This is just a quick post because I felt the need to share this information. I have always been a slave to GUI eye candy even though my true love is the CLI. Recently, (not just Gnome) but KDE has shoved their head so far up their own rear end that they've decided they will compromise ease-of-use and speed for a poorly written, resource hog of a window manager. So, when I decided to install a GUI on my Debian laptop, I decided to go with xfce because it reminded me of the days of pleasant eye candy + functionality + ease-of-use + resource savvy. Yes, that's quite a mouthful but that's just honestly how I feel.
At any rate, I needed a way to set a default size for my Terminal window but it wasn't as easy as clicking Edit > Preferences. However, it was as easy as this:
matthew@intrepid$ vi ~/.config/Terminal/terminalrc
I changed the following line:
MiscDefaultGeometry=80x24
To:
MiscDefaultGeometry=108x30
I also changed a few others, but it was as simple as updating the aforementioned line with the geometry I wanted. If you're unsure of how to read the geometry:
Number of characters per line = 108
Number of lines = 30
For those that are picky about the location of the window when the application starts, you can change your configuration line to look like this:
MiscDefaultGeometry=108x30+0+0
+0+0 places the window in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Here is how to read the window placement:
+xoffset+yoffset
With regards to screen geometry, 0,0 is the top left corner of the screen. The +xoffset is how many lines to the right you want the window shifted. The +yoffset is how many lines down from the top of the screen you want the window shifted.
Now, given all this information, if I want my window to have a size of 108x30 and open at the center of my screen I would set the configuration option in terminalrc to:
MiscDefaultGeometry=108x30+350+300
Now, on my system, xterm is the default terminal emulator. Before making changes to your system, verify that this is the correct syntax to use with your terminal application otherwise you could experience unexpected behavior.
Until next time ...
