gnome-terminal is Always 80x24. No global or per-profile setting available.

[Ralph Corderoy]

It seems that every new gnome-terminal window is fixed at 80x24. The --geometry command line option can be used, e.g. "--geo =100x40" but this only affects the window opened by that invocation of gnome-terminal. Altering the command executed by an icon or menu item to use --geo isn't sufficient since typing Ctrl-Shift-N or selecting the "Open Terminal" menu item results in the new window being 80x24; it doesn't copy the window executing the command. I also understand that gnome programs, including gnome-terminal, don't honour any Xt resources, so they can't be used. I've examined gnome-terminal's settings in gconf-editor and there doesn't seem to be anything to help.

How can I change the default window size for a profile such that it be used for all new windows of that profile type? I suspect this should be a wishlist bug.

In theory, I should be able to do

     echo -n '^[[8;40;100t'

to set the terminal to 100x40. xterm supports this and vte's vteapp.c has resize_window() which is called on the appropriate signal but it doesn't work in gnome-terminal. Neither does

    echo -n '^[[4;200;200t'

which also works in xterm to set the terminal to 200x200 pixels. Again, vte has code to support this escape sequence.

[Ralph Corderoy (ralph-inputplus)]

This is on a standard Ubuntu 7.10, gnome-terminal 2.18.2-0ubuntu1.

As you can't cut and paste those echo(1)s above, here's some printf(1) equivalents.

    $ printf '\x1b[8;40;100t'
    $ printf '\x1b[4;200;200t'

[Ralph Corderoy (ralph-inputplus)]

I've also found that rxvt 1:2.6.4-12 responds correctly to the two printf(1)s above. So gnome-terminal is so far the only one that doesn't.

[Sam_ (and-sam)]

Hi Ralph,
there are answers about global and profile which may satisfy you:
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Hardy#Change_the_default_Terminal_window_size
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+question/6241

[Ralph Corderoy (ralph-inputplus)]

Hi Sam, thanks for the pointers. The first isn't suitable because it's
editing a file that isn't intended to be edited by the user and also
changes the size for all users on the machine, not just me! :-) The
second shows others are having the same issue but there's no solution to
have per-profile default sizes.

I think the fact that the `ESC [ 8' escape sequence doesn't work in
gnome-terminal despite vte's resize_window() code also suggests this is
a valid bug.

[Sam_ (and-sam)]

Hi Ralph,
first, according to the title > No global or per-profile setting available<
the first link shows how to make a global change, in your words >for all users on the machine<
and as user with admin rights on my machine I've intended to do so and had no problem ever since.

Second, I can assure you, that I have a default and user profile.
The default opens with size 80x24 and the user with 90x26 as attached.

[Ralph Corderoy (ralph-inputplus)]

Hi Sam, my `global' in the bug's title means `not per-profile for a
single user', not `for all gnome-terminals across all users', so
although that solution may work for you, I have other users on this
machine so it isn't suitable. And files under /usr/share aren't
intended to be edited by a user or admin. of the machine.

I think this bug is probably really two. The lack of configurability
over the terminal size, with per-profile settings, means I can't, for
example, quickly open a new log-file monitoring terminal, or a new IRC
client one. A user can match profiles to uses rather than just
appearance, e.g. a dark blue background is log-file monitoring with a
small font size but that needs a particular terminal size too.

The second issue is gnome-terminal's lack of compliance with the `ESC [
8' and `ESC [ 4' sequences. This is a hard, concrete bug; not a
`wishlist' item. I've opened a second bug for that, bug #258775, so
this bug can concentrate on the lack of per-profile setting.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for the report, could you send it upstream to bugzilla.gnome.org since you're having the issue? leaving this as incomplete until that, thanks in advance.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[Ralph Corderoy (ralph-inputplus)]

I guess that's a pro forma comment because there's sufficient information here, it's just neither you nor I have the time to raise it upstream. Closing this bug means anyone looking to help out won't pop along and raise it upstream for us.