Alpha 6 released

[George Nachman]

Hi iterm2-discuss,

Alpha 6 of iTerm2 has been released! It features a complete rewrite of the Preferences, Bookmarks, and Profiles system. The goal of the redesign was to simplify iTerm2's configuration, which was spread out over several windows (bookmarks, profiles, preference, and session info). In this iteration, profiles are collapsed into bookmarks. Bookmarks' attributes are still subdivided into roughly the same categories as profiles had, and you can copy a group of bookmark attributes from one bookmark to another. This should ease most of the pain of losing profiles; if not, please let me know how you use profiles. Bookmarks are now tagged (like GMail labels) and searchable. This is to replace hierarchical folders, which were cumbersome and underused. Finally, the Session Info dialog is now gone and replaced with a scaled-down Preferences dialog. Almost all Bookmark preferences can now be applied to an individual session immediately. Also, changes to a bookmark through Preferences affect all sessions using that bookmark immediately.

This is a big change and it needs a lot of testing. Please let me know what you think and any problems you have. If there's a crash, please report it and include your ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist file.

-George

[Josh Budde]

George-

iTerm2 is looking amazing and things are working great from some simple testing I've run it through. Its very nice to have an actively maintained terminal project again.

Something that springs to mind though-when using it I instinctively want to right click in the bookmark panel or select the Bookmarks menu item to find an option to modify bookmarks. It may just be me though.

Also-is there a way to turn off the big pictures saying 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' in the bookmarks pane? Or am I just being dense?

Thanks

Josh

 _________________________________
/ Josh Budde Local Computer Guy   \
\ jbu...@a2tech.us 734-272-2162   /
 ---------------------------------
\                             .       .
 \                           / `.   .' " 
  \                  .---.  <    > <    >  .---.
   \                 |    \  \ - ~ ~ - /  /    |
         _____          ..-~             ~-..-~
        |     |   \~~~\.'                    `./~~~/
       ---------   \__/                        \__/
      .'  O    \     /               /       \  " 
     (_____,    `._.'               |         }  \/~~~/
      `----.          /       }     |        /    \__/
            `-.      |       /      |       /      `. ,~~|
                ~-.__|      /_ - ~ ^|      /- _      `..-'   
                     |     /        |     /     ~-.     `-. _  _  _
                     |_____|        |_____|         ~ - . _ _ _ _ _>

[Josh Budde]

Oh-and one bug. If you're using the bookmarks drawer and start typing a tag you can't delete characters. For example say I have a tag 'home' assigned to a bookmark. If I mistaken start typing 'hi' in the search field in the bookmark drawer you can't erase the 'i' and change it to an 'o' unless you click the x to clear the field

Thanks

Josh

 _________________________________
/ Josh Budde Local Computer Guy   \
\ jbu...@a2tech.us 734-272-2162   /
 ---------------------------------
\                             .       .
 \                           / `.   .' " 
  \                  .---.  <    > <    >  .---.
   \                 |    \  \ - ~ ~ - /  /    |
         _____          ..-~             ~-..-~
        |     |   \~~~\.'                    `./~~~/
       ---------   \__/                        \__/
      .'  O    \     /               /       \  " 
     (_____,    `._.'               |         }  \/~~~/
      `----.          /       }     |        /    \__/
            `-.      |       /      |       /      `. ,~~|
                ~-.__|      /_ - ~ ^|      /- _      `..-'   
                     |     /        |     /     ~-.     `-. _  _  _
                     |_____|        |_____|         ~ - . _ _ _ _ _>

On Sep 1, 2010, at 8:53 PM, George Nachman wrote:

[Mihai Moldovan]

Hi Josh,

WORKSFORME - sorry.

I can delete and add letters in the search box at will, the results will
also be updated correctly.

Btw, the images just represent a preview of
background/foreground/fonts/etc., so it's not just a static picture. ;)

However... uhm... my fonts are all reset to the default (obviously) -
colors (font colors, as well as background) seems to work fine though.

Best regards,

Mihai

[Josh Budde]

It works in the bookmarks window, but does not seem to work in the bookmarks drawer

Josh

 _________________________________
/ Josh Budde Local Computer Guy   \
\ jbu...@a2tech.us 734-272-2162   /
 ---------------------------------
\                             .       .
 \                           / `.   .' " 
  \                  .---.  <    > <    >  .---.
   \                 |    \  \ - ~ ~ - /  /    |
         _____          ..-~             ~-..-~
        |     |   \~~~\.'                    `./~~~/
       ---------   \__/                        \__/
      .'  O    \     /               /       \  " 
     (_____,    `._.'               |         }  \/~~~/
      `----.          /       }     |        /    \__/
            `-.      |       /      |       /      `. ,~~|
                ~-.__|      /_ - ~ ^|      /- _      `..-'   
                     |     /        |     /     ~-.     `-. _  _  _
                     |_____|        |_____|         ~ - . _ _ _ _ _>

[Mihai Moldovan]

Ok, CONFIRMED. :)

[George Nachman]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the comments. I've opened issues 33, 34, and 35 to track
these issues. To address each individually:

Can't erase in search field:
I cannot reproduce this. The steps I attempted were:
1. Open iterm
2. Command-B, bookmarks drawer opens
3. Enter "mx" (I have a tag "MyFolder")
4. Press delete. The 'x' is erased as expected.

