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Software - Support => Other => Topic started by: CuriousGuy on November 30, 2014, 01:09:50 AM

Title: How to have default terminal open at specific size and location?
Post by: CuriousGuy on November 30, 2014, 01:09:50 AM

I believe the default Terminal that comes with LL 2.0 is LXTerminal. I've got the color settings I want (from  Edit -> Preferences -> Style). But I can't figure out how to have the window always open at a given size and at a given location. I read somewhere that almost all stuff like that is handled by conf files but I couldn't find one for the terminal.

Is there an easy way a noob can edit the configuration file to have LXTerminal open at a given size and location?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions/links/etc you can provide. Any and all help is appreciated.

Title: Re: How to have default terminal open at specific size and location?
Post by: gold_finger on November 30, 2014, 10:44:01 AM

Honestly, I don't know why it's so difficult to change settings for the lxterminal.  That's one thing that drove me nuts for a while when I first started using LL.  I've switched to using xfce4-terminal myself for that and a few other reasons of personal preference.  Haven't messed with lxterminal in a while, so attempted to change it's settings again to answer your question and ended up having to mess around quite a bit to find answer.

One would think one or all of the following things would work, but none of them do:

• Right-click Menu in panel, choose Edit Applications, go to Accessories -> Terminal, hit Properties and edit the command to launch lxterminal with something like this:  lxterminal --geometry=120x30.  Doesn't work!
• Open Thunar file manager, enable showing hidden files, look under $HOME/.config/lxterminal/ and open lxterminal.conf file in leafpad text editor.  Theoretically, changing geometry there should do it also -- but it doesn't for some reason.
• Again in Thunar, navigate to and edit file $HOME/.local/share/applications/lxterminal.desktop theoretically should work.  It didn't either.

Only thing that worked when I tested this was editing the file /etc/skel/.local/share/applications/lxterminal.desktop.  You can add geometry specification to the "Exec" line like this:  Exec=lxterminal --geometry=120x30.  So, for whatever reason, user settings under Home directory seem to be ignored and only the default file under /etc/skel seems to be looked to when launching lxterminal.  Doesn't make any sense to me, but not sure how to fix it.

Above works when launching lxterminal from Menu -> Accessories -> Terminal.  I no longer have the custom shortcut for the terminal on my panel, so can't vouch for whether it works for that as well.  You'll have to see for yourself.  If it doesn't, try right-clicking on it and choose "Properties", then try editing the command to include the desired geometry.  Hopefully that works.

As far as getting lxterminal to open in a specific spot on the desktop -- not sure if that's possible.  I have program windows (any of them, not just the terminal) setup to appear in the middle of the screen instead of off to upper-left (or right).  Way I did that was to go to Menu -> Settings -> Windows Manager Tweaks -> Placement (tab) and move the slider for "Minimum size of windows to trigger smart placement" all the way to the right (large) and also chose "At the center of the screen" from the "By default, place windows" choices.

Title: Re: How to have default terminal open at specific size and location?
Post by: shengchieh on December 01, 2014, 09:56:08 PM

lxterminal  --geometry=100x50

For help, see

lxterminal --help

Sheng-Chieh

p.s. Other utilities use the --geometry option as well.