Re: Some questions about mintty

[Andy Koppe <andy dot koppe at gmail dot com>]

2009/6/22 Mark Harig:
> 1. There is no description of the '-e' switch in mintty's manual page.
> Â Is it an "execute-this-command" option? ÂOr, should the user be
> Â aware that it is specific to "execute this shell"?

The -e option was added for compatibility with xterm and other
terminals, but it isn't actually needed. The first non-option argument
is taken as a command, with any additional arguments passed as
arguments to that command. For example, you can start an ssh session
in mintty like this:

  mintty ssh user@server

Alternatively, you can use -e to mark the start of the command to execute:

  mintty -e ssh user@server

Either way, the command is executed directly using exec(), i.e. if you
want to invoke a command through a shell you have to do so explicitly,
e.g.:

  mintty sh -c "DISPLAY=:0 ssh -l user server"

Thanks for pointing out the lack of documentation on -e. I shall correct that.


> 2. There is a '-p / --position' option described in the manual page.
> Â Is there a corresponding option for the ~/.minttyrc initialization
> Â file?

No. ~/.minttyrc contains settings from the options dialog only.


> 3. When the color of the cursor is changed to a block, the text
> Â can be read through the block, but it appears that the text is
> Â always white.

The background colour is used for text beneath the cursor, so if the
cursor is visible infront of the background, the text beneath the
cursor should be visible too. With the default white-on-black colours,
you get black text inside a white cursor block.

Is it a particular mode or program where you're seeing this problem?


> ÂCan the cursor's (reverse) text color be changed?

Yes, through the xterm sequence for setting colours, where in a small
extension the default colours are represented as colours 256 through
261:

256 - normal foreground
257 - bold foreground
258 - normal background
259 - bold background
260 - cursor background
261 - cursor foreground

For example, this sets the cursor background colour (which is used for
the text beneath it) to black:

echo -e "\e]4;260;#000000\a"

(Colour names from rgb.txt are not supported.)


> 4. Is is possible to view italic fonts (in italicized form) in mintty?

Apparently not. It's the same in PuTTY though, and I'm guessing that's
because slanted text isn't suited to the square character cells in a
terminal. Additionally, there doesn't seem to be a way to hide
particular font styles in the standard Windows font selection dialog,
which probably explains why the Italics styles appear even though
they're not supported.

I think I'll resolve this by doing away with the font dialog and
instead add drop down boxes for font, style, and size directly on the
text pane of the options.

Andy

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