Make utility Terminal windows less intrusive

Feb 24, '02 11:02:54AM

Contributed by: sharumpe

This falls into a "nitpicky" category. As someone who enjoys the extreme customization ability of X11's (e.g. XFree86) ATerm program, but hates the holdbacks that go along with using X11, I am always looking for ways to make Terminal behave more like ATerm.

One of the things I like to do is to see a couple of my log files all of the time. With ATerm, I can make a 100x8 character window, remove the scroolbars, titlebar, and resize handles, turn it 60% transparent, and put it in a corner. Good stuff.

In Terminal, you can't get quite that handy, but you can get close. Read the rest of the article for some settings to make "utility" terminal windows less intrusive...

Add the following elements to a saved terminal window (*.term):

  <key>WinLocX</key>
<string>0</string>
<key>WinLocY</key>
<string>0</string>
<key>WinLocULY</key>
<string>130</string>
<key>TerminalOpaqueness</key>
<real>5.000000e-01</real>
<key>Scrollback</key>
<string>NO</string>
<key>Rows</key>
<string>8</string>
<key>Columns</key>
<string>100</string>
This will give you a 100x8, 50% transparent window with no scrollbar in the bottom left corner of your screen. This may not be where you like, but you can change the position by changing WinLocX and WinLocY. The scrollbar is clutter for this purpose, and you can still scroll up or down with the pageup/dn keys.

WinLocULY is the odd bit here - it basically sets an offset on the Y axis (vertical) that is the height of the window. 130 is the height of 8 rows plus titlebar with Monaco 9pt. YMMV.

Geek away. And if you figure out a way to get rid of the titlebar, too, let me know!

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