I tend to agree with this one, because it makes sense and because we would be making room for one of the several requested options. Comments?

I'm on a quest to remove all annoying tiny little bits in GNOME's ui ;) any setting that cannot be justified should be nuked. By the way, why is are "background color" and "background" on different tabs?

*** Bug 350105 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 71685 [details] [review]
Make the terminal follow the global cursor_blinks pref

This removes the checkbox from the profile editor, along with all the code that deals with it and the corresponding the schema. It installs a gconf notification listener to react to changes of the global GNOME key, /desktop/gnome/interface/cursor_blinks. (Along with some changes to the .glade2 file, due to the fact that glade loves to change stuff...)

This will not make the people that have profiles with different settings for blinking very happy, although I wonder if such people actually exist. Maybe there are a11y implications that we are not aware of? Maybe Billh knows.

In any case, since this changes a string (though it is just a warning) and the UI, freezes force to hold the patch.

Created attachment 71686 [details] [review]
Make the terminal follow the global cursor_blinks pref

This removes the checkbox from the profile editor, along with all the code that deals with it and the corresponding the schema. It installs a gconf notification listener to react to changes of the global GNOME key, /desktop/gnome/interface/cursor_blinks. (Along with some changes to the .glade2 file, due to the fact that glade loves to change stuff...)

This will not make the people that have profiles with different settings for blinking very happy, although I wonder if such people actually exist. Maybe there are a11y implications that we are not aware of? Maybe Billh knows.

In any case, since this changes a string (though it is just a warning) and the UI, freezes force to hold the patch.

glade part contains some extra changes (usually happens)

Created attachment 71713 [details] [review]
Same as before, minus the unneeded glade induced changes to the .glade file

At some point, one should open the .glade file in glade, save it and commit the changes, in order to avoid this patch-editing thing. 

Of course, glade should avoid unnecessary changes: I rememeber there was a bug on glade about that, but I do not seem to be able to find it now.

Related bug 356552.

Any progress on this one?

Behdad, can we get this in?

I don't see why we should add gconf listeners when we can just connect to notify::gtk-cursor-{blink,time,timeout} on the GtkSettings object ? And even better would be to make vte automatically follow those settings.

The parts of the patch removing the UI are ok.

Right.  Go for it!

        * src/gnome-terminal.glade2:
        * src/gnome-terminal.schemas.in:
        * src/profile-editor.c: (profile_changed), (terminal_profile_edit),
        (profile_editor_update_sensitivity):
        * src/terminal-profile.c: (terminal_profile_init),
        (terminal_profile_update), (profile_change_notify),
        (terminal_profile_create):
        * src/terminal-profile.h:
        * src/terminal-screen.c: (terminal_screen_sync_settings),
        (terminal_screen_screen_changed), (terminal_screen_class_init),
        (terminal_screen_finalize), (terminal_screen_reread_profile): Use the
        gtk-cursor-blink setting, and remove the profile option. Bug #342921,
        based on a patch by Mariano Suárez-Alvarez.

Humm, thinking about this again, should make vte follow gtk+ cursor settings by default?

Definitely yes. Already filed bug 510903 for that; once that's in I'll remove the code from g-t (in the screen-changed handler) again.

I actually disagree with this change for various reasons:

 + it breaks settings of users

 + I don't know of any easy way to change the gtk+ setting

 + it's a bit similar to the situation where the HIG recommends that the user can override the control center toolbar appearance (so even if we had a central setting for this, we should allow overriding it in the terminal since it's really essential in the interface)

In my personal case, the blinking cursor is probably one of the worst annoyances that can exist in a terminal.

Can we reopen the bug and change this in some way?

Just get rid of the blinking by default ;-)

(In reply to comment #16)
>  + I don't know of any easy way to change the gtk+ setting

http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2006/05/blink-blink

a flashing gnome-terminal cursor block is about 10 times as annoying as a flashing | thin cursor in every other app.

this change has driven me so far to distraction that i've gone and disabled global cursor flashing for my entire desktop, even though i prefer to have the cursor flash in normal applications.

this really needs to be reconsidered.

ps: everyone complaining about this thus far (and even those requesting it in the first place, including the duplicate) all want their terminal cursor not to blink.

maybe it makes more sense simply to hardwire the terminal cursor to never blink (without removing the choice for the rest of the desktop).

/me wants his terminal cursor blinking...

/me stubbornly repeats the mantra

http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2006/05/blink-blink
http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2006/05/blink-blink
http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2006/05/blink-blink
http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2006/05/blink-blink
http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2006/05/blink-blink
http://uwstopia.nl/blog/2006/05/blink-blink

;-)

Although it's good that the Gnome-Terminal follows the system-wide option now, I don't see why the option has been removed from the terminal's profile options.

I like my blinking cursors *except* in a specific terminal profile (for a terminal that sits on my desktop).

Can the option brought back please?

Hey, were do I send hate mail for this change? :)

I'm quite accustomed to thick-non-blinking cursor in terminal _and_ thin-and-blinking cursor in other editable areas like gedit.

And this is for a reason:

1. The thick cursor in terminal just seems natural and, when it's thick, it's already easy to spot and blinking is just a big annoyance.
2. The thin cursor isn't that easy (at least for me) to spot when it doesn't blink.

With the current options I cannot have both thick-non-blinking and thin-and-blinking one...

So why don't we have _two_ options, like these?

