fp rehash
$ fc-cache -f -v
(to update fonts in X without a reboot or restarting X)

And then try the xterm command, or urxvt.

IsaacKuo · 08-31-2017, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by F.Society

I'd actually be willing to give it a go, but like I said I'm new to linux. Does it come pre installed in debian lxde? If so where do I find this?

I was trying out xterm because a more experienced buddy seemed to be disgusted at my use of the stock lxterminal.

There's nothing wrong with lxterminal.

Anyway, if you want to install rxvt, the simplest way is to open up lxterminal (or any other console interface) and use the commands:

Code:

su
apt-get install rxvt-unicode-256color

In Debian, if you don't know the exact name of a package you can:

1) use "apt-cache search something"

or

2) Do an internet search in a web browser for "debian package something"

If you get way too many results, you can cut down the results with:

Code:

apt-cache search something | grep somethingelse

F.Society · 08-31-2017, 11:37 PM

Thank you to everyone that replied .All the information here was very very helpful. Cheers!

ondoho · 09-01-2017, 01:22 AM

- you also need to find about xfonts. try enetering the command 'xfontsel' and get your bearings with this older font format.
- rxvt-unicode, aka urxvt, is another lightweight terminal emulator. i use it. many people use it.
- also find out about terminal color schemes, e.g. here.