4 ms·

Apple should follow MS's example and open source its Terminal.app It's a decent terminal emulator, but could use several enhancements and the community could h

Apple should follow MS's example and open source its Terminal.app It's a decent terminal emulator, but could use several enhancements and the community could help. For some reason I haven't changed to iTerm yet, even though it's been objectively better in every way for years. Even the minor gripe I had with font rendering is fixed. There's something about using default apps as much as possible that appeals to me. But Terminal.app is lagging compared to the competition.

rbanffy 5y ago
> It's a decent terminal emulator, but could use several enhancements and the community could help. It's the only modern terminal that passes the VT torture test. It supports double width and double height characters (great for terminal error messages). It doesn't support overline (which is awesome for status lines at the bottom of the screen) and requires font support for line drawing and block graphics (Unicode 13 introduced 2x3 blocks and the next one will introduce 2x4s). > There's something about using default apps as much as possible that appeals to me For me it's one less thing to distract my distraction-prone brain.
- tambourine_man 5y ago
  Better keyboard only text selection, vertical/horizontal splits (I know about tmux, I still prefer scrolling and searching on true app), true color support, image visualizing would be nice.
- Komodai 5y ago
  VT torture test?
  - DHowett 5y ago
    I think rbanffy is referring to vttest[1], but I'm not certain. [1]: https://www.invisible-island.net/vttest/ https://www.invisible-island.net/vttest/ EDIT to add: vttest is maintained by the current maintainer of xterm. It's the "torturiest" VT test I know of.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      No. Not this one. It's too much work to test everything. A much more concise can be used from: curl -q http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/animation/vt100-animation/torturetest.vt On a real terminal, you'll be able to see even the smooth scrolling function that AFAIK no windowed terminal implements.
      - DHowett 5y ago
        Whoa, thanks! It looks like I’ve got some reading to do.
        rbanffy 4y ago
        Next steps would be supporting Tektronix and ReGIS graphics. Sixel graphics are a terrible idea.
ossusermivami 5y ago
when i am using macOS I use kitty as on my (primary) Linux laptop, and it's works beautifully there, (iterm2 is great too)
Maursault 5y ago
> Apple should follow MS's example and open source its Terminal.app This is bellyaching about nothing. Instead, Microsoft should follow Apple's example and open source the operating system. The only part of macOS that is not open source is the GUI, i.e. Quartz Compositor, and the gui applications. Microsoft, meanwhile, is an incredible slouch when it comes to open source, only very recently changing their hostile "embrace, extend, extinguish" stance towards OSS.
- melony 5y ago
  Mac without the userland is mostly useless. At that point you might as well switch fully to FreeBSD.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    This is a straw man, and also not entirely accurate. Darwin is BSD, and in theory just as useful as BSD, or FreeBSD, NetBSD, and useful to developers, and to anyone that can figure out how to install it and use it. [1] Meanwhile, Windows without hardware less than 2 years old is absolutely worthless. Thus, Linux. [1] http://www.puredarwin.org/ http://www.puredarwin.org/
    - ahtihn 4y ago
      > Meanwhile, Windows without hardware less than 2 years old is absolutely worthless. That is not my experience at all.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      >Meanwhile, Windows without hardware less than 2 years old is absolutely worthless. This is false. Source: Installed Windows 11 from official Microsoft ISO on a laptop from 2016 (6 years old) and runs buttery smooth. Please stop spreading FUD like this.
      - Maursault 4y ago
        If it were not true, Linux would never have become popular. Linux evolved beyond quickly fixing what Microsoft broke to take over the server space, but that was Linux's first practical reason for existing, to mitigate the problems with Windows slowly dying after about 2 years of being installed and used daily.
disruptiveink 5y ago
I was a Terminal.app user since Tiger, only recently had to switch to iTerm 2 as since Big Sur it forces anti-aliasing on non-HiDPI displays, even when turned off in the settings (I like non anti-aliased Monaco 10pt). It looks like a bug, but hasn't been fixed since.
- matvore 4y ago
  If you use a font which doesn't have outline data Terminal.app and you set the rendered size to whatever is the native size of the font, Terminal.app will show you the unadulterated bitmap (if you use a multiple of the size, Terminal.app should scale it up without anti-aliasing). I generate a .dfont without outline data based on a tweaked version of my favorite bitmap font, in Font Forge. Now, if there is a way you can pre-render your favorite outline font to a bitmap and write it as a .dfont without outlines (other extensions may be fine, not sure though), you could switch back to Terminal.app. But font tools on GitHub etc. are very very few and never work that well, if they even do what they advertise at all.

