GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 324035
label field prefix for terminal tabs
Last modified: 2005-12-20 17:27:08 UTC
The title can be changed and updated by escape codes or whatever the xterm application running locally or remote happens to be. This is a problem because the gnome-terminal 'set title' feature's utility is in being able to give meaningful labels to each of your open tabs. (This is to keep straight which tab is associated with each remote server or user.) The current 'solution' to this challenge is to create a new gnome-terminal profile for each remote server. But this is overkill. Why not instead simply add a new menu item below 'set title' called 'set label' which offers the ability to set a prefix to the title called a 'label'. This prefix is not changed or updated by xterm escape codes. I would like to implement this.
So I am implementing this. Will you accept this new feature once I submit the patch?
If I recall correctly Davyd Madeley davyd@madeley.id.au was interested in similar ideas recently and wanted to have the host (and head, on the cluster he was using) displayed in the terminal title. You might want to get in touch with him. P.S. I do recall correctly, see this post in the list archives http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-November/msg00135.html (Read in one of the Gnome journals on Planet Gnome you felt this bug was being ignored. It is frustrating but please be patient. Triaging bugs is a pretty thankless task so I do not do it very often (and I mostly use xterm) but I have huge respect for people like Luis who do. It took a considerable amount of my time to provide you this much of a reply with information I hope is relevant and I'm a volunteer too and I dont get anything for doing this. I hate it when people say "it could be worse" because it is a truism but some reports have gone years without getting any response at all but if you are lucky most developers will provide some kind of acknowledgement within a few weeks. You might be simply be unlucky to have caught a maintainer who was sick on holidays or in the process of finding a new maintainer. It is not unsual for bugs to get no reply for over a week, even the professional Gnome developers tend to be doing the maintaince work of other modules on the side from other Gnome work which pays the bills.)
Adding to Alans comments, gnome-terminal has no maintainer. This bug isn't being ignored, there is just no-one that would read it. When I file a bugreport I usually want a response within 30min and a fix within a few days, max a week. Unfortunately after doing b.g.o (which gets very very few bugreports) I understand it is harder than it might seem. Notifying reporters that the product lacks a maintainer is still on my TODO list. I do try to help out with getting gnome-terminal patches reviewed and committed (eventhough there isn't a maintainer) and triage every once in a while. Now on to the bugreport. There are a few bugreports about the handling of the title. There are some weird interactions about how it is implemented. Your suggestion sounds like a workaround for a better fix. Perhaps something can be done with the 'Dynamically-set title' option in the profile.
Withdrawing offer to implement.