1. Thin cursor blinks (default: yes).
2. Thick cursor blinks (default: no).

--
Cheers,
Alex

After having just installed The 8.04 beta1 of Ubuntu I fired up the default terminal and decided to play some nethack on nethack.alt.org.

So, I set up my nethack profile to black on white and telnetted away but to my horror my poor little @ just wouldn't stop blinking.  ARRRRGH.  Now, I see that I can turn off the cursor system wide but that is a poor solution.  PLEASE bring back the option to switch cursor options.

In the meantime, I'm off to install some other terminals that I can adjust settings on properly without changing the rest of my system.

I thought I added a comment about this, but I think this setting, in the context of  gnome-terminal, could be overridable from the application, like http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/toolbars-controlling-display.html.en suggests for the display of toolbars.

So you suggest a "System default", "Always", "Never" combo widget?

System default, Blink, Do not blink. Or something like this. The checkbox looked "simpler", but if following the system default is important, then it's a way to solve this.

*** Bug 524851 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I got to say that I too was terribly disturbed to find my gnome-terminal wh^H^Hblinking at me.  Please bring back the option and set it to “System default” or “Off” by default.

I just registered an account to display my dislike of the fact that I cannot have blinking thin cursors and non-blinking terminal cursors at the same time. This is just bananas and breaks my working environment which I have used over the past 2 years :(

+1 to adding it as a profile option to override system defaults. 

Don't spam the bug with useless comment please. Provide a patch instead, as outlined in comment 27 ff.

> Don't spam the bug with useless comment please.

I personally don't think that these comments are completely useless.  Now at least you can see that there are people who need both options.

> Provide a patch instead, as outlined in comment 27 ff.

I doubt that an average gnome-terminal user (even if he's experienced programmer himself) can do such patch in a reasonable time.  You as a gnome-terminal developer are in much more comfortable position for this task. ;-)

--
Regards,
Alex

(In reply to comment #33)
> I personally don't think that these comments are completely useless.  Now at
> least you can see that there are people who need both options.

The developer now mentioned that such a change would be accepted, so any additional comments (after that) would be noise. Although I wasn't aware until comment 32 that such a solution would be acceptable.

Any news on this one? Now Ubuntu Hardy will almost be out and I'd really hate to be forced to compile my own gnome-terminal just so I can turn off cursor blinking.

Maybe Mariano and Christian could pick this up again? They seem to have removed the option after all...

(In reply to comment #35)
> Any news on this one? Now Ubuntu Hardy will almost be out and I'd really hate
> to be forced to compile my own gnome-terminal just so I can turn off cursor
> blinking.

Keep in mind that GNOME & Ubuntu are two different things ;-) It won't be fixed upstream in GNOME for Hardy because the changes implies a UI change and a UI change can't be done in GNOME 2.22. Also, Hardy will be out quite soon and it's more or less frozen too now...

I too was shocked to see the cursor blinking and the option removed after upgrading to gnome 2.22.

As previously suggested by others, the best approach is to provide three different options ("System default", "Always", "Never").

Having just made the Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 upgrade.  This change is very short-sighted.  There's a big difference in appearance between the one-pixel-wide cursor used in text areas and the one-character-rectangle cursor used by gnome-terminal.  It's helpful for the thin one to blink because it can be hard to spot.  The block one is big, fat, and hairy enough on its own so can easily be spotted and blinking is a huge distration.  We block animated ads and blinking HTML but now have a blinking blinking rectangle in our terminal windows.  Something simply must be done.

> Something simply must be done.

So go ahead and provide a patch (if able). Saying 'me too' while the developer agrees will just make this bugreport unreadable.

Fixing typo in Bugzilla Tip. Please follow that suggestion (meaning: no discussion). Removing comments that didn't follow this suggestion.

Wouter, can I bribe you into submitting a patch?

(In reply to comment #44)
> Wouter, can I bribe you into submitting a patch?

I'm sorry. I don't speak C. :) chpe might perhaps?

Why have comments #40 and #42 from Jay L. T. Cornwall been removed?  I presume by Olav from #43.  Jay's comments were polite, helpful, and he was willing to provide a patch and trying to discuss the patch's content.  If I was Jay, I'd find it very discouraging and not bother to contribute further.

Unless a better offer comes along, a patch to revert to the old behaviour would seem the best route;  have gnome-terminal have its own cursor blink setting for its own big fat cursor.  That would satisfy most complaints.  If someone wants to tidy things up further in the future with a use-system-default/no-blink/blink combo then they can under a separate timescale but it's not worth holding up fixing this bug for that to happen.

I agree with Ralph and also found the comment by Jay L. T. Cornwall to be constructive and sensible.

I polity asked not to post off topic comments to keep the bugreport readable. Seems this bug only gets such responses, making it unusable. Closing bug.

PS: Every point has been raised before. Reverting also wouldn't do anything. #1 it wouldn't be available in stable (UI break aren't allowed) #2 nobody would implement the right thing anymore.

I hoped with closing this that people would read the bugzilla tip, etc. Heard that it is misinterpreted to mean that GNOME doesn't listen or whatever. I think this bug states often enough that:


  Yes, we agree fully

  Yes, following system default is way from ideal

  Yes, something will be down about it


In short: I've opened a new bug to implement the correct thing. That is bug 533522. So please don't state we didn't listen; I'm just doing what the bugzilla tip stated up to know (file new bug -- no patch as I am not a dev).


Note: that bug would mean an UI freeze break if it would be implemented for 2.22 (developers cannot just commit such changes to a stable branch). However: exceptions can be asked (by devs) and made. Further, distributions are free to do what they want.