Can you send me a copy of your
~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist file? Maybe there's
something in there I'm not thinking of.

The Quick Brown Fox:
I wanted to show a preview of your session so you can see the font and
colors at a glance. But it does look kind of silly. Maybe I'll move
the preview out of the table since it does take a lot of room.

Context menu:
Good idea, that's easy.

[George Nachman]

Ooh, I wonder if you have backspace mapped to something? I bet that
would do it. Are you using the xterm key mappings?

[George Nachman]

Yep, that's it. I'll update the bug. Should be easy to fix.

[Josh Budde]

Thanks a lot for looking into this George-

Attached is my iterm plist. I did migrate it from a classic iterm install but everything else seems to work alright

Thanks

[Josh Budde]

Awesome

Quick work!

Josh

 _________________________________
/ Josh Budde Local Computer Guy   \
\ jbu...@a2tech.us 734-272-2162   /
 ---------------------------------
\                             .       .
 \                           / `.   .' " 
  \                  .---.  <    > <    >  .---.
   \                 |    \  \ - ~ ~ - /  /    |
         _____          ..-~             ~-..-~
        |     |   \~~~\.'                    `./~~~/
       ---------   \__/                        \__/
      .'  O    \     /               /       \  " 
     (_____,    `._.'               |         }  \/~~~/
      `----.          /       }     |        /    \__/
            `-.      |       /      |       /      `. ,~~|
                ~-.__|      /_ - ~ ^|      /- _      `..-'   
                     |     /        |     /     ~-.     `-. _  _  _
                     |_____|        |_____|         ~ - . _ _ _ _ _>

[spork]

Wow.

Thanks so much for making the color selection updates. Having them
"live" in the window is really, really helpful. Now if you can make
the "blur", "anti-alias", and other options preview live... :)

So far the prefs cleanup looks great. 100x better.

Also a slightly relevant question. I recall in the past issuing some
manner of "defaults write ..." commands to set some weird font
parameters, and possibly other things. How do I ensure that I've
cleared any of those settings? I've had some issues with every font
but Monaco just looking wrong as far as spacing and line height (pre-
iTerm2 as well). I suspect that at some point I buggered something
up.

Thanks for all the great work, it's good to see an actively developed
alternative to Terminal.app!

Charles

[George Nachman]

Thanks, Charles. I do plan to make all the options preview live (bug 37).

As for defaults, I am not an expert on it, but I think you probably ran some of these commands from the old iterm site:

defaults write net.sourceforge.iTerm UseUnevenTabs -bool false
defaults write net.sourceforge.iTerm MinTabWidth -int 75
defaults write net.sourceforge.iTerm MinCompactTabWidth -int 60
defaults write net.sourceforge.iTerm OptimumTabWidth -int 175
defaults write net.sourceforge.iTerm StrokeWidth -float 0
defaults write net.sourceforge.iTerm BoldStrokeWidth -float -2
defaults write net.sourceforge.iTerm SearchCommand \
        -string "http://google.com/search?q=%@"

To see if you have overridden any of these, run:

defaults read com.googlecode.iterm2 PropertyName

If it says:

The domain/default pair of (com.googlecode.iterm2, UseUnevenTabs) does not exist

then it is not overridden. If it prints some other value, then you can remove it with:

defaults delete com.googlecode.iterm2 PropertyName

You might want to back up your Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist before doing this just in case things go sideways. Also, make sure you quit iTerm2 before  fiddling with the defaults or you may have an unpleasant experience :)

[Stan]

Hey George, thanks for your work.

My only little grudge is that I've had to go into all bookmarks and
change the shell/command settings to command. The actual command was
remembered, but the switch went to "shell" instead of "command". Took
me less than 30 seconds do update all and iterm2 now works.

[Josh Budde]

I noticed that too-I put it down it down to importing my iTerm .plist into iTerm2

Thanks

Josh

 _________________________________
/ Josh Budde Local Computer Guy   \
\ jbu...@a2tech.us 734-272-2162   /
 ---------------------------------
\                             .       .
 \                           / `.   .' " 
  \                  .---.  <    > <    >  .---.
   \                 |    \  \ - ~ ~ - /  /    |
         _____          ..-~             ~-..-~
        |     |   \~~~\.'                    `./~~~/
       ---------   \__/                        \__/
      .'  O    \     /               /       \  " 
     (_____,    `._.'               |         }  \/~~~/
      `----.          /       }     |        /    \__/
            `-.      |       /      |       /      `. ,~~|
                ~-.__|      /_ - ~ ^|      /- _      `..-'   
                     |     /        |     /     ~-.     `-. _  _  _
                     |_____|        |_____|         ~ - . _ _ _ _ _>

[George Nachman]

I created bug 40 to address this. I'll try to get a bugfix release out soon to deal with the stuff that has been mentioned since a6.

