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mate-desktop / mate-terminal

The MATE Terminal Emulator
http://www.mate-desktop.org
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Resizing the font of terminals #381

Open jkpubsrc opened 3 years ago

jkpubsrc commented 3 years ago

Expected behaviour

If you have open multiple tabs and modify the size of the font, the font should be resized in all tabs at the same time.

This behavior is to be expected as this is conform to a variety of other applications like text editors or IDEs. There is not one IDE where you define the font size individually for every source code file. You define it globally. A terminal window is not different: A terminal window is not a LibreOffice Writer document, it is just a window into a text buffer.

All terminal windows - including the Mate Terminal - have had a behavior such as this. (This has been changed now apparently. Sorry, but that is inconvenient and not a good idea.)

Actual behaviour

If you have open multiple tabs and modify the size of the font, the font gets only resized in one tab. If you switch to another tab you still have the old font. That forces the window to resize. This is extremely annoying especially if you switch back to the tab with the smaller font: In this case the window has been shrunken. And you have to resize it again back to the size you require.

Package version

1.24.0

Linux Distribution

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

jkpubsrc commented 3 years ago

And even more irritating:

I strongly recommend to please keep the usability as it has been for decades, as this kind of usability has been perfect for decades.

We nowadays can look back to a few decades of effort in improving various kinds of software. In recent years I noticed that there is a point where you cannot improve the usability of software any more. Of course you still can come up with more ideas for features and even implement them, but unfortunately you will not improve the usability any more but decrease it, though your might have the best intentions. You already have reached an optimum. IMHO this is what has happened here.

Please return to the former behavior where modifying the font by shortcut affects all tabs, not only a single one. Unfortunately the new behavior is very irritating and quite inconvenient.

rbuj commented 3 years ago

Feature Request

Add an option in the preferences that allows this behavior, by setting the terminal font it should also change the font in all terminals.

Note that the current behavior is correct, as many users may want to change only the font in one terminal, for example, to configure a remote host through a COM port, such as a CISCO router.

cwendling commented 3 years ago

I'm kind of confused… changing the font in the preferences does apply to all open terminal windows and tabs. Only changing the zoom does not, which IMO is to be expected: as the OP's analogy, many editors and IDEs have a per-document zoom level which is not tied to the main setting.

So IMO this is expected behavior, and I'm not sure how meaningful it would be to have this setting persist: if one wants to change the font size, adjust it in the profile's preferences and it'll be global and persistent.

jkpubsrc commented 3 years ago

I'm kind of confused… changing the font in the preferences does apply to all open terminal windows and tabs.

Yes - in preferences.

But ....

The old behavior was:

The new behavior is:

The old behavior was that I encountered for as long as two decades. It was very convenient, as changes typically do need to affect all terminals: If the font size is too small (or too big) this does not depend on the host you're connected to, instead it typically entirely depends a) on the screen itself, b) on the current light conditions, or c) on the current exhaustion of your eyes.

The new behavior is that I encounter now in more recent releases. Things definitively have changed here as I encountered the irritating fact, that the window size changed if I switched to another terminal tab. And this behavior I've never seen before in the last two decades. This behavior is new.

I've never seen a browser window change size if I switch tabs.

I've never seen a tab in Pluma change size if I switch tabs. (I've never seen a Pluma text tab have a different font size than the others either.

I've never seen an IDE change size if I switch tabs. (I've never seen an IDE text tab have a different font size than the others either.

And that's what I'd expect from a mate terminal window as well: To not change size if I switch tabs. I even would not expect a text tab to have different font size in regular applications as well. This might make sense in WebBrowsers and WYSIWYG text editors, as web pages are very specific and completely unrelated to each other, and as WYSIWYG are of completely different nature anyway. But a mate terminal is not like a web browser. A mate terminal is like Plume. I naturally expect the mate terminal font size to be resized for all tabs at the same time. That would be convenient. And it has been this way for two decades (because it is convenient). I would therefore expect that pressing Ctrl-Plus or Ctrl-Minus would affect all tabs, not only the current one. And iff (!) this would affect a single tab, it is very confusing, that if I switch tabs in the same window the window resizes. No application resizes if I switch tabs. (Why would they, as typically the window size dominates over size requirements of controls in the window.)

I think the culprit here is that a Ctrl-Plus and Ctrl-Minus nowadays a) only affects a single tab and b) is not permanent. This has been different in all older releases. This is inconvenient now. I therefore recommend the old behavior: Such changes should again affect all tabs of the same window. And again they should be of permanent nature: All tabs (and terminal windows in general) that are opened after a press of Ctrl-Plus/Ctrl-Minus should have the new font size. This is no longer the case either.

jkpubsrc commented 3 years ago

One remark.

The old behavior was convenient, the new one unfortunately is not. For this to understand you have to consider the motivations involved:

This behavior is consistent with other applications. Even with WebBrowsers: If you use Ctrl-Plus/Ctrl-Minus to change the font size, these changes are a) permanent and b) affect all web sites of the same origin. (And in contrast to WebBrowsers in terminals we do not have to differentiate between different origins: A terminal with a bash on a the local machine does not have it's own style and colors compared to a terminal with a bash on a remote machine.)

I think the culprit here is that a Ctrl-Plus and Ctrl-Minus nowadays a) only affects a single tab and b) is not permanent. This has been different in recent releases. I recommend to change this behavior back to what it was in the recent decades as that behavior was very convenient.

jkpubsrc commented 3 years ago

So IMO this is expected behavior, and I'm not sure how meaningful it would be to have this setting persist: if one wants to change the font size, adjust it in the profile's preferences and it'll be global and persistent.

Remark: In the past you were able to change this using Ctrl-Plus/Ctrl-Minus. But now it is no longer possible to use Ctrl-Plus/Ctrl-Minus for that purpose. This is a step back.

And this does not affect all tabs any more.

So if I now find that a different font size is needed, I now need to ...

For comparison: This is what it used to be: