A new terminal for XWindows and Wayland

There are plenty of graphic terminals for linux, so what makes this one different?

• it allows to split a window in several tiling subwindows, exactly like the old Terminator terminal. Of course it can create several simultaneous windows, and allows to have several tabs in each window.

• allows to have an always-available drop-down terminal in all screens, with an appearance similar to the Quake console, exactly like Guake. Of course, the Guake-like terminal can be split in tiling subwindows, wich is its main novelty.

• supports Drag'n'Drop of terminals between tabs and windows, allowing to reorder them at will.

• it has been written in Vala and uses Gtk3, which allows it to take advantage of the new characteristics available and to use less resources.

Each Terminus window has two buttons at the left: one to create a new Terminus window, and another to create a new tab in the current window. Also, doing right-click on a terminal will open a contextual menu which also allows to subdivide it horizontally or vertically, in tiles.

A terminal can be dragged from the top bar (the red one), and dropped into another terminal (being added as a new tile), into a new tab in an existing window by dropping it into the tabs bar or the title bar, or into a new window if dropped outside any window. A terminal can be moved between different windows too, and even between a normal window and the Guake one.

By default, using Shift+F12 will show the Quake-like terminal, but you can change the key binding by pressing right-click and selecting "Properties". Nearly all the actions in Terminus have a configurable hotkey.

Also by default, Ctrl+Shift combined with the keypad's Add, Subtract and Enter keys will increase, decrease, and return to normal, font size. You can also use Ctrl + Mouse Wheel to change the font size (and Ctrl + middle button to return to the normal size).

By default, terminus is launched during startup to check if the user wants to have the Quake-like terminal available, so just installing it and rebooting will guarantee to have it. You can also launch it from a terminal.

Currently the number of options modifiable is small, but more will become available.

Under Gnome Shell (and derived desktops) be sure to enable the extension, to allow you to launch the Guake mode terminal.

Just follow the classic meson instructions:

mkdir install
cd install
meson
ninja
sudo ninja install

If, during meson stage, you receive an error for missing libraries, install them and run meson again, until there are no more missing libraries.

It is very easy to add new palettes to Terminus. Just edit a file with .color_scheme as extension, and place it at /usr/share/terminus (or /usr/local/share/terminus, depending where you installed the binaries) to have it globally available, or at ~/.local/share/terminus to make it available only to you.

The format is very simple. Here is an example that defines a foreground/background color scheme:

name: Orange on black
name[es]: Naranja sobre negro
text_fg: #FECE12
text_bg: #000000

This file will define the Orange on black color scheme, that specifies that the foreground will be orange, and the background will be black. It also specifies the name translated into spanish.

Another example, this time for a palette scheme:

name: Solarized
palette: #002b36
palette: #073642
palette: #586e75
palette: #657b83
palette: #839496
palette: #93a1a1
palette: #eee8d5
palette: #fdf6e3
palette: #b58900
palette: #cb4b16
palette: #dc322f
palette: #d33682
palette: #6c71c4
palette: #268bd2
palette: #2aa198
palette: #859900

This one defines the Solarized palette, with all its 16 colors. Each palette entry defines one color, and they will be inserted in that precise order. There must be exactly 16 palette entries; no more, no less.

You can define in a single file a color scheme and a palette scheme, but they will be shown in the app as separated elements. This is: if you define in a single file a color and palette scheme called MYGREATFULLSCHEME, you will find a color scheme called MYGREATFULLSCHEME in the color scheme list, and it will change only the foreground/background colors; and you also will find a palette scheme called MYGREATFULLSCHEME in the palette scheme list, and it will change only the palette itself, but not the foreground/background colors.

Q: I use Gnome-Shell/Ubuntu desktop and when I show the Quake terminal, it doesn't get the focus.
A: Be sure to install and enable the Terminus extension, even under X11. Then do a killall terminus to relaunch it from the extension, and everything should work fine.

Q: I'm using Wayland, and pressing Alt+F12 (or my keybinding) doesn't show the Quake-like terminal.
A: That's because Wayland doesn't allow to an application to set its own keybindings. Fortunately, Terminus includes a Gnome Shell extension that allows to show the Quake-like terminal. If you have installed Terminus, just exit your session, enter again, and enable the extension with gnome-tweak-tool.

Another way is using the desktop keybindings to launch the script "terminus_showhide", which makes use of the DBus remote control to show and hide the Quake-like terminal.

In Gnome Shell it is as easy as opening the Settings window, choose the "Keyboard" icon, and add there the desired hotkey, associating it with "terminus_showhide" program.

Q: I translated Terminus, but the color and palette schemes aren't translated. Why?
A: You have to also translate the ".color_scheme" files located at data/local.

Sergio Costas Rodriguez
[email protected]
http://www.rastersoft.com
https://gitlab.com/rastersoft/terminus