ROXTerm is a terminal emulator intended to provide similar features to gnome-terminal, based on the same VTE library. It was originally designed to have a smaller footprint and quicker start-up time by not using the Gnome libraries and by using a separate applet to provide the configuration GUI, but thanks to all the features it's acquired over the years ROXTerm can probably now be accused of bloat. However, it is more configurable than gnome-terminal and aimed more at "power" users who make heavy use of terminals.

It still supports the ROX desktop application layout it was named after, but can also be installed in a more conventional manner for use in other desktop environments.

The Debian changelog provides a good summary of what's changed between versions.

First generate a build directory using cmake, for example:

cmake -S . -B build

Then build with:

cmake --build build

or ninja -C build or make -C build depending which of ninja/make cmake chose.

Install with:

sudo cmake --install build

or sudo ninja install -C build or sudo make install -C build

The default prefix is /usr/local.

Version 3.15.1 onwards apply a CSS class name to ROXTerm's vte widget, based on the profile name. For example, a profile name of "My Profile" applies the CSS class name "roxterm-My-Profile". Use with care, because using different values of properties such as "padding" in the same window could cause problems with window geometry.

OSC 52 is an escape sequence that allows programs in the terminal to access the desktop's clipboard. This is now supported in ROXTerm, with some security measures:

• Apps can only write the clipboard, not read it.
• You have to confirm each clipboard write unless you change a profile setting.
• OSC 52 is ignored if the originating terminal is not focused.
• OSC 52 is ignored if the terminal has a selection made with its GUI.

Each time the clipboard is written, an indicator flashes in the tab bar, then stays visible until cleared by clicking it or by performing a copy operation in ROXTerm's GUI.

ROXTerm has to resort to intercepting read operations on the pty device, because VTE doesn't provide support for this OSC. ROXTerm does not intercept terminfo/termcap sequences to indicate that it supports OSC 52, so you may need to take extra steps to enable it in some apps, for example in neovim:

if vim.env.SSH_TTY then
  local function paste()
    return {
      vim.fn.split(vim.fn.getreg(""), "\n"),
      vim.fn.getregtype(""),
    }
  end

  vim.g.clipboard = {
    name = "OSC 52",
    copy = {
      ["+"] = require("vim.ui.clipboard.osc52").copy("+"),
      ["*"] = require("vim.ui.clipboard.osc52").copy("*"),
    },
    paste = {
      ["+"] = paste,
      ["*"] = paste,
    },
  }
end

Recent versions of ROXTerm, in conjunction with recent versions of vte, support kinetic scrolling with libinput, which considerably improves the UX on laptops for users of Wayland, and for xorg users who can't or prefer not to use the deprecated synaptics driver. ROXTerm can detect whether the feature is supported in vte at run-time, so no re-compilation is necessary if you upgrade from an older vte.

• User guide,
• Ubuntu PPA
• roxterm-git in AUR

Tempus Themes should have support for roxterm by the time you read this. If not, you can use convert-tempus.

Support for translations has just been reinstated. Please note that most of the existing translations are out-of-date and/or incomplete.

CMake integration for translating strings in the code and UI should be working now. To add a new translation, simply create a new .po file in the po directory with your language code as its basename.

The .pot file for these translations is messages.pot. It can be generated with the pot make/ninja target (after running cmake):

make -C build pot

or

ninja -C build pot

Its default location is build/po/messages.pot. You can copy it to the po directory and edit it to create a brand new .po file. When your edits are complete, commit your .po file to git, ignoring the other .po files. Whenever an upstream update causes changes to the strings use the pot-merge make/ninja target to merge messages.pot with existing .po files. Then edit your .po file and commit it again.

The po-compile target compiles .po files into .mo files. This is run automatically during the overall build process, but the other rules above must be run explicitly; this is to reduce the chance of your edits accidentally being overwritten. pot-merge automatically runs pot first if necessary.

If you want to build a local deb package you will have to add any new mo files to debian/roxterm.install.

Translating the HTML documentation and man pages is not currently supported, but is being worked on.

You can submit your translations by creating a github PR, attaching the po file to an issue, or by emailing it to me h@realh.co.uk.

The HTML guide in the docs directory has been refactored to use a single XHTML file containing all the pages, using Javascript to mimic a multi-page site. Partial translations have been constructed in the new format, but they are quite outdated.

Creating a new translation, or updating one of the above, is supported using po4a. For the following steps, the current directory should be the root of the checked out or unpacked roxterm source tree.

You will need po4a installed in addition to cmake, make etc.

With the pt_BR translation, for example:

po4a-gettextize --format xhtml --master docs/en/index.html \
    --localized docs/pt_BR/index.html --po po/xhtml/pt_BR.po \
    --master-charset UTF-8 --localized-charset UTF-8

This tool is only intended to be run once to import an existing translation into the po4a workflow. Work with the generated .po file from then on. All the translations will be labelled as "fuzzy" to ensure they are reviewed, and untranslated strings will contain English instead of being left blank in the po file.

Simply create a new empty .po file in po/xhtml with your language code as its basename, for example po/xhtml/pt_BR.po. Then the following steps will convert it to a valid po file.

Step-by-step:

1. Make sure po4a is installed on your system (and cmake and make if necessary).
2. Commit or back-up your po file if you have edited it.
3. Make sure the build directory is ready by running cmake -S . -B build.
4. Run make -C build poxhtml (or ninja ...).
5. Edit your po file if necessary and repeat from step 2.

Step 4 uses po4a to perform the following with a single command:

1. Update po/xhtml/xhtml.pot with respect to docs/en/index.html
2. Update any po files in po/xhtml by merging them with po/xhtml/xhtml.pot
3. For each po file which is sufficiently complete, generate a new XHTML file in a subdirectory of docs (for example docs/pt_BR/index.html).

The man page translations were so incomplete that I have removed them altogether. Support for new translations will be provided in the near future, also using po4a.