I fail to see a single use case for terminal transparency. It makes text less readable.
Allowing people to choose their own fonts can make text less readable. There are only 3 or 4 reasonable choices anyway, so all others should be dropped.
Allowing themes to change window decorations can cause confusion and reduce usability. Let's drop that.
Having more than one window manager available is inefficient and means that more developer time is wasted in duplicative effort. Only one window manager is needed.
Having more than one web browser is inefficient and means duplicated effort. Drop all other browsers.
Having more than one Linux distribution is inefficient.
Having more than one OS is inefficient.
Having more than one system architecture causes needless work.
Supporting any NIC that isn't the best makes the system less efficient. Drop inferior NICs.
edit: I think the question is relevant, because part of what is going on here is that projects like Ubuntu and GNOME are taking cues from Apple's success
Like apple did with the iphone?
http://techland.time.com/2013/04/16/ios-vs-android/
Depending on which metric you chose, either iOS or Android is ahead. However, the data is not conclusive enough to warrant your statement. If anything, it seems to be leaning in the opposite direction.
http://www.jdpower.com/content/press-release/upO8vjP/2012-u-...
Go KDE.
At any rate, the only reason you need is user choice! User choice is always a valid reason. Removing customization options is rarely the proper thing to do.
Of course, in this case, users still have a choice: they can choose to install another terminal! Which it seems many of them have done.
In a good terminal (e.g. konsole) the text remains fully opaque while only the background becomes transparent.
This is more difficult than simply setting a window-wide opacity, which is why the terminal must have its own support for it.
So you maintain the readability benefit while still being able to see major changes to the window behind the terminal if necessary (something which I have found occasionally useful).
Also, it just looks nice! By having an appropriate background image and playing with the opacity it has a negligible affect on readability.
I suspect the issue at hand is the removal of a feature that was available previously without explicit discussion or explanation.
With aterm (transparent only to backgrounds, not other windows) and an imagemagick script to shade backgrounds, I get to have pretty much any photo I want as a background, and it doesn't impact my work.
Only exception: astronomical photos with lots of stars. Very hard to resolve a white '.' character.
Shading script is short. Here it is for reference:
#!/bin/bash
# should set my background and darken the image for aterm
# imagemagick documentation here:
# http://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line-options.php#fx
convert $@ -fx 'u/2.0' ~/.shadedbackground.jpg
fbsetbg -c ~/.shadedbackground.jpg
aterm -tr -sl 10000 -fg white -bg black
I've always liked it for the ability to see/read documentation on a window behind the terminal. Specific use cases include referring to man pages, API docs and the like where I can't just copy+paste something and/or need to check config.conf against the settings/defaults in online docs.
It's especially useful on smaller screens where I don't have the luxury of having a 80-char wide terminal side-by-side with a browser window (and avoiding horizontal scrolling).
I haven't been a Gnome user for many years though... Exactly for reasons like this. They have removed a few features too many. IIRC, last time I tried to log in with a Gnome session to see if anything had improved, I couldn't turn off cursor blinking in the terminal.
I've been using Linux since way before Gnome existed, and it does piss me off that (from the perspective of a power user) it's less usable now after all those years than it was in the first few years of its existence. Gnome turned on its own users long ago, and I think the year of the Linux desktop might be further now than ever, especially for the Gnome project in its current form. It's an illusion to attract new users if even the old ones don't want to use it anymore.
I wish the Gnome project good luck, but they are clearly sailing a different sea.
I have a cheat sheet open behind my terminal, for say c-vim keybindings.
Instead of switching windows continuously
RTFA it does not make text less readable: https://bug698544.bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment....
Drag the windows side by side with the snap feature.
> RTFA it does not make text less readable
The text would be more readable with an opaque background.
(Personally, I do leave my XFCE4 desktop on default settings, but I do alter defaults in some packages)
The person in the link commenting "PUT IT BACK EVERY OTHER TERMINAL EMULATOR HAS IT" is more baffling.
Both wanting choice and options, but at the same time not wanting to have to change when there are other options.
Gnome Terminal may (effectively) be the only terminal emulator available to you if you do not have rights to install software or to change default software.
Then yes, they should.
If the boss gives you lemons, you don't go to the lemon tree and ask if it can make lemons that read email, browse NFS shares and change screensaver settings. You go to your boss and say "just-lemons isn't good enough".
However, "choice is poison" is a rather extreme over-compensation for this problem. Sometimes, options really do provide value. And many times, if they are designed correctly, they don't substantially increase cost; if the features are orthogonal and implemented independently, the additional complexity is only linear with the number of features, not quadratic or worse as happens if they are too interrelated.
I understand that we want to get away from the "you need to spend hours customizing your environment to make it usable" approach to design that plagues some open source project, but going to the other extreme and saying that "choice is poison" is just as bad.
I'd rather have something that was well thought through and is internally consistant than a grab-bag of customisation, none of which coexists well - like most linux desktops.
That's should always be second to providing solutions. Solve the problems that transparency solved first. If you aren't aware of the problems that transparency in terminals provided, then removing it is purely an act of ignorance.
1) Have you searched the literature on perceptual defects and enablement? If so I'd love to see references.
2) Have you consulted widely on mailing lists that Gnome Terminal users use and checked use cases? If so, can you link to those? I'd like to see them.
> How can I use a full screen terminal window and still read documentation in that same screen?
I've asked this question. I've yet to see a reply.
If your documentation isn't viewable in terminal, why do you insist of having a full screen all the time - resize your terminal? If you do insist of having a full screen all the time, why are you using gnome-terminal at all?
> why do you insist of having a full screen all the time
Because I'm actively working in my terminal. Why should I waste space moving something somewhere else, especially away from where I'm looking?
> resize your terminal?
Maybe you like limiting the size of your workspace, but I don't.
> If you do insist of having a full screen all the time,
Because I'm not always in the terminal, but when I'm in the terminal, I don't see a reason to limit the space it uses.
Anyways, not you are being willfully ignorant. Rather than try and understand the problem, and how transparency was being used, you are being dismissive. You aren't trying to help in the least.
So, unless you want to take the time to understand the problem, why waste your time, and others, adding a comment that is essentially worthless?
Um, do they know their market? I doubt grandma is clammoring for transparency in her terminal windows but she's not the primary user profile for Gnome, you know?