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Terminal - a good terminal?



#include <hallo.h>
* Jeff Teunissen [Thu, Oct 07 2004, 02:20:31AM]:

> > If we are going to allow generic names, then obviously they would be
> > applied to the most commonly used or "best for the novice" example, so
> > I'm pretty sure that GNUstep apps aren't going to get them.
> 
> On one of those counts, many GNUstep-using apps often win over their
> "competition". e.g. Terminal is a _very_ nice terminal emulator with
> excellent compatibility (it does UTF-8 well, and emulates the Linux console

Who said that the "linux" console is a good kind of terminal emulation?

> very well) and many features that are not found elsewhere. 

Such as? Let's compare. It may be look nice, but is it really good for
daily use?. I just tried version 0.9.4-2.2 and have "mixed feelings" (to
avoid a bad word) after comparing to rxvt-unicode.

meta-keys in UTF-8 mode? Only after manual configuration. 

Manpage? None (or not easy to find).

Command line options? No idea, either none or the program reacts insane.

UTF-8 support? Lousy or none. One has to choose it manually (and it
supports only few encoding anyways). And failed to display any glyphs
from the known UTF-8-demo.txt except of those from charsets in the menu.
Not even the threading in mutt is displayed properly.
Choosing the "Handle widht-chars" option has broken the output completely.

Automatic guessing of the charset (on-the-fly)? No.
Self-configuration by locale settings? No.

Speed? Lousy. From time to time feels slow like hell, even compared to
the gnome-terminal. No way to choose core X fonts instead of XFT.
Measure performance ("locate bmp", not precise): 2 times slower than
Gnome-Terminal, 8 times slower than Konsole or Urxvt(w. XFT), about 20
times slower than urxvt (core fonts, UTF-8 mode).

Bold/Bright fonts? No. There is a selection for the Bold font but seems
to be broken.

Italic font support? No.

Customisable color palette? No.

Extra features (transparency, background image, etc.) - no.

Memory usage? Terrific. 30MiB to be loaded - get one a simple terminal
window! Compare with rxvt-unicode: 7MiB (2MiB RSS), 1MiB more in XFT
mode.
The good part: ~800kb per new window (urxvtd takes ~600kb), that's fair

Configurable by xresources or similar mechanism? No (apparently).

Changing settings on-the-fly? No.

So there are not many nice things about this "Terminal". The only one I
can see is the *step integration but it is a matter of taste. And I have
to say the same thing as before - calling this package "terminal" is
unfair, it will attract the attention of newbies to a program that is
below average, feature and performancewise. "gnustep-terminal" would be
much more appropriate - it is a Terminal for real GNUstep fans.

Regards,
Eduard.

PS: I should create a big x-terminal-emulator survey/shootout.
-- 
* PerlRonin wuenscht sich gerade 'ne irc-lobby.  Dann koennte man 'draussen
	stehen und warten bis er 'rausgekickt wird.



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