Re: Customize xfterm4 for a terminal-bound program in Xfce

[Paulo Marcel Coelho Aragao <marcelpaulo+l@gmail.com>]

Almut Behrens wrote on Dec, 17:

[...]

> > I'm migrating from KDE to Xfce and I'm not being able to do this: to add a 
> > launcher in the Panel for a program running on a terminal, with customized 
> > terminal properties. For example, I'd like to launch mutt and mc within a 
> > taller terminal window, without menu and scroll bars. If the program doesn't 
> > run on a terminal, like xconsole, for example, I just need to add a -geometry 
> > argument. I can't figure out how to do something similar to programs that run 
> > on a terminal.

> This somewhat depends on what options the terminal understands, but the
> approach would generally be much the same, i.e. use -geometry for the
> terminal that mc/mutt/... is running in.  Size is sometimes specified
> in pixels, but usually in characters, e.g. for "mc in rxvt" I have a
> command like
> 
>   rxvt -geometry 120x50+480+0 -e mc
> 
> -geometry applies to the terminal; the -e executes the application in
> the terminal.  Feel free to add other options as required -- mc options
> would of course go after "-e mc".

Thank you so much for the tips, Almut. I got confused because Xfce launchers 
come pre-configured with xfterm4, which is a wrapper than can call whatever 
terminal is set in $TERMCMD. I still get confused by it, so I'm calling 
xfce4-terminal directly, passing the geometry and application to run. 

> For more complex start commands (where you need to set up environment
> variables and stuff) I usually put everything in a small wrapper
> script, which I then call from the window manager.  The last command
> in such a script would typically be an "exec" (which avoids that an
> unnecessary shell process is kept running...)
> 
>   #!/bin/sh
> 
>   # do some setup here, like specific locale changes, lib paths, colors
>   # or whatever there's no commandline option for...
> 
>   exec rxvt -geometry 120x60+50+20 -e mutt

That's a good idea. If any of the commands gets out of hand, I'll follow this 
path.

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer
Paulo