GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 424992
Cursor drawing is slightly broken starting with 2.18.0
Last modified: 2008-11-29 05:59:10 UTC
Please describe the problem: Since I have been using gnome-terminal 2.18.0, I have been observing problems with cursor drawing. In short, its width isn't constant; it is sometimes a bit thicker than expected, and sometimes thiner, that is, the usual width if I'm not mistaken. I can't reproduce this problem on my desktop, but it always happens with my laptop. That's a really wild guess, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that my laptop has a wide screen (1920x1200)? It seems doubtful to me, but mentioning it doesn't hurt. Steps to reproduce: 1. Start gnome-terminal. The cursor is thicker than usual. 2. Type a character and delete it with backspace. Now the cursor is thiner. Actual results: As explained, the width of the cursor varies. Expected results: I would expect the cursor to always have the same width, as usual. Does this happen every time? No, I can see this problem only on my laptop box, not the desktop one for some reason. Other information:
Created attachment 85629 [details] Screenshot for when the cursor is thicker than expected.
Created attachment 85630 [details] Screenshot for when the cursor is thiner.
I should have mentioned that the vte I am using is synced to SVN trunk on 2007/03/23.
I've not managed to reproduce this one with trunk. Cursor width is controlled by the cell contents, that is the cursor expands to cover the character underneath. My suspicion is that we're drawing a double-wide cursor into a single width clipbox (and that simply could not happen!). I'm intrigued by your prompt settings, especially by the eol '~', do you mind posting your bash settings? And if you could work out the difference between your two machines... ;-) Thanks for the report - I'm just hoping it's not as nasty as it initially seems. --> vte
My shell is zsh, not bash, and the ~ at the end is due to: RPROMPT='%~' in my ~/.zshrc file. However, I don't think this is the culprit since my desktop box (where I can't reproduce the bug) also has this setting. The rest of my settings aren't relevant: a few aliases, plus setting LC_CTYPE. I'll continue to try to find differences between the two boxes but at the moment I really have no idea what could cause this. I'm still not ruling out the possibility that there is a problem within my environment. Thanks for your answer.
I used to see this regularly, but have not seen it happen for a while. Lets assume it's been fixed.