gnome-terminal is a terminal emulator program that is part of
the GNOME project. It provides access to the Unix shell on the GNOME
environment. It emulates the DEC VT terminals as supported by the
xterm(1) program from the X distribution.
gnome-terminal supports colour display (see the section on
environment variables for details) and provides mouse support
to applications that are aware of mouse events for xterm-like
terminals.
EMULATION
The GNOME terminal program (gnome-terminal) is designed to
emulate the 'xterm' program provided by the X Consortium. The
xterm(1) program in turn is an almost-complete emulation of the DEC
VT102 terminal.
The GNOME terminal program supports the same extensions to
the VT102 that the xterm program provides, through special escape
sequences. The xterm program is an evolving program. Recent changes
to xterm have been been incorporated into gnome-terminal. This
includes emulation of the newer DEC VT220 escape sequences.
CLASSES
The GNOME terminal allows you to have different configuration
profiles to suit different uses (different background colours,
presence, absence or position of scrollbars, and so on). To set
these up, you invoke the preferences dialogue box from the settings
menu of gnome-terminal. Select the options you prefer (these changes
will be made to your currently-open terminal, so you can see what
they look like), and before closing the preferences box, make sure
you have put a new name in the space marked "Terminal Class".
To activate a specific class at program startup you can use
the --tclass command line option
GNOME Terminal Factories.
It is possible to start a single instance of the GNOME terminal
program, and yet have multiple windows open at the same time. The
easiest way of achieving this is by selecting "File" and then "New
terminal" from the menu. But it is also possible to programatically
instruct GNOME Terminal to reuse an existing running instance of GNOME
Terminal.
By defaul the GNOME desktop ships with settings that allow terminals
to share a single process, hence reducing memory usage. This is
achieved by registering GNOME with the CORBA gnome-name-service and
using the --start-factory and the --use-factory options.
OPTIONS
--tclass CLASS_NAME
Makes Gnome Terminal uses the configuration values for the terminal
class specified in CLASS_NAME (for example, I use --tclass red for
root terminals). You can define new classes through the Preferences
dialog.
--font FONT_NAME
Specifies the font to be used to display text in the Gnome Terminal.
--nologin
This option indicates that the shell started by Gnome Terminal should
not be a login shell but a regular shell.
--login
This option indicates that the shell started by Gnome Terminal should
be a login shell (this trick is cleverly achieved in the Unix world by
running the shell but telling the shell that its name has a dash in
the front. Very clever).
--geometry GEOMETRY
Specifies the startup geometry for the terminal.
--command CMD, -e CMD
Executes the command
CMD
instead of the shell. This saves some memory if you are just planning
on running a dedicated application on that window. For example, you
could run the `minicom' terminal emulator on the window like this:
gnome-terminal --command minicom
or for example, if you want to monitor your system:
gnome-terminal --command top
--execute CMD, -x CMD
This flag is here for compatibility reasons. It is the same as --command.
--foreground COLOR
Specifies the color to be used for the foreground of the terminal.
--background COLOR
Specifies the color to be used for the background of the terminal.
--utmp
Updates the Unix Login entry (The UTMP file, this is the default),
this registers the GNOME terminal instance with the list of users that
are logged into the system (so you will be visible with the `who'
command).
--noutmp
Requests GNOME Terminal to not update the login records. This means
that the user will not show up in the output of the `who' Unix command.
--wtmp
Requests that this session will be logged into the system records for
users that have logged into the system. This is different from
`utmp' because this keeps track of who logged in and logged out of the
system, independently of whether it shows up in the list of users.
--nowtmp
Requests that the session be not logged into the system records.
--title TITLE, -t TITLE
Sets the title for the GNOME terminal to be TITLE.
--termname NAME
Specifies the terminal name that should be put in the environment
variable TERM. It is not advised that you use this flag, but you
might want to use it for some bizarre cases.
--start-factory-server
Tells GNOME Terminal that it should start the factory server. This
will provide a terminal server that later other GNOME terminals can
contact (this saves memory, as a single process is ran, and multiple
GNOME terminals windows can be managed by the same process).
--use-factory
This tells GNOME terminal that it should try to contact an existing
GNOME Terminal factory to minimize memory use.
--pixmap FILENAME
Specifies the image filename to be used as the background for this
terminal.
--bgscroll
Specifies that the background image should scroll together with the
text as the screen scrools.
--bgnoscroll
Specifies that the background image should not scroll when the text
scrolls in the terminal.
--shaded
Requests that the background image be shaded (for used with
--transparent and --pixmap).
--noshaded
Requests that the background remain untouched (no shading be applied).
--transparent
Requests that the terminal should run in "transparent" mode, making
the background of the terminal be the background of your root window.
--icon FNAME
Specifies the filename that contains the icon that would be used for
your terminal (if your window manager supports the icon hints).
AUTHORS
Michael Zucchi is the wizard behind the Zvt widget which implements
the terminal. Miguel de Icaza and Erik Troan implemented the user
interface elements for the gnome-terminal program.