Zterm

Contents

• Introduction
• Installing
• Building
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Command Line Options
• Configuration
• Roadmap

Introduction

Zterm (pronounced Zed-Term) is a simple terminal emulator using Vte and Gtk+ written using the Zig programming language. Some useful features of Zterm are:

• Multiple terminals can be open in tabs and panes within a single tab
• Configurable keybindings
• Comprehensive theming options
  • Control over colors used
  • Choice of backgrounds - solid color, transparent, image or gradient
• Simple and small graphical interface taking up less screen space than other similarly functional terminals

Installing

• Arch Linux and derivatives - Zterm is in the aur
• FreeBSD - A binary tarball is provided for the latest release of FreeBSD (at the time of release) on the releases page over at codeberg Other Linux distros or operating systems will have to build from source, see building.

Building

You will need the Zig compiler, version 0.9.0, available from ziglang.org. You will also need the Gtk-3.x and vte libraries plus development headers installed on your system.

Zterm can be built using the Zigmod package manager for Zig.

Zigmod

zigmod ci
zig build -Drelease-safe=true

This will place the executable in zig-out/bin and the icon and .desktop file in the appropriate subdirectories of zig-out/share. To Install somewhere else, one can simple set the prefix like so.

zig build -Drelease-safe=true --prefix /some/directory

The data directory can also be adjusted if necessary. For instance, if one wanted to install Zterm in their home directory, with the executable in ~/bin and the data files in ~/.local/share, it can be done like so.

zig build -Drelease-safe=true --prefix $HOME -Ddatadir=".local/share"

Assuming one has ~/bin in their $PATH, this should be sufficent to add a menu entry and icon in most modern Unix desktop environments, without needing root permissions.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The following table gives the default keybindings. If any customization is desired, see configuration

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl/Shift/T	New Tab
Ctrl/Shift/Enter	New Pane
Alt/R	Change Pane Orientation
Alt/[1-9]	Goto [num] Tab
Alt/UpArrow	Previous Tab
Ctrl/PageUp	Previous Tab
Alt/DownArrow	Next Tab
Ctrl/PageDown	Next Tab
Alt/RightArrow	Next Pane
Alt/LeftArrow	Previous Pane
Ctrl/Shift/Q	Quit

Command line options

Usage: zterm [-h] [-e <COMMAND>] [-t <TITLE>] [-w <DIR>]
Flags:
	-h, --help                   	Display this help and exit.
	-e, --command <COMMAND>      	Command and args to execute.
	-t, --title <TITLE>          	Defines the window title.
	-w, --working-directory <DIR>	Set the terminal's working directory.

Configuration

Zterm uses the nestedtext human readable data format to store it's configuration. The main program options may be edited with the preferences dialog without editing any files. However, at this time the only way to change the default keybindings is by editing the file ~/.config/zterm/keys.nt. The file will be auto-generated if it does not exist. All configuration options set via the preferences dialog will take effect immediately. Any changes to the keys.nt file will require a restart to take effect.

Roadmap

• Preferences dialog
• Remove most color handling code and replace with zig-color color library
• Finish implementing all preferences
  • Background image
  • Background gradient
  • Expose charset settings
• User editable keybindings
• Dialog to set keybindings
• Set tab title based on running program / current directory
• change from GtkBox widget to more flexible GtkPaned
• change build to utilize only zig build system