#604959 xdgutils: please introduce (sane) xdg-terminal

Package:
xdg-utils
Source:
xdg-utils
Submitter:
Simon Richter
Date:
2026-06-26 16:47:02 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
Tags:
#604959#5
Date:
2006-01-18 22:55:17 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

The problem at hand is the proposed (and implemented) solution for
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=332223 .

I'm unconvinced that bumping the priority on the other terminal
emulators is an adequate solution, hence I'm opening this "general" bug
for discussion on how to reflect individual users' choices properly.

It has been suggested on #debian-devel that maybe creating a per-user
~/bin with its own alternatives links might be an option, however there
needs to be a fallback mechanism in case the currently selected option
goes away. Perhaps it might be an idea to have a wrapper binary that
will fall back on the highest precedence alternative in this case, or
optionally show a menu (gee, there may be multiple wrapper programs, so
there needs to be a mechanism to select them...NOT!).

This message shall serve as a starting point for discussion. Please CC
the bug in replies.

   Simon

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (50, 'experimental')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15-1-powerpc
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
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=eOr6
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
#604959#10
Date:
2006-01-19 17:01:19 UTC
From:
To:
        Hi,

 We had a similar problem for GNOME recently, but not on the terminal
 emulator front, it was with web browsers.

 Rationale: you don't want to see konqueror launched as the default
 browser in GNOME but you want GNOME to be integrated with Debian.


 The www-browser and x-www-browser alternatives provide an useful mean
 for classing browsers system-wide with a priority.
 The sensible-browser script is an useful entry point to launch the most
 suitable browser from the current environment.  sensible-browser will
 use the environment to guess what browser or alternative to launch
 (browsers in $BROWSER, x-www-browser, www-browser in xterm,
 www-browser).

 It is simple to extend this scheme with:
 - gnome-www-browser for browsers with GNOME support (epiphany-browser,
   galeon, firefox-gnome-support, ...)
 - check for $DISPLAY and eg. $GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID in
   sensible-browser to decide to launch gnome-www-browser or default to
   x-www-browser

 These changes were commited in galeon and epiphany's SVN, the changes
 to sensible-browser and to firefox remain to be done.

 Of course, this could be followed for KDE too.

 Simon, would this help with the problem you mentionned?

   Cheers,
#604959#15
Date:
2006-01-20 18:01:22 UTC
From:
To:
Hello,

Loïc Minier wrote:

Ah, I remember that one as well.

And GNOME would by default be configured to launch gnome-www-browser,
thus solving the problem for GNOME users who do not set any other
browser in gnomecc. The question for me would be whether this affects
people who use neither GNOME nor KDE (the browsers optimized for a
specific environment could then be demoted to some lower priority than
the non-specific ones, perhaps?)

Sounds good.

You mean, that they now register as an alternative for gnome-www-browser?

It should not be difficult to get that done. I had somehow expected that
the bug report and any followups are forwarded to -devel to spark
discussion, so I'm explicitly forwarding it there.

Not entirely, since it isn't limited to browsers or terminals. Many
users have personal preferences about things that are currently handled
through the alternatives system, and the sysadmin's choice (or
non-choice, as in the "bumping priorities" scenario) will affect them.

For example, everytime a GNOME or KDE application launches, a lot of
dotfiles will be created for me, so I'd like to avoid this as much as
possible as I will only have to clean up afterwards.

    Simon
#604959#20
Date:
2006-01-22 19:38:49 UTC
From:
To:
        Hi,

 GNOME could then be configured to launch either sensible-browser or
 gnome-www-browser (my preference would go to sensible-browser because
 it makes sense system-wide, not only under GNOME).

 I'm not sure about demoting the priorities.  I think priorities should
 decrease with the number of users because the more specific a package
 is (in terms of number of users) the more likely you want it to be the
 default, but I suppose there's no general rule, and it's difficult to
 measure the importance of launching a browser matching the current
 environment with respect to its popularity.

 epiphany-browser and galeon do, yes.

 My response went through debian-devel when I Cc: the bug report, so
 I'm continuing this way.

 Yes.  However, I consider that the system command sensible-browser is
 user-configurable (via $BROWSER) and the GNOME environment is
 user-configurable (via gconf settings), so for the browser choice front
 system-wide and in GNOME, I'm satisfied with the way of things.

 Hmm, this sounds like a whole new class of problems.

   Cheers,
#604959#27
Date:
2010-11-24 17:24:55 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

Simon Richter wrote:
[lxterm having higher priority than konsole on KDE systems]

. unlike browsers with $BROWSER and desktop-specific settings, there
  is no standard, cross-distro way to make a user-specific choice of
  terminal

. apps integrated into Debian can and should be using
  x-terminal-emulator, without an explicit "/usr/bin/", as hinted at
  by policy §6.1 "Introduction to package maintainer scripts"

. therefore users can put a script implementing whatever policy they
  choose in ~/bin/x-terminal-emulator, but:

   1. that requires more know-how than many users have
   2. applications not integrated into Debian would just use xterm
      anyway, which is not so great.

To solve (1): an interested person could make an app that installs an
easily configurable ~/bin/x-terminal-emulator script.  This seems
like a rfp rather than a general bug, if anything.

To solve (2): one could introduce a TERMINAL environment variable
analogous to MAILER and implement xdg-terminal that reads it.  Please
clone this bug and assign to xdg-utils if interested.

Sensible?
Jonathan
#604959#37
Date:
2010-11-25 18:43:55 UTC
From:
To:
clone 348775 -1
reassign -1 xdg-utils 1.0.2+cvs20100307-3
retitle xdg-utils please introduce (sane) xdg-terminal
tags -1 + upstream
quit

Paul Wise wrote:

When no desktop is in use, it uses $TERM to choose a terminal,
so on this machine it would end up trying to run 'linux'. :)
Using $TERMINAL would fix that, I think.
#604959#52
Date:
2026-06-26 16:33:45 UTC
From:
To:
Including the upstream xdg-terminal script in xdg-utils would resolve a
number of Debian bugs related to scheme-handlers. See:
* https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-utils/-/merge_requests/160

* https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=885346
* https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=924625