GNOME 42 Improves XWayland Auto Termination Handling

[coder]

Frankly 80% of the time I use Firefox, Evolution, gedit, LO or totem. They all run natively on wayland and x11 is not needed

I have yet to find a terminal emulator I like better than plain old xterm. It's fast, light-weight, customizable enough, and has low visual overhead (assuming you disable the menubar). And did I mention fast?

kpedersen , back me up on this!

[jacob]

I have yet to find a terminal emulator I like better than plain old xterm. It's fast, light-weight, customizable enough, and has low visual overhead (assuming you disable the menubar). And did I mention fast?

kpedersen , back me up on this!

But xterm doesn't even support font antialiasing, and if you use the patched version that does, then it's SLOW. And it's not exactly a model of ergonomics or user friendliness (it doesn't even support cut&paste correctly).

[coder]

But xterm doesn't even support font antialiasing, and if you use the patched version that does, then it's SLOW.

Well, at the font size I use, I can find bitmap fonts that meet my needs.

And it's not exactly a model of ergonomics or user friendliness (it doesn't even support cut&paste correctly).

Eh, speak for yourself. I've been click-drag copying & middle-button pasting for 2 decades and counting. If you use a mouse with the correct number of buttons, it's not an issue.
; )

In all seriousness, the middle-button clicking has become an issue in the work-from-home era, during which I've already had to replace one trackball after only a year, because the button-switch of its click-wheel became flaky. I use a trackball at home, in part because I don't have room for a mouse on my keyboard tray. Luckily, I got the replacement for only $35. If I had more soldering expertise, I'd attempt a DIY switch replacement.

At the office, I use a heavy-duty gaming mouse, which I expect should click reliably for the next decade. I just wish I could find a trackball of comparable build quality.

[grok]

Well, at the font size I use, I can find bitmap fonts that meet my needs.


Eh, speak for yourself. I've been click-drag copying & middle-button pasting for 2 decades and counting. If you use a mouse with the correct number of buttons, it's not an issue.
; )

In all seriousness, the middle-button clicking has become an issue in the work-from-home era, during which I've already had to replace one trackball after only a year, because the button-switch of its click-wheel became flaky. I use a trackball at home, in part because I don't have room for a mouse on my keyboard tray. Luckily, I got the replacement for only $35. If I had more soldering expertise, I'd attempt a DIY switch replacement.

At the office, I use a heavy-duty gaming mouse, which I expect should click reliably for the next decade. I just wish I could find a trackball of comparable build quality.

Hello, did you know that touchpads that click themselves can middle-click!
although I don't know if the middle-clicking is specific to hardware/driver.

[jacob]

Eh, speak for yourself. I've been click-drag copying & middle-button pasting for 2 decades and counting. If you use a mouse with the correct number of buttons, it's not an issue.
; )

But the click drag copy/middle paste model sucks. Let's put aside the fact that it doesn't follow the conventional ctrl-C/ctrl-V (or shit-ctrl in the case of a terminal window) for absolutely no reason at all, it only works if the text is rendered on the screen AND selected at the moment you are pasting. You can't select something, navigate away, maybe click on other stuff (which would deselect it) and then paste the previously selected text which is the normal and expected behaviour in every contemporary app. Sometimes it's a convenient shortcut, but it mustn't be the only way to do copy&paste and in xterm it is.

It's just one example. Xterm uses the Athena widgets library with its logic defying sliders (at least in the original version, but even with better clones like Xaw3D and others, the vertical slidebar handling in xterm is still broken). Basically xterm is not just the product of its era (mid-80s) but also of its origin, where it (as well as Athena) was created as a minimal implementation by basic coders with no experience in, or understanding of, the principles of ergonomics and UI design. I profoundly dislike Apple, but to give credit where it's due, they designed the Lisa and the Mac UIs even before Athena and they got it right from day 1.

[coder]

Hello, did you know that touchpads that click themselves can middle-click!

