why is qterminal so small ?

[shirishag75]

See the following -

and

for some reason by default the window is pretty small, even when I have asked it to use 100% width.

FWIW, my system supports and uses 1600x900 screen so it's wide-screen.

I did see that the size is hardcoded in qterminal.ini

/.config/qterminal.org$ cat qterminal.ini | grep 640
size=@Size(640 480)

I say hardcoded as I changed it, rebooted the system and saw that the same settings were in there as earlier.

The same I saw of keyboard shortcuts as well, changing any keyboard shortcuts in the .ini file has no effect and they go back to their default keybindings.

I have given most of the info. of system specific at #491

[agaida]

Dropdown settings only apply to the dropdown terminal, not to the normal terminal

Edit: I guess Settings > Behaviour "Save size when closing" is what you want - at least one time to set the size that fit for you.

[shirishag75]

I did that, will know on next reboot whether it worked or not.

[agaida]

@shirishag75 - but the idea of intiial settings without saved size or positions sounds nice to me, not that i missed it much until now, but i guess some people would love it.

[tsujan]

but the idea of intiial settings without saved size or positions sounds nice to me

Found this issue by chance.

I did it a long time ago but not in a way usable for all. My reason was that I wanted an appropriate, fixed, initial size. pcmanfm-qt has such a setting (I don't remember if it was there or I added it); FeatherPad too.

If I find time, I'll add it. For now, I only self-assign.

[apjanke]

Related: #284. Sounds like pretty much the same request.

@agaida, @shirishaG: Are you looking for a setting that will control the size of the window each time you launch qterminal or press Ctrl-N? Or just a setting that controls the size of the window the first time you run qterminal on a new machine or new desktop session?

[tsujan]

@apjanke I've self-assigned but may not have time to do it soon. So, if you want to do it soon, please tell me and I'll remove the self-assignment -- 2 devs shouldn't work on the same thing.

[apjanke]

Let's wait to hear back from agaida and shirishaG to confirm that this would work, but yeah, I'd like to give this a try later this week if this is what they're looking for.

Since there are already boolean prefs for "Save Size when closing" and "Save Position when Closing", this could probably be handled by just adding a new "Default window Size" pref that takes an (X, Y) size pair, and have it be used for new windows when "Save Size when closing" is off. The pref could be displayed right after "Save Size when closing" on the Behavior sheet; there's room there.

The (X, Y) size should be in characters, not pixels, right?

Question: When "Save Size when closing" is set, and you change the window size and close the window, should that change this saved "default size" pref? I'd say no.

So, this would take:

• Adding a new pref in the Properties
• Modifying QTerminal's window-opening code to respect it
• Adding widgets to control the pref in PropertiesDialog
• Adding an item for it in Properties::migrate_settings()
• Add entries for it in the src/translations files

Right?

[shirishag75]

The easiest and perhaps most straight-forward would be a way to set the window size the way I want and have it use that constantly. There are a whole mess of settings in ~/.config/qterminal.org/qterminal.ini which probably needs to be documented and exposed in some way so that the user can make use of it. But that is a different and perhaps a bit more larger issue.

I am not sure how the whole thing really works or even if changes in the .ini file does any change at all or the dimensions of the terminal are hard-coded somewhere else ?

There also needs to be a system of querying the terminal and know the size, dimensions etc. I dunno if that can be on the console or not currently.

[tsujan]

but yeah, I'd like to give this a try later this week if this is what they're looking for.

Great! I removed self-assignment.

Don't forget that "Save size when closing" and the new option should be mutually exclusive -- and it's better to put them near each other, IMO.

EDIT: Oh, you've already considered that in your comment.

[apjanke]

The easiest and perhaps most straight-forward would be a way to set the window size the way I want and have it use that constantly.

But how exactly do you want to set that size? Turn on "Save Size when closing", adjust the terminal window size to what you want, then close it, then go back into preferences and turn off "Save Size when closing", so that last saved size sticks around?

