Termite
Termite is a minimal terminal emulator designed for use with tiling window managers. It is a modal application, similar to Vim, with an insert mode and command mode where keybindings have different functions. Termite is based on the VTE library.
The configuration file allows to change colors and set some options. Termite supports transparency along with both the 256 color and true color (16 million colors) palettes. It has a similar look and feel to urxvt.
Contents
Installation
Install the termite package, or termite-gitAUR for the development version.
Usage
Termite starts in insert mode by default. Text may be selected using the mouse, or by using command-mode keys. In insert mode, Ctrl-Shift-c is used to copy selected text to the X clipboard, Ctrl-Shift-v to paste. Ctrl-tab starts scrollback completion, and Ctrl-Shift-up / Ctrl-Shift-down scroll the screen up or down.
Ctrl-Shift-space enters command-mode. Many commands are borrowed from Vim, for example v for visual mode, Shift-v for visual line mode, Ctrl-v for visual block mode, y to copy ("yank") selected text, / and ? for searching, w, b, ^, $ for movement, and Escape to go back to insert mode.
Configuration
Termite looks for configuration files in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/termite/config, ~/.config/termite/config, $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/termite/config and /etc/xdg/termite.cfg. The configuration file is used to change options such as font, colors, window hints, etc. The configuration file is in ini format, with three sections: options, colors, and hints.
Font
Fonts are specified in the format font=<font_name> <font_size> under the options section. <font_name> is specified according to fontconfig, not Xft. Use fc-list to see which fonts are available on the system (see also Font configuration#Font paths).
~/.config/termite/config
[options] font = Monospace 9 font = Terminus (TTF) 8 font = Droid Sans Mono 8
Colors
Colors consist of either a 24-bit hex value (e.g. #4a32b1), or an rgba vector (e.g. rgba(16, 32, 64, 0.5)). Valid properties for colors are foreground, foreground_bold, foreground_dim, background, cursor, and colorN (where N is an integer from zero through 254; used to assign a 24-bit color value to terminal colorN).
~/.config/termite/config
[colors] foreground = #dcdccc background = #3f3f3f
Transparency
As of version 9, Termite supports true transparency via color definitions that specify an alpha channel value [1]. This requires a compositor to be running, such as Compton or xcompmgr. Most compositors do not require special configuration for Termite to use transparency.
~/.config/termite/config
[colors] background = rgba(63, 63, 63, 0.8)
Troubleshooting
Colored ls output
For colored ls output it is necessary to use a custom LS_COLORS environment variable, which can be set with a dircolors file. Generate one with:
$ dircolors -p > ~/.dircolors
Then edit ~/.dircolors file, and append
TERM xterm-termite
to the end of the list of terminals, and save the file.
For Bash in ~/.bashrc and Zsh in ~/.zshrc, add:
eval $(dircolors ~/.dircolors)
and restart the terminal. For fish, add
eval (dircolors -c ~/.dircolors | sed 's/>&\/dev\/null$//')
to ~/.config/fish/config.fish and relogin or reload the config via:
. ~/.config/fish/config.fish
Ctrl-T not working
Ctrl-T should open a new tab, but it sometimes fails with certain shells. If the termite window outputs no directory uri set when this happens, the solution is to add
. /etc/profile.d/vte.sh
to your ~/.zshrc.
See this stackexchange question for more details.