Oh, I'm not a fan of those. I have a bluetooth mouse that lives in my laptop bag, just to avoid using the touchpad for any extended amount of time. My laptop even has the little stick in the middle of the keyboard, but I like that even less than the touchpad.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

[coder]

You can't select something, navigate away, maybe click on other stuff (which would deselect it) and then paste the previously selected text which is the normal and expected behaviour in every contemporary app.

The only thing you can't do is select other text you want to replace. However, this turns out to be a non-issue, because that only holds for apps which use click-drag to copy, and those are becoming very view. So, this makes it easy to copy text out of my xterm. When I want to replace text in my xterm, I'm probably using vi, which has its own way of selecting text and initiating replacement. Even on the commandline or in various interpreters, I can still use vi editing (thanks to libreadline's ~/.inputrc or set -o vi, in shells of machines where I haven't configured it).

Sometimes it's a convenient shortcut, but it mustn't be the only way to do copy&paste and in xterm it is.

For me, it's a non-issue. For you, there are other terminal emulators.

Xterm uses the Athena widgets library with its logic defying sliders (at least in the original version, but even with better clones like Xaw3D and others, the vertical slidebar handling in xterm is still broken).

They work well enough, although I'm usually scrolling via mousewheel or shift-PgUp/PgDown.

I profoundly dislike Apple, but to give credit where it's due, they designed the Lisa and the Mac UIs even before Athena and they got it right from day 1.

They made everything as simple as possible, which is great for people apprehensive about tech. However, they conflate approachability with overall usability. The UI that's easiest for a novice to learn and use isn't the most productive UI for the journeyman. The vi editor is the perfect counterexample -- unfriendly and unforgiving to novices, but with productivity benefits that make life-long users of most who invest the time and effort to really become fluent.

[jacob]

The only thing you can't do is select other text you want to replace. However, this turns out to be a non-issue, because that only holds for apps which use click-drag to copy, and those are becoming very view. So, this makes it easy to copy text out of my xterm. When I want to replace text in my xterm, I'm probably using vi, which has its own way of selecting text and initiating replacement. Even on the commandline or in various interpreters, I can still use vi editing (thanks to libreadline's ~/.inputrc or set -o vi, in shells of machines where I haven't configured it).

Selecting text to replace is a constant in my workflow. I just installed xterm in a toolbox container on fedora and tried to select text in it, then select text in gedit to replace => it doesn't work.

They work well enough, although I'm usually scrolling via mousewheel or shift-PgUp/PgDown.

"Well enough" is not enough. The UI of all things must just work 100%, 100% of the time. That's why the bazaar approach could prove successful in some areas (including, surprisingly, the Linux kernel) but it has never been anything but a total disaster in UI design.

They made everything as simple as possible, which is great for people apprehensive about tech. However, they conflate approachability with overall usability. The UI that's easiest for a novice to learn and use isn't the most productive UI for the journeyman. The vi editor is the perfect counterexample -- unfriendly and unforgiving to novices, but with productivity benefits that make life-long users of most who invest the time and effort to really become fluent.

[/QUOTE]

This is a sophism. They made their UI simple to learn, but also consistent, predictable, accessible, and with an actual focus on the ergonomics and, yes, efficiency of the workflows. You are conflating muscle memory with productivity. There is absolutely nothing productive, efficient or laudable about vi, although with practice you can do things fast in it. But you could just as well learn to code fast in Intercal. There is nothing vi does that a modern programming editor doesn't do better, from auto-indentation to correct handling of Unicode to powerful search & replace to syntax highlighting and code assistance (and not just based on regexes).

The proof is in the pudding: in the later 80s, virtually all productivity software that people actually wanted to use was on the Mac, then in the 90s there was also Windows. On classic X11 there has never really been any unless you count xfig, which was actually useful for what it was worth, but it couldn't touch Corel Draw or even Mac Paint.