rbanffy 5y ago

> It's a decent terminal emulator, but could use several enhancements and the community could help. It's the only modern terminal that passes the VT torture test. It supports double width and double height characters (great for terminal error messages). It doesn't support overline (which is awesome for status lines at the bottom of the screen) and requires font support for line drawing and block graphics (Unicode 13 introduced 2x3 blocks and the next one will introduce 2x4s). > There's something about using default apps as much as possible that appeals to me For me it's one less thing to distract my distraction-prone brain.

tambourine_man 5y ago
Better keyboard only text selection, vertical/horizontal splits (I know about tmux, I still prefer scrolling and searching on true app), true color support, image visualizing would be nice.
Komodai 5y ago
VT torture test?
- DHowett 5y ago
  I think rbanffy is referring to vttest[1], but I'm not certain. [1]: https://www.invisible-island.net/vttest/ https://www.invisible-island.net/vttest/ EDIT to add: vttest is maintained by the current maintainer of xterm. It's the "torturiest" VT test I know of.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    No. Not this one. It's too much work to test everything. A much more concise can be used from: curl -q http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/animation/vt100-animation/torturetest.vt On a real terminal, you'll be able to see even the smooth scrolling function that AFAIK no windowed terminal implements.
    - DHowett 5y ago
      Whoa, thanks! It looks like I’ve got some reading to do.
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        Next steps would be supporting Tektronix and ReGIS graphics. Sixel graphics are a terrible idea.

ossusermivami 5y ago

when i am using macOS I use kitty as on my (primary) Linux laptop, and it's works beautifully there, (iterm2 is great too)

Maursault 5y ago

> Apple should follow MS's example and open source its Terminal.app This is bellyaching about nothing. Instead, Microsoft should follow Apple's example and open source the operating system. The only part of macOS that is not open source is the GUI, i.e. Quartz Compositor, and the gui applications. Microsoft, meanwhile, is an incredible slouch when it comes to open source, only very recently changing their hostile "embrace, extend, extinguish" stance towards OSS.

melony 5y ago
Mac without the userland is mostly useless. At that point you might as well switch fully to FreeBSD.
- Maursault 5y ago
  This is a straw man, and also not entirely accurate. Darwin is BSD, and in theory just as useful as BSD, or FreeBSD, NetBSD, and useful to developers, and to anyone that can figure out how to install it and use it. [1] Meanwhile, Windows without hardware less than 2 years old is absolutely worthless. Thus, Linux. [1] http://www.puredarwin.org/ http://www.puredarwin.org/
  - ahtihn 4y ago
    > Meanwhile, Windows without hardware less than 2 years old is absolutely worthless. That is not my experience at all.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >Meanwhile, Windows without hardware less than 2 years old is absolutely worthless. This is false. Source: Installed Windows 11 from official Microsoft ISO on a laptop from 2016 (6 years old) and runs buttery smooth. Please stop spreading FUD like this.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      If it were not true, Linux would never have become popular. Linux evolved beyond quickly fixing what Microsoft broke to take over the server space, but that was Linux's first practical reason for existing, to mitigate the problems with Windows slowly dying after about 2 years of being installed and used daily.

disruptiveink 5y ago

I was a Terminal.app user since Tiger, only recently had to switch to iTerm 2 as since Big Sur it forces anti-aliasing on non-HiDPI displays, even when turned off in the settings (I like non anti-aliased Monaco 10pt). It looks like a bug, but hasn't been fixed since.

matvore 4y ago
If you use a font which doesn't have outline data Terminal.app and you set the rendered size to whatever is the native size of the font, Terminal.app will show you the unadulterated bitmap (if you use a multiple of the size, Terminal.app should scale it up without anti-aliasing). I generate a .dfont without outline data based on a tweaked version of my favorite bitmap font, in Font Forge. Now, if there is a way you can pre-render your favorite outline font to a bitmap and write it as a .dfont without outlines (other extensions may be fine, not sure though), you could switch back to Terminal.app. But font tools on GitHub etc. are very very few and never work that well, if they even do what they advertise at all.