Why remove choice for background image in mate-terminal 1.16.1?

Development Discussion
#1

So I pulled in a bunch of mate upgrades a day or two ago, and now in MATE Terminal 1.16.1, my terminal background image is gone.

So I go into mate-term’s profile prefs, to the “Background” tab, and where there used to be a selection to navigate to an image file to have as the background, that navigation selection is gone.

My dconf setting for mate-terminal’s background-image is still set to the image I use, but the image doesn’t actually appear as a background in mate-terminal.)

What on earth is up with that?! How can I choose a background image now, as we have always previously been able to do? This strikes me as a downgrade, not an upgrade.

mate-terminal devs, please advise.

#2

Hello watchpocket

I move you to a better forum where a dev may or may not see this.

May be better to just file a bug report.

#3

use and configure terminator instead if you want a background image for your terminal that badly. It’s not that hard to do, and the terminator package also sets x-terminal-emulator as itself as part of its post-inst script.

terminator also allows for use of multiple, simultaneous emulators side-by-side in a parent window, if you may find any use for that (as an example; Reading a man page alongside a command you’re inputting so you don’t need two terminal instances opened at once.)

#4

I figured I should follow up my advice; While you can make GNOME and MATE prefer x-terminal-emulator, if you use MATE Menu it will still open mate-terminal; To fix that, you need to do some script editing.

I’ll save you the bother and give you the part in question;
FIle /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mint_menu/plugins/system_management.py:

            Button4 = easyButton( "terminal", self.iconsize, [_("Terminal")], -1, -1 )
            if pathExists("x-terminal-emulator"):
                Button4.connect( "clicked", self.ButtonClicked, "x-terminal-emulator" )
            elif pathExists("xdg-terminal"):
                Button4.connect( "clicked", self.ButtonClicked, "xdg-terminal" )
            elif pathExists("mate-terminal"):
                Button4.connect( "clicked", self.ButtonClicked, "mate-terminal" )
            else:
                Button4.connect( "clicked", self.ButtonClicked, "xterm" )
            Button4.show()
            self.systemBtnHolder.pack_start( Button4, False, False, 0 )
            self.mateMenuWin.setTooltip( Button4, _("Use the command line") )```

Just search `if ( self.showTerminal == True ):` in `pluma` (ran as `sudo pluma` or `gksu pluma` and override the default block with the above. I tried making it so there was only one argument (ideally symbolic links would be for everything) but that didn't pan out so well for some reason. I probably miscoded but it's what I have and it works.
#5

This functionality had been removed from VTE (terminal widget library) at some point, and when mate-terminal was switched to GTK+3, we lost it. Now we’ll need to reimplement it from scratch to get it back. Other VTE-based terminals either do the same, or move on without this feature.

For reference, upstream report about this:

3 Likes
#6

Man his avatar is creepy; like some possessed, undead bomberman. But it’s at least comforting to know he removal of background image support isn’t Wimpy’s fault.