Bob Kåres homepage

Maximally compatible Terminal.app setup

Terminal.app doesn't always play nice with other systems, and suddenly you have backspace working as delete in one place (but not another), or the forward-delete button not doing anything at all. Especially logging onto a linux box via ssh and running screen seems to trigger some of these bugs. So, once I got it running nice I wrote this down.

This setup is for Leopard, which made this way easier. I have some notes on the setup for Tiger lying around, if anybody is interested then contact me.

Those having upgraded from Tiger with a fixed Terminal.app should remove any customizations done then (for example .inputrc) and go for defaults.

The setup

I base this on the "Pro" setup that comes with Leopard, then make the following modifications:

• Keyboard:
  • page down: \33[6~
  • page up: \33[5~
  • shift page down: scroll to next page in buffer
  • shift page up: scroll to previous page in buffer
  • Check "use option key as meta key"
• Advanced: Declare terminal as: rxvt

Extra customizations

There are also a few other things I like to be different from the default, but which won't make anything break:

• Window title: uncheck dimensions, check command key
• Shell tab, when the shell exits: Close if the shell exited cleanly

Ready-made setup file

Here is a ready-made setup file containing all my customizations: osxterminal.terminal.