There are a whole mess of settings in ~/.config/qterminal.org/qterminal.ini which probably needs to be documented and exposed in some way so that the user can make use of it.

These are mostly controlled in the Preferences pane (⌘-, on Mac; some "preferences" or "options" menu item on other systems). The rest are just saved state based on what has happened in the last qterminal session. I dunno if this file is intended to be user-editable or not; I would suspect not.

There also needs to be a system of querying the terminal and know the size, dimensions etc. I dunno if that can be on the console or not currently.

Do you mean with escape sequences by the program running inside the terminal? Or querying the QTermWidget object via C++ calls? Or interprocess communication with the qterminal program somehow?

[apjanke]

Great! I removed self-assignment.

Cool. I'm pretty busy with the day job the next couple days, but expect a PR from me this weekend.

Don't forget that "Save size when closing" and the new option should be mutually exclusive

Maybe it should be a radio button between "Save Size when closing" and "Default Size" instead of check box(es), to make the mutual exclusivity obvious?

[tsujan]

Turn on "Save Size when closing", adjust the terminal window size to what you want, then close it, then go back into preferences and turn off "Save Size when closing", so that last saved size sticks around?

That's what I've done for myself (with a small change in the code) but I don't think it's good for all users.

I'd add two spin boxes like in featherpad:

In featherpad, the whole row will be disabled if saving size on closing is checked.

That's just a suggestion.

EDIT: the symbol in the above screenshot is ×, not x (y, z).

[tsujan]

And if you add spin-boxes, set their max. values to primary screen dimensions (please don't use QDesktopWidget for that -- it's obsolete).

[tsujan]

There are a whole mess of settings in ~/.config/qterminal.org/qterminal.ini which probably needs to be documented

@shirishag75 Contents of config files are for apps, not for users. Some users may know the code, some others may guess meanings of keys but manual editing of a config file isn't a good practice in general.

Anyhow, documentation doesn't make sense for config files.

[agaida]

hmm - i should look into the history, there was a reason why we allowed so small sizes ...

And i would not put so much work into it - i should start a new debian live iso and take a snapshot.

[tsujan]

And i would not put so much work into it

IMHO, it's a necessary feature. An unchangeable start size isn't something I could tolerate ;)

[agaida]

- direct from the start

[tsujan]

More specifically, the start size of a config dialog, for example, can be fixed. But a text editor or a terminal emulator? Never! Saving size on quitting can't replace setting the start size -- they're 2 different options that should be provided by such apps. Strange that this subject was forgotten...

[agaida]

i have nothing against a fixed optional start size - the current behavior goes back to pvanek, with the logical argument: "I like it that way." - If we implement it, we should be careful.

A fixed start size contradicts saving the size at closing ...

[agaida]

So - the initial size is hard coded - but with save size on exit that wouldn't last long.

[tsujan]

with the logical argument: "I like it that way."

Only Gnome devs make apps just as they "like" them ;) -- probably, as it's easier to them.

[agaida]

hihi - and i thought until now, that they just remove functionality that they don't like. So more developers on a project will result in far less functionality.

Edit: Please keep in mind that qterminal was one of pvaneks pet projects and became part of LXQt short time ago. So i guess it was really a good argument :D

[tsujan]

Yes, I know that we owe debt of gratitude to pvanek. If it wasn't for his forking Konsole, we wouldn't have this nice app.

EDIT: I can't use Konsole even under KDE anymore ;)

[yan12125]

The (X, Y) size should be in characters, not pixels, right?

This is a good idea!

[tsujan]

OK, I waited enough ;) Implemented in #606 :

The new option is enabled only when "Save size when closing" is not checked.

[shirishag75]

Thank you, What version of qterminal will I need to see this feature ?

[tsujan]

What version of qterminal will I need to see this feature ?

It isn't merged yet but it should be in the next release.

[shirishag75]

looking forward to that, thank you. Mark it fixed and released when you merge and push the new release.

[tsujan]

You're welcome.

Mark it fixed and released when you merge and push the new release.

GitHub will close this issue as soon as the PR is merged.