[spork]

Two other things:

-The "buttons" on top of the prefs window (global settings, bookmarks,
advance) do not track the state of what's shown below. For example,
if I do something under bookmarks, close the prefs and then open them
again, the "bookmarks" icon is selected, but the general prefs are
shown.

-iTerm has grown to be almost 600MB overnight with about 8 windows
open:

spork 831 4.2 27.8 1072320 583764 ?? R 12:33AM
53:08.64 /Applications/iTerm.app/Contents/MacOS/iTerm -psn_0_127007

Thanks,

Charles

[George Nachman]

Thanks for the bug report. I opened bugs 42 and 43 to track these. I can definitely reproduce the prefs bug.

[Dio Gratia]

With right button New and selecting a bookmark:
Always provides Home Directory. Also defaulted to selecting Home
Directory. Switching to Directory <path> has no effect. Updating the
<path> has no effect.

Right button Select <tab> updates the cwd to the path stored in
Directory. Looks like something got targeted wrong. Should be under
New?

There doesn't appear to be a way to add a new bookmark without a Menu
Bookmarks Manage Bookmarks. All the bookmarks keymaps seem to map to
toggling the open/close state of the bookmark drawer.

The little icons with the "Quick brown..." in the bookmark drawer
seems superfluous.

There should be a way to open the Preferences Bookmarks from the
bookmark drawer?

On a positive note the Preferences Bookmarks seems like a great idea.
I imagine iTerm2 will be a lot easier to use when it settles down a
bit.

OS X 10.6.4 Macbook 5,1

[Mihai Moldovan]

Hi Dio,

I cannot say anything to the first few things, so I'll skip this for now.

However...

>There doesn't appear to be a way to add a new bookmark without a Menu
>Bookmarks Manage Bookmarks. All the bookmarks keymaps seem to map to
>toggling the open/close state of the bookmark drawer.

Are you sure you are using the newest revision? There is no "Manage
Bookmarks" menu item anymore, as Bookmarks and Profiles have been merged
into just "Bookmarks". That said, the old menu items are gone and one
new menu item has been added: "Show Bookmarks Window". (Can be opened
via Shift + Command + B.)

> The little icons with the "Quick brown..." in the bookmark drawer
> seems superfluous.

It's just a preview for the Bookmark's selected font type and size. It
has already been removed in the newest revision(s), as requested before
(bug #34 - http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/issues/detail?id=34).

> There should be a way to open the Preferences Bookmarks from the
> bookmark drawer?

Right, I think we should go the right click -> edit way here as well.
Will add this to the bug #33.

> On a positive note the Preferences Bookmarks seems like a great idea.
> I imagine iTerm2 will be a lot easier to use when it settles down a
> bit.

Yeah, I guess Bookmarks and Profiles caused some confusion before,
that's why George did the major rewrite. :)

Best regards,

Mihai

[George Nachman]

Hi Dio,

Thanks for the bug reports! Welcome to the list.

On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 7:55 PM, Dio Gratia <diog...@gmail.com> wrote:
> With right button New and selecting a bookmark:
> Always provides Home Directory.  Also defaulted to selecting Home
> Directory.  Switching to Directory <path> has no effect. Updating the
> <path> has no effect.

Verified. Tracked on bug 44.

> Right button Select <tab> updates the cwd to the path stored in
> Directory.  Looks like something got targeted wrong.  Should be under
> New?

Sorry, I don't quite understand. I think the steps you're describing are:
1. Open two or more tabs
2. Right click in it the window, opening the context menu
3. Open the "Select" submenu
4. Choose a tab from the submenu
5. The cwd changes in the bookmark?

I tried that but nothing changed.

>
> There doesn't appear to be a way to add a new bookmark without a Menu
> Bookmarks Manage Bookmarks. All the bookmarks keymaps seem to map to
> toggling the open/close state of the bookmark drawer.
>

As Mihai suggested, the way to add a bookmark is to open preferences.
Select "Bookmarks" at the top. Then there is a [+] button below the
list of bookmarks that adds a new one.

> There should be a way to open the Preferences Bookmarks from the
> bookmark drawer?

I was going to add a right-click menu for that to avoid using screen
space (bug 33).

> On a positive note the Preferences Bookmarks seems like a great idea.
> I imagine iTerm2 will be a lot easier to use when it settles down a
> bit.
>

Thanks, glad to have you here. I expect stability will return over the
next week or two. The last alpha was a huge change, so there have been
a lot of early bug reports.

-George