Jonathan Lam

Core Developer @ Hudson River Trading

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Using xterm

On 4/27/2021, 12:53:04 PM

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I don't see many people using xterm as the terminal emulator in a general *nix install. I think most people use the default terminal emulator that comes bundled with the desktop environment, like xfce4-terminal or konsole (KDE). While xterm is lacking in some of the fancier features like tabbing¹, I like how simple and standard it is (the standard terminal emulator for X). It is nice to be able to switch to another desktop environment (e.g., when debugging a friend's code) and be immediately familiar with the terminal shortcuts.

That being said, the conventions are not very similar to other common terminal emulators, so this is a list for my own remembering.

• There are configuration menus when you Ctrl+Right/left/middle click. These are, respectively, "Main Options," "VT Options," and "VT Fonts." I find that the original font size on a high-resolution screen is too small, so I usually start by upping the resolution.
• You can set xterm options by editing ~/.Xresources file. there are a number of options that are documented on the manpages, although I find the ArchWiki page covers the main options and is easier to read. My ~/.Xresources is very simple:

! choose a font and font size you like
xterm*faceName: IBM Plex Mono
xterm*faceSize: 11

! white background
xterm*foreground: rgb:00/00/00
xterm*background: rgb:ff/ff/ff

After setting your configuration, run xrdb -load ~/.Xresources to update the X settings. Then open a new instance of xterm, and it should have the new settings.
• xterm uses the cut/selection buffer rather than the main clipboard (ref this, this). This means that to copy/paste, select the text you want to copy, and use either Shift+Insert or middle click to paste². (The source and destination can be any combination of xterm or other applications in X.)
• Keyboard scroll using Shift+Page Up/Down³.
• Toggle fullscreen using AltEnter. It's a bit of a strange key combination, but a little more welcome than guessing where F11 is.

Footnotes

1. Of course, there are always workarounds.

2. I found this strange coming from Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V, but it actually requires fewer keystrokes because the copying is implicit every time you select any text. And if you use middle click, pasting only takes one press rather than a key combination.

3. Perhaps not as important, but I use this a lot because my mouse scrollwheel is broken

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