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St – A simple terminal implementation for X

st.suckless.org

21–30 of 223 posts

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#21

I like the principles behind its design, but not supporting scrollback and saying "that functionality should be provided by tmux or something similar" is baffling when it's done in the name of removing bloat and complexity. Not everybody wishes to use a terminal multiplexer in all cases, either.

It is explained in the info that scrollback is implemented in dvtm. Duplicating the functionality would probably go against the general minimalist Suckless design philosophy. Non-goals: unlimited scrollback buffer (done by dvtm)

Interesting. Thanks for the pointer to dvtm. I'm not sure I can see using it when I'm already fairly hooked on tmux, but it does seem kind of nice.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#22

I like the principles behind its design, but not supporting scrollback and saying "that functionality should be provided by tmux or something similar" is baffling when it's done in the name of removing bloat and complexity. Not everybody wishes to use a terminal multiplexer in all cases, either.

...and does it not support pasting from the X clipboard ? It's not accepting in my installation, anyway... :/

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#23
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find tmux's scrollback to be vastly inferior to a native terminal's though. There are several reasons, but the biggest is that I'm pretty sure it's not possible to get more than a screenfull of text to my local X11 PRIMARY selection.

I just use tmux's native copy/paste mechanism, using the keyboard. Using that it's possible to get the full scrollback buffer, or any part of it.

And I want to paste it into a non-terminal application running locally while the tmux is on a remote host?

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#24
post #22

I like the principles behind its design, but not supporting scrollback and saying "that functionality should be provided by tmux or something similar" is baffling when it's done in the name of removing bloat and complexity. Not everybody wishes to use a terminal multiplexer in all cases, either.

...and does it not support pasting from the X clipboard ? It's not accepting in my installation, anyway... :/

I can paste in to it from the X clipboard using SHIFT-INSERT just fine.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#25
Interesting. I've been wanting a better terminal for some time. rxvt is super buggy, especially with clickable URLs. xfce4-terminal is better but select-to-copy is flaky and doesn't always copy the text I select.

I really wanted st to work for me but something is wrong with the character sizing when using Source Code Pro (17pt) as the font. I installed this on my Arch laptop (a hidpi ThinkPad T460s) and something is seriously screwy with the fonts. At top is xfce4-termina; on the bottom is st:

http://imgur.com/a/8ALoS

I would report this to the author but I don't see any way to do so.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#26
post #22

I like the principles behind its design, but not supporting scrollback and saying "that functionality should be provided by tmux or something similar" is baffling when it's done in the name of removing bloat and complexity. Not everybody wishes to use a terminal multiplexer in all cases, either.

...and does it not support pasting from the X clipboard ? It's not accepting in my installation, anyway... :/

[modifier]+shift+insert or [modifier]+shift+v are the default bindings for paste. [modifier] is most commonly Alt or Super (the Windows key). Keep in mind that your window manager might already have a binding for these, preventing them from working.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#27
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just use tmux's native copy/paste mechanism, using the keyboard. Using that it's possible to get the full scrollback buffer, or any part of it.

And I want to paste it into a non-terminal application running locally while the tmux is on a remote host?

You can always use ssh and something like xclip or pbcopy.

Also, I always use mosh for ssh (when possible) so that I can recover my connection if I run into network issues. Since mosh works by synchronizing a virtual screen, I don't get scrollback at all without tmux or the like.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#28
post #2

Why do people care so much about terminal emulators and their supposed "bloat" and "complexity"?

Bugs. When you work all day long in a terminal, you need it to be reliable. As I mentioned above, xfce4-terminal is what I normally use but select-to-copy doesn't work 100% of the time. This is super annoying. I'd switch to rxvt but it has its own problems. Despite having had terminals for so much longer, *nix has fallen behind macOS when it comes to terminal usability and reliability.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#29
post #2

Why do people care so much about terminal emulators and their supposed "bloat" and "complexity"?

Its funny, but I have had fewer stability issues with gnome-terminal than I have had with st. Seems like most people have the opposite experience.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#30
post #2

Why do people care so much about terminal emulators and their supposed "bloat" and "complexity"?

Bugs. When you work all day long in a terminal, you need it to be reliable. As I mentioned above, xfce4-terminal is what I normally use but select-to-copy doesn't work 100% of the time. This is super annoying. I'd switch to rxvt but it has its own problems. Despite having had terminals for so much longer, *nix has fallen behind macOS when it comes to terminal usability and reliability.

Termite is pretty good and bug-free in my experience.
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