terminalle 0.2

A fancy drop-down terminal emulateur.

TERMINALLE

A modern, extremely minimalist, semi-transparent fullscreen "drop-down" terminal emulateur. Use dbus (installed by default in GNOME and KDE) to toggle window visibility or quit.

Based on VTE, the business logic of this Python package is contained entirely within a concise ~150-line file — which mostly just configures keyboard shortcuts — making it easy to modify for alternative uses.

It omits many features common in other terminal emulators, such as tabs, because it's meant to be used in conjunction with a terminal multiplexer such as tmux, which offers a stable, powerful, and mature UI. See also tmux mode for enhanced tmux features.

Usage

# See usage info.
$ terminalle --help

# Start the server. The window is initially hidden by default.
# This is unnecessary if you've enabled auto-start with `terminalle auto`.
$ terminalle &

# Toggle window visibility.
$ dbus-send --session --type=method_call --dest=org.gnome.Terminalle /org/gnome/Terminalle org.gnome.Terminalle.Toggle

# Close the window and kill the server.
$ dbus-send --session --type=method_call --dest=org.gnome.Terminalle /org/gnome/Terminalle org.gnome.Terminalle.Quit

Use Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V to access the clipboard.

Install

$ sudo pip install terminalle

# Optional: start the server automatically on login and restart automatically if exited.
$ terminalle auto

# Optional: disable auto-start (if enabled, this should be done prior to uninstalling).
$ terminalle no-auto

You'll probably want to hook up the toggle method to a keybinding for easy access. In GNOME, you can either do that in the GNOME Control Center GUI (a.k.a "Settings"), or with gsettings:

# WARNING: Running this verbatim will disable any other custom keybindings.
#          It is merely provided as an example.
$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys custom-keybindings "['/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/']"

# WARNING: This will overwrite any existing custom keybinding called 'custom0'.
$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/ name "Toggle Terminalle"
$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/ command "dbus-send --session --type=method_call --dest=org.gnome.Terminalle /org/gnome/Terminalle org.gnome.Terminalle.Toggle"
$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/ binding "<Super>Return"

Configuration

See an example configuration. See the defaults in settings.py. Defaults can be selectively overridden in ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/terminalle.yaml. Typically, this is ${HOME}/.config/terminalle.yaml.

TMUX MODE

This is the recommended way to use Terminalle. Turn it on by setting tmux: true in terminalle.yaml (see configuration). It configures some alternative tmux keyboard shortcuts, which would normally be impossible to configure in .tmux.conf since terminal emulators typically cannot handle these key combinations. Generally replacing the tmux prefix with a simple Ctrl modifier, it cuts the number of keystrokes in half without requiring you to memorize new shortcuts. If you're a tmux power-user, this will change things for you.

The following shortcuts are enabled in tmux mode:

Command	tmux default	tmux mode
split-window	<Prefix> "	Ctrl+"
split-window -h	<Prefix> %	Ctrl+%
swap-pane -U	<Prefix> {	Ctrl+{
swap-pane -D	<Prefix> }	Ctrl+}
copy-mode	<Prefix> [	Ctrl+[
paste-buffer	<Prefix> ]	Ctrl+]

To reap maximum benefits, add the following to your .tmux.conf, taking care of other common tmux shortcuts that do not get mangled by typical terminal emulators:

# Generally shorten `Ctrl+b <X>` to `Ctrl+<X>` for various `<X>`.
bind -n C-Up resize-pane -U            # Ctrl+Up
bind -n C-Down resize-pane -D          # Ctrl+Down
bind -n C-Left resize-pane -L          # Ctrl+Left
bind -n C-Right resize-pane -R         # Ctrl+Right

# Generally shorten `Ctrl+b Meta+<X>` to `Meta+<X>`.
bind -n M-Up resize-pane -U 5          # Alt+Up
bind -n M-Down resize-pane -D 5        # Alt+Down
bind -n M-Left resize-pane -L 5        # Alt+Left
bind -n M-Right resize-pane -R 5       # Alt+Right

# Note that `new-window` is not shortened because `Ctrl+c` sends `SIGINT`.
bind -n C-n next-window                # Ctrl+n
bind -n C-p previous-window            # Ctrl+p

bind -n C-Space next-layout            # Ctrl+Space

This all goes especially well with something like vim-tmux-navigator.