Configure xfce4-terminal via config file

rchristian · 2024-11-04 07:06:21

While I'm aware the suggestion generally is to use either xfconf-query or GUI editors, both have been pretty miserable experiences for configuring xfce4-terminal in my experience. I'd like to just have a simple text file to edit w/ automatic or semi-automatic reloads to propagate those changes like you'd see in just about every other modern terminal.

As far as I can tell, ~/.config/xfce4/terminal/terminalrc used to fill that void, but no longer does, and ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-terminal.xml won't propagate outside of a restart, making it pretty useless as anything other than a backup file.

Is there any good solution in this space? The UX compared to say Alacritty or Kitty seems pretty lacking if I have to wrangle a huge color string every time I want to tweak a color, this is quite frustrating.

I'm not running xfce desktop, just the terminal & thunar.

ToZ · 2024-11-04 23:31:59

Depending on the version of xfce4-terminal that you are running, it may have transitioned its settings to xfconf meaning you need to use xfcfon-query or the menu items from within the app to make any changes.

both have been pretty miserable experiences for configuring xfce4-terminal in my experience.

Can you give examples of where this is the case?

rchristian · 2024-11-06 04:14:43

Apologies, I was sure I added the terminal version. I must've somehow deleted it, how silly. I'm running v1.1.3, Xfce 4.18

ToZ wrote:

Can you give examples of where this is the case?

Happy to. Forewarning: I tried to actually give this some thought and come to a comprehensive list of reasons why I think the current system is unfit for purpose, so it might be a bit long-winded. This might not be all my issues with the current config system but they're the biggest ones.

xfconf-query
Let's say I've just installed xfce4-terminal, and want to set some items. I run `xfconf-query -c xfce4-terminal -lv` to get the full list of settings to which I'm returned ~47 and I might want to alter ~20 of them. I must now, one by one, run `xfconf-query -c xfce4-terminal -p /....` dozens of times, which is of course prone to typos and is incredibly time consuming. Sure, I could break out a bash script to do it for me, but breaking out bash to set some items is an incredibly poor UX.

Then there's the issue of the `color-palette`: someone decided they were going to merge all colors into a 16-color rgb (or hex) string. If I wanted to change the color of cyan, xfconf-query has me counting semi-colons to try to figure out item I actually need to change. It's miserable, especially if you want to fiddle with the scheme a bit; I might make 2-300 changes and tweaks of the colors by the end. Obviously, quite painful.
Xfce Terminal Settings
This seems to be the choice tool for configuring, so it's the one I'll comment on.

By all means, it's an improvement over the UX of xfconf-query, however, it's still incredibly lacking. Settings are poorly labeled or unlabeled entirely (same issue as above re: hex string, the user is presented 16 boxes for the color palette. "Which one is supposed to be cyan again?") and, as some features (like the color picker) aren't custom built, they're unfit for purpose. Trying to change a color, for example, uses 4 separate clicks just to give me a field where I can insert a hex string. This is the system color picker, I understand fully this isn't Xfce's doing, but a color picker meant for quick config changes fundamentally needs to work a bit differently than one allowing a user to casually pick a color. Very different target use cases of course.

Shortcuts from this GUI tool are incredibly hit-or-miss, some work, some don't as (from what I've read) they aren't actually hooked up to xfconf (or whatever the backend is). The user is required instead to jump back to xfconf-query to fix them manually.
Both
I, like most Linux users, love having the ability to check my config files into version control. It's an absolute super power that I can create checkpoints (commits) and go back years to figure out what I set & why. Git (or other VCSs) are lovely. XFCE, with the lazy config file sync, removes this as a possibility unless I wanted to restart my system upon every change. No thanks.

Text editors have histories themselves, allowing users to undo or redo changes at a whim. Very basic feature, built into everything in the past 40+ years, which XFCE removes the possibility of using. You're left manually writing your settings to a file & numbering them on every change just to have some semblance of history. Piping the current config from xfconf-query to a text file to act as a rudimentary history system is miserably slow & prone to mistakes.

Additionally, I'm not using base vi from '76; my text editor has all sorts of handy features for not only displaying content, but helping me write it. Comments, color helpers to align lightness & saturation, suggestions, etc., all incredibly useful tools that I get for free in a simple .txt file, yet I'm missing in the provided tools for configuring Xfce. This would be a monumental task, to replicate all that a user could want, hence, give them a simple config file! Let users bring their own tools for the functionality they want to aid them in setting values.

