LinuxQuestions.org - Unwanted gap at the bottom of xterm

Would you please look at this screenshot:

Attachment 11591

This is stjerm, a "Quake-style" terminal application, running GNU Screen. Note how the hardstatus bar sits right at the bottom of the screen, there is almost no visible gap.

The same happens in Vim, except the status line is exactly one line above the bottom, because commands will be inserted into the line below it. I would like to post a screenshot, but I can only upload three.

That works well in stjerm and RoxTerm.

The next screenshot begins to illustrate the problem:

Attachment 11592

That is Tilda, another "Quake-style" terminal application. Note that there is a gap below the status bar. Likewise, Vim has a full empty line for commands, but in Tilda, that line is taller than in stjerm or RoxTerm. I found the exact same problem with LX Terminal, gaps the same size as in Tilda.

Finally, the problem at its worst:

Attachment 11593

That is Xterm. Note how the gap now is considerably taller, and in Vim, there is absolutely enough room for two lines of commands under the status bar.

That is a waste of precious space, because my screen is small. It's a netbook.

I also feel the problem when using mutt in Xterm, there is an ugly, two-line empty space at the bottom of the screen that I'd really rather be using.

Now you may be thinking, "just use stjerm and get done with the whole issue." OK, maybe, but I have these two different uses for my terminal:

I press a key and have stjerm drop down whenever I want to run commands (which is very frequent), and I run two applications (e.g. mutt) in separate XTerm windows, launched by global key shortcuts.

I have been using RoxTerm or LX Terminal for those. Not because I particularly love them, rather because I have always hated Xterm so much. It is as ubiquitous as Vi, which is good, but it's always looked awfully awful ugly, and it's so hard to configure.

But I recently ran across some pretty darn good (unofficial, of course) documentation that really helped me with configuring Xterm so it looks decent. Since I have tamed the beast and now it looks good, I think I just want to use it because it's small, ubiquitous and has fewer dependencies. Tilda, Rox and LX Term can all go away, I will just stick with stjerm because of the drop-down feature, which I particularly love.

Now, can I fix that hideous gap in all my Xterm windows? I have tried a few tweaks like xterm*vt100*geometry: 120x80 (and many other geometry numbers) in ~/.Xresources, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Also, note that I run all these terminals maximized and in full screen mode, always set automatically by Openbox.