Hi Dan,
> You mention it's "not a terminal emulator for
everyone". Is there
> anything specific you had in mind?
Yes, have you tried changing the font size ;-) ? If you want to do
that,
you have to recompile st. Same goes for changing the colors, or the
font
type. And there is absolutely no scrollback support. Fortunately the
Fedora package has some handy scripts to do that yourself, but it's
still an inconvenience.
st works for me, because I like the defaults (or have grown accustomed
to them) and use tmux, so the lack of scrollback does not bother me.
But
I still think that st is a bad default, because it just does not
support
all the features that as a new user you'd expect from a terminal
emulator. If alacritty wouldn't cause issues here and there, I'd vote
for that being the default. But unfortunately alacritty *needs*
hardware
acceleration and will not start on old machines.
Cheers,
Dan
Yeah, I noticed those issues also.
Regarding scrollback, I started using `tmux` with `st` (this is
specifically
discussed/recommended in the `st` docs), so I put the following in my
i3 config
file: 'bindsym $mod+Return exec st -e tmux'.
Regarding font size, I created the following wrapper at
'/usr/local/bin/st':
```sh
#!/usr/bin/env sh
exec /usr/bin/st -f "DejaVu Sans Mono:size=11" "$@"
```
The reason for creating a wrapper script to set the font size (instead
of in
the i3 config file) is so it will apply to all other ways `st` might be
launched (such as running `ssh` from `rofi`).
I spent weeks trying to get `urxvt` to meet my minimum requirements and
it
was not straightforward, and ultimately I was never able to get it to
work
with 'powerline' fonts (ie. vim status line) - so I strongly vote
against
`urxvt`.
With the two hacks noted above `st` provides a great terminal, and has
a very
small footprint.
I think the plan was to write some guidance for the i3 spin anyway, so
it
would be easy enough to mention these tips.
`st` colors look great (including solarized and gruvbox light/dark
themes in
vim), but unfortunately, there is no way to change the color theme in
the
terminal itself (ie. switch between light and dark background). This is
something I need because I use my laptop outside sometimes (so need the
light
background). My workaround for this is to add the following line in my
i3
config to use `xfce4-terminal` when I need a light background:
'bindsym $mod+Shift+Return exec xfce4-terminal -e tmux' (note the Shift
key
in the keybinding).
The only reason I am using both `st` and `xfce4-terminal` at the same
time
is because I want to test `st` in my daily use (except when I NEED a
light
background).
At this point I definitely recommend to include `st` in the base i3
spin,
with a note about the hacks above, and another note that if the user has
additional requirements they should install the terminal emulator that
meets their specific requirements (ie. for me that would be
`xfce4-terminal` since it's light/dark themes meet my needs - but I am
also
considering to recompile a second version of `st` with light theme via
config.h, but I think that is totally outside the scope of the i3 spin).
Also, note that `st` is relatively low on the precedence list for
`i3-sensible-terminal` so the user could `dnf` install most other
terminal
emulators, and they would 'automagically' start working from the i3
perspective.
Whereas since `urxvt` is the highest precedence, installing any other
terminal emulator necessarily requires i3 config changes to get it to
start with `$mod+Return`.
Cheers,
Casey