A URL in the terminal's text can be opened by Button3's menu's Open Link or Ctrl-Button1 click. I read through a load of mail, using the latter to open interesting URLs, and then de-minimise the browser and plough through the tabs. I'm taking it on trust that I've successfully Ctrl-Button1'd the URL and triggered a tab opening. If I didn't, I'd have forgotten by the time I switch from terminal to browser. It would be nice if there was some visual feedback to acknowledge the ButtonPress. Note, the URL is opened on the Press, not the Release, so there's no possibility of moving before Release to abandon the action. Given that, the feedback would also be on the Press. Inverting the URL's cells for the duration of the Press/Release could be sufficient. Or for a fixed, short, time. It would need trying to see what worked.
Sound like an interesting idea, Ralph. Just curious - have you seen anything like that in other terminals or console apps?
It doesn't seem that vte allows changing of its text, however. What do you think about showing a desktop notification (through libnotify) on opening an URI? This would be disabled by default, of course.
Hi Igor, No, I haven't seen another terminal do this, although my experience is limited to xterm, aixterm, gnome-terminal, and now xfce4-terminal. Shame on vte! :-) A notification would appear away from where I'm focussed and be a distraction. How about if the pointer changed shape for a short while? Even if "auto-hide mouse pointer" is on it should be visible at the moment because it's just been used.
Well, it seems that vte is also preventing the cursor shape from being changed. I mean, I can set the cursor but it will only be seen when pointing to the window decorations or the notebook; the vte widget, on contrary, is preserving its cursor. Ralph, do