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St – A simple terminal implementation for X

st.suckless.org

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Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#91

Post by lisaberlin »

nightcracker wrote: post #88
aexaey wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Also, one should keep in mind that having to apply personal patches is perfectly acceptable for suckless software. In fact, for the very same st, to change font, colour scheme, or hotkeys/shortcuts - one has to edit config.h file and recompile. There is no traditional text config file or "Preferences" menu. This might sound bizarre at first, but actually works as well as editing a text config file: config.h is…

It is still bizarre because not every user wants to and/or doesn't have the skills to do that.

Yes, and that's perfectly ok. These people simply aren't the target audience, just like you wouldn't recommend Arch to a Linux beginner.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#93

Post by detaro »

nine_k wrote: post #53
matthewbauer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree. But, how often do you change your settings after you've found the right ones? A minimalist would see runtime configuration as bloat.

Finding the right settings is a relatively slow process. Also, finding the right values for 80% of the settings is fast, but fiddling with the rest can take time. Trying something new also becomes harder. For the vast majority of user-facing programs, run-time configuration is a must. A fancy GUI for it might be superfluous; a simple text file / command-line way to set options should always be available.

The difference between a config file that's dynamically loaded and a file that is compiled in is surprisingly small, as long as the compile times are very fast. First noticed that when using XMonad: one shortcut to recompile it and reload it, that's just as fast as editing configuration of any other window manager.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#94

Post by j605 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #8
corybrown wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use now? Keyboard shortcut for font size change is a must for me.

"Keyboard shortcut for font size change is a must for me." From the st man page: Alt-Shift-Page Up Increase font size. Alt-Shift-Page Down Decrease font size. Alt-Shift-Home Reset to default font size.

Some don't read the man pages.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#96

Post by icebraining »

nightcracker wrote: post #88
aexaey wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Also, one should keep in mind that having to apply personal patches is perfectly acceptable for suckless software. In fact, for the very same st, to change font, colour scheme, or hotkeys/shortcuts - one has to edit config.h file and recompile. There is no traditional text config file or "Preferences" menu. This might sound bizarre at first, but actually works as well as editing a text config file: config.h is…

It is still bizarre because not every user wants to and/or doesn't have the skills to do that.

What lisaberlin wrote applies - suckless is like Unix: user friendly, just very selective about who it decides to make friends with.

But in this case, I would disagree. The file is quite readable (way more than most text config files I've seen), and the single command to compile is even included in the README. If you're the kind of person that purposefully downloads a new terminal, rather than using the built-in one, you can probably configure st just fine.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#97

Post by sametmax »

lisaberlin wrote: post #91
nightcracker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still bizarre because not every user wants to and/or doesn't have the skills to do that.

Yes, and that's perfectly ok. These people simply aren't the target audience, just like you wouldn't recommend Arch to a Linux beginner.

Exactly. I would never use it, but I'm perfectly alright having something targeting a niche perfectly. It's better than trying to please everybody and ending up being "meh".

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#99

Post by e12e »

matthewbauer wrote: post #47
michaelmrose wrote: post #38

Recompiling software to change options is utterly and totally ridiculous

I kind of agree. But, how often do you change your settings after you've found the right ones? A minimalist would see runtime configuration as bloat.

If it's one thing I've often had to change across systems (hardware and operating systems) it's things like font type and size. If one works mostly from one workstation (eg: a laptop) this is less of a hassle (just need to change on each new generation of ppi, and perhaps on some major system upgrades) -- but then one might want to switch things up as new fonts are released every so often.

Edit-compile-run is a rather complicated way to tune font size compared to a slider.

And on that note, while I admire ST for its simplicity, I've been a happy user of Sakura for the past few years (though, sadly not on windows 10... I've yet to find a really good console for w10).

https://launchpad.net/sakura (page down at the moment...)

http://www.pleyades.net/david/projects/sakura

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