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iterm2's new metal renderer[1] has greatly increased my terminal happiness on mac. Highly recommended. [1]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/wikis/Metal-Rend

iterm2's new metal renderer[1] has greatly increased my terminal happiness on mac. Highly recommended. [1]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/wikis/Metal-Renderer https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/wikis/Metal-Renderer

caiob 8y ago
No ligature support is a deal breaker for me though, and it doesn't seem there's an easy fix to this issue.
- tenken 8y ago
  I haven't jumped on ligatures yet ... In what ways do they in crease productivity?
  - caiob 8y ago
    Code readability.
    - ropeadopepope 8y ago
      It makes code less readable for me. To each his own, I suppose.
      - zlynx 8y ago
        I agree. The ligature thing looks neat at first but I have spent far too many years looking at regular ASCII text. I mean, spot the difference between ==, = and ＝. Or <= and ≤. I especially hate != as ≠. And since at some point we have to use a different editor or read a git diff, we need to read the regular ASCII form anyway. So what's the point and why bother learning ligatures?
  - tenken 8y ago
    Wow, downvoted for asking for points of view, nice.
  - laumars 8y ago
    They don't but they don't reduce it either. They just look pretty. Some people like it while others do not. The problem with the IT community is we often try to argue the personal preference using some bastardisation of the scientific method. So you'll get people make claims about readability et al. But really it's just personal preference. Personally I quite like them when used with a typeface that doesn't go nuts with ligatures. Hasklig is a great example; it's based on Source Code Pro and only really uses ligatures for character combinations that are generally only used together in an ASCII art kind of way. But that's just what I find pretty; others will undoubtedly hate it and have their own reasons too. Sonny advice is just experiment. If.you find it pretty then use them; if you don't then don't use them.
- llimllib 8y ago
  I like the ligatures too, but I found it was slowing my terminal down too much. YMMV
look_lookatme 8y ago
Just enabled this and it's very snappy. Thanks!
kahlonel 8y ago
I just tried it, ran `time cat bigassfile.txt` test. How come it is slower after I enabled this? I have a mid-2013 MBA.
- gnachman 8y ago
  When the metal renderer is enabled the screen updates at 60fps. When it is not enabled, the refresh rate is governed by the current bandwidth. There are cases where the new renderer has lower throughput because it does not use adaptive framerate. I’ll look into this.
  - pvg 8y ago
    As another datapoint: for a 100k line log file, iterm2 had up to 2.5x variability between runs and the fastest was about twice slower than Terminal.app.
- eric_h 8y ago
  I tried it myself without benchmarking and it felt much faster, but actually timing it shows the original renderer was about 1.5s faster. Fascinating. I'm guessing the original renderer drops frames.

caiob 8y ago

No ligature support is a deal breaker for me though, and it doesn't seem there's an easy fix to this issue.

tenken 8y ago
I haven't jumped on ligatures yet ... In what ways do they in crease productivity?
- caiob 8y ago
  Code readability.
  - ropeadopepope 8y ago
    It makes code less readable for me. To each his own, I suppose.
    - zlynx 8y ago
      I agree. The ligature thing looks neat at first but I have spent far too many years looking at regular ASCII text. I mean, spot the difference between ==, = and ＝. Or <= and ≤. I especially hate != as ≠. And since at some point we have to use a different editor or read a git diff, we need to read the regular ASCII form anyway. So what's the point and why bother learning ligatures?
- tenken 8y ago
  Wow, downvoted for asking for points of view, nice.
- laumars 8y ago
  They don't but they don't reduce it either. They just look pretty. Some people like it while others do not. The problem with the IT community is we often try to argue the personal preference using some bastardisation of the scientific method. So you'll get people make claims about readability et al. But really it's just personal preference. Personally I quite like them when used with a typeface that doesn't go nuts with ligatures. Hasklig is a great example; it's based on Source Code Pro and only really uses ligatures for character combinations that are generally only used together in an ASCII art kind of way. But that's just what I find pretty; others will undoubtedly hate it and have their own reasons too. Sonny advice is just experiment. If.you find it pretty then use them; if you don't then don't use them.
llimllib 8y ago
I like the ligatures too, but I found it was slowing my terminal down too much. YMMV

look_lookatme 8y ago

Just enabled this and it's very snappy. Thanks!

kahlonel 8y ago

I just tried it, ran `time cat bigassfile.txt` test. How come it is slower after I enabled this? I have a mid-2013 MBA.

gnachman 8y ago
When the metal renderer is enabled the screen updates at 60fps. When it is not enabled, the refresh rate is governed by the current bandwidth. There are cases where the new renderer has lower throughput because it does not use adaptive framerate. I’ll look into this.
- pvg 8y ago
  As another datapoint: for a 100k line log file, iterm2 had up to 2.5x variability between runs and the fastest was about twice slower than Terminal.app.
eric_h 8y ago
I tried it myself without benchmarking and it felt much faster, but actually timing it shows the original renderer was about 1.5s faster. Fascinating. I'm guessing the original renderer drops frames.