If this is the intended user experience, I might start poking around for older versions of xfce4-terminal that haven't forsaken the config file. The terminal is otherwise great, I'm running on a pretty niche setup hardware & software-wise and it's the first thing that runs really, really well without issue (I mentioned Alacritty & Kitty, they both have significant issues w/ my setup). It's just that customizing the terminal is like pulling teeth at the moment.

ToZ · 2024-11-06 11:56:41

Thanks for the examples.

xfconf-query
Let's say I've just installed xfce4-terminal, and want to set some items. I run `xfconf-query -c xfce4-terminal -lv` to get the full list of settings to which I'm returned ~47 and I might want to alter ~20 of them. I must now, one by one, run `xfconf-query -c xfce4-terminal -p /....` dozens of times, which is of course prone to typos and is incredibly time consuming. Sure, I could break out a bash script to do it for me, but breaking out bash to set some items is an incredibly poor UX.

Then there's the issue of the `color-palette`: someone decided they were going to merge all colors into a 16-color rgb (or hex) string. If I wanted to change the color of cyan, xfconf-query has me counting semi-colons to try to figure out item I actually need to change. It's miserable, especially if you want to fiddle with the scheme a bit; I might make 2-300 changes and tweaks of the colors by the end. Obviously, quite painful.

I think profiles would be useful here like some other terminal programs have. See: https://gitlab.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-term … issues/151.

Xfce Terminal Settings
This seems to be the choice tool for configuring, so it's the one I'll comment on.

By all means, it's an improvement over the UX of xfconf-query, however, it's still incredibly lacking. Settings are poorly labeled or unlabeled entirely (same issue as above re: hex string, the user is presented 16 boxes for the color palette. "Which one is supposed to be cyan again?") and, as some features (like the color picker) aren't custom built, they're unfit for purpose. Trying to change a color, for example, uses 4 separate clicks just to give me a field where I can insert a hex string. This is the system color picker, I understand fully this isn't Xfce's doing, but a color picker meant for quick config changes fundamentally needs to work a bit differently than one allowing a user to casually pick a color. Very different target use cases of course.

Shortcuts from this GUI tool are incredibly hit-or-miss, some work, some don't as (from what I've read) they aren't actually hooked up to xfconf (or whatever the backend is). The user is required instead to jump back to xfconf-query to fix them manually.

You could create bug reports for this, I guess. But you're right in that the color chooser used is GTKs and that can't be changed unless someone is willing to rewrite a colour changing utility. As for the keyboard shortcuts they should work, so if you are hitting some bugs, please file reports.

rchristian · 2024-11-06 12:32:59

ToZ wrote:

I think profiles would be useful here like some other terminal programs have. See: https://gitlab.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-term … issues/151.

Might be a nice feature, but would do nothing for my concerns listed above. I use a tiling window manager, I'm perfectly content to read off one part of the screen and type into another, but a verbose CLI is just not an efficient interface at the end of the day. Everything but the key & value is unnecessary faff which config files notably do away with.

ToZ wrote:

You could create bug reports for this, I guess. But you're right in that the color chooser used is GTKs and that can't be changed unless someone is willing to rewrite a colour changing utility. As for the keyboard shortcuts they should work, so if you are hitting some bugs, please file reports.

Sorry, but for the reasons I outlined above, I'm not interested in pursuing a better GUI -- it's fundamentally the wrong interface for this sort of thing. If someone else wants to, feel free, but it's not something I use so I don't really care about fixing bug or improving it. The ergonomics will always be subpar. Makes more sense for me to revert, if that's the only option I'm left with.

Last edited by rchristian (2024-11-06 12:33:20)

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#1 2024-11-04 07:06:21

Configure xfce4-terminal via config file

#2 2024-11-04 23:31:59

Re: Configure xfce4-terminal via config file

#3 2024-11-06 04:14:43

Re: Configure xfce4-terminal via config file

#4 2024-11-06 11:56:41

Re: Configure xfce4-terminal via config file

#5 2024-11-06 12:32:59

Re: Configure xfce4-terminal via config file

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