Re: Are title-bars/tabs necessary?

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 01:45:18PM -0500, Jeremy Maitin-Shepard wrote:
> csant <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> >> only window-manager-related space I can afford are the tabs (although
> >> I start wondering if they are really necessary too :).
> 
> > I have been wondering about that too - and even tried it for a while. But  
> > I am afraid I at some point lost track... The main problem usually is that  
> > *terminals* (which are the majority of client windows on my system) don't  
> > really tell you in the the window title what you were busy with on them...  
> > although probably this is a problem that could be solved.
> 
> It certainly can be.  Shells like zsh can be programmed to keep the
> title bar updated with useful information like user@hostname, the
> current working directory, the current running command line, or the
> previous command that was run if no command is currently running.  In
> many cases this allows the title bar to indicate rather well the
> contents of the window.
> 
> -- 
> Jeremy Maitin-Shepard


well, in case someone is not aware of it: for xterm and the like
(and every 'sufficiently standard' terminal emulator (say, `rxvt')
there is at least always the possibility to use some escape
sequences to directly write into the title bar and use 
this facility within some aliases to get meaningful headings.
so, one does not need specific shells to do this.

e.g., I use tcsh and have set the following in `.cshrc`
(would be rather similar with bash and `.profile')

alias label   'echo -n "]2;\!*"'
alias cd      'cd \!*;label "$hostbasename":$PWD'

don't know, how the above comes across via mail but in
the  first line the `echo` command uses
<ESC>]2 (escape right bracket followed by `2;')
and than inserts some text (placeholder \!*)
given on the command line, e.g. 

label "my_title"

and than ends with <CTRL>G

I don't remember, but it is somewhere in the xterm-docs or on the net
what escape sequences excactly are understood by xterm.

in effect, this allows to set the title bar text with
the `label' alias. more importantly, the `cd' alias sets the
title bar automatically to the current machine and directory 
after each `cd' command. 
the latter serves me fine 99% of the time (for the rest
the `label' command is OK. of course one can construct one's
own favorite information which should be dumped into the
title bar with appropriate modification of the above.

maybe this is of use for someone.

joerg