Terminal not maximized when tiling

[Bogdan-Constantin Popescu]

Binary package: xfce4-terminal

This is a very minor inconvenience present in xfce4-terminal 0.6.3 shipped by default with xubuntu 14.04.

Steps to reproduce

1. open a new instance of xfce4-terminal
2. tile window (left or right)

The window will not occupy all the available space both vertically (full length) and horizontally (half length of the screen).
The effect is more obvious when there are at least 2 tabs opened, the space left being bigger.

[Massimo (massimo-b)]

I would prefer a continuous resizing instead of a grid based resizing.
I guess the grid is based on the font size. But other applications are all continuously resizing.
For example I prefer all Terminals on one desktop, usually 3 or 4 in a grid with tabs:

+------------+------------+
|t1|t2|t3 |t1|t2|t3 |
|------------|------------|
|sh $ |sh $ |
| | |
| | |
| +------------+
| |t1|t2|t3 |
| |------------|
| |sh $ |
| | |
| | |
+------------+------------+

Now it is quite impossible to align the 3 windows without gaps due to gridded resizing.
A work-around would be to have snapping to ignore the grid.

[Massimo (massimo-b)]

Currently I'm using tilda as Terminal replacement. It has continuous resizing, the rest is quite equal to Terminal, also quite small code base.
But also there I have other issues where Terminal is in advance:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3525447&group_id=126081&atid=704598

[Massimo (massimo-b)]

Too bad that there is nothing on the 4.12 roadmap and wishlist for Terminal.
I understand now that Terminal is based on vte and this feature request may rather belong to vte. But as far as I read even if vte resizing is grid based there is the possibility to force it by the derived application.

I'm using terminator now which fits to most needs and I'm looking forward to further tiling features of xfwm-4.12 itself if not going for a tiling wm anyway.

[Bogdan-Constantin Popescu (bogdan-popescu0905)]

This may be linked with https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-terminal/+bug/399956

[Simon Steinbeiß (ochosi)]

It's very likely a problem with the line-wrapping in VTE-2.

VTE-3 fixes this problem and likely all problems with resizing terminal windows. I don't think this can be fixed prior to the port to Gtk3/VTE-3.

[Alistair Buxton (a-j-buxton)]

Yes, this happens because the terminal windows always has to be a multiple of the line height, plus decorations and other widgets. So often it can't be exactly the size of the screen. Although maximizing it does work as expected, snapping/tiling does not truely maximize the window, and the app itself will always try to resize itself to the exact multiple.

I think this has been reported upstream

[Simon Steinbeiß (ochosi)]

Afaik Vte-3 has this feature, with Vte-2 the size of the terminal window always has to be a multiple of the line height / character width, plus decorations and other widgets.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

Vte-3 definitely supports arbitrary widget size, the extra amount at the right and bottom will be blank.

I remember it used to suffer from drawing artifacts if the size was not properly aligned; I can't tell if these were fixed during the Vte-2 days or not.

Just my 2 cents: Konsole doesn't have grid based resizing and it drives me nuts. I think forcing the grid should be the default for a terminal and probably that's what most users would prefer. (If it's a configure option to change it then of course I'm totally okay with that.)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Igor Zakharov (f2404)]

Resolved by migration to vte3.

[iBart (bart-)]

Xfce Terminal now uses VTE3 but it is still afffected by this bug.

[Theo Linkspfeifer (lastonestanding)]

It looks like the window manager xfwm is preventing terminal emulators like xfce4-termial and gnome-terminal to fully maximize when tiled.

I have tested with mutter/macro, and there are no gaps.

[Theo Linkspfeifer (lastonestanding)]

*marco

I tried with kwin also, and it does ignore resize increments too.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[michael hackson (professoroats)]

Using awesome wm and xfce4-terminal I found a walkaround for this problem.

In awesome wm, and maybe other window managers as well, there is an option to resize window not according to grid. In awesome it's in the window's upper left corner, you hold down right mousebutton and can now freely resize it in any matter. It's stepped with prevalued pixel amount but you can make it fill the screen doing this.

[Aleksandrs-stier (aleksandrs-stier)]

Created attachment 8104
Shows an example of the terminal-gap-bug.

xfwm4 v4.13.0

# Problem
If I snap a terminal with hidden menubar to a display-corner then the terminal-window isn't resized properly and leaves a gap to the bottom (look at the attached picture).

# Reproduce
1. Open terminal
2. Hide menubar
3. Snap terminal to the left/right bottom corner
4. Observe a gap between the terminal and the bottom of the display

[Aleksandrs-stier (aleksandrs-stier)]

Generally the window-size of the terminal is adjusted not good, leaving gaps sometimes to the right and to the bottom. This is rather inconvenient for people who work a lot with the terminal. This is ugly and wastes valuable display-space. For me this is a reason to change the DE in the long-run because I work a lot with terminals.

[Olivier Fourdan (fourdan)]

(In reply to Aleks from comment #1)
> Generally the window-size of the terminal is adjusted not good, leaving gaps
> sometimes to the right and to the bottom. This is rather inconvenient for
> people who work a lot with the terminal. This is ugly and wastes valuable
> display-space.

This is because xfce4-terminal uses size increments, so its size must be a multiple of the character cells.

Try konsole, and see what I mean.

> For me this is a reason to change the DE in the long-run
> because I work a lot with terminals.

Sure, feel free to use whatever desktop you want :)

[Olivier Fourdan (fourdan)]

or use tilix...

[Aleksandrs-stier (aleksandrs-stier)]

This means it can't and won't be fixed because this is just the way xfce4-terminal is programmed?

[Aleksandrs-stier (aleksandrs-stier)]

I somehow thought its an xfwm issue because I have the same problem with gnome-terminal and I think it worked in Linux Mint Cinnamon. But thanks for the tip. Konsole works indeed. No reason to switch the DE :)

[Aleksandrs-stier (aleksandrs-stier)]

I just tested it again in cinnamon and it works. Therefore I think that it might be rather a window-manager issue because the mint-guys somehow manage to display the terminal-window (xfce4, gnome, xterm, urxvt) properly. So is there anything you can do about it?

[Olivier Fourdan (fourdan)]

This is not an issue, this is xfwm4 being strict about what the application specifies...

The application specifies a base size and size increments, xfwm4 obeys and enforce those.

[Aleksandrs-stier (aleksandrs-stier)]

Ok then I close it.

[Roland-happy (roland-happy)]

I think this bug is still open in combination with xfwm4:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-terminal/+bug/1422626

Would it be possible to implement an option in xfce4-terminal that it specifies pixel hints instead of size increments?

This would would fix this bug thats bugging people for years:
https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14869
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/xfce-terminal-borders-unevenly/71482
https://www.reddit.com/r/xfce/comments/a18zet/gaps_when_tiling_windows/
https://askubuntu.com/questions/583324/xubuntu-tiling-how-to-maximize-terminal-window-for-partial-tiling
https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=10863
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-terminal/+bug/399956

[Unit 193 (unit193)]

As noted by the upstream maintainer, this was fixed in the migration to vte3.

[Ben R (benrobart)]

I am on a fresh install of Ubuntu and this is still an issue. The "fix released" doesn't seem to be actually fixed.

[Benedict (bjb43)]

If it helps, I've put the following code in my .bashrc

if [ "$DISPLAY" ]; then
 activ_win_id=`xprop -root _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW`
 activ_win_id=$(echo $activ_win_id | awk '{ activ_win_id=substr($0,41,9); print activ_win_id; }' )
 xprop -id $activ_win_id -remove WM_NORMAL_HINTS
fi

I think this removes the WM_NORMAL_HINTS from any terminal emulator. Xfwm then manages to tile the terminal window without gaps, and the tiles are filled correctly.

[Alex Busnelli (booshnelli)]

Been battling this mild annoyance as long as I can remember! On Linux Mint 20.3 Xfce Edition currently. I've utilized @bjb43's bash snippet to good success for several months now, however if I happen to alt-click the xfce terminal emulator it goes back to it's stubborn old gapped-edges. The only solution then being to re-source my bashrc and click & drag the window back to the edge to tile it again properly. Oh the humanity!!

It's really not that terrible but I'd put a bounty out for this stinkin thing if I could.

[George Thomas (georgefsthomas)]

You might be better off submitting any complaints to the XFCE issue tracker:

https://gitlab.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-terminal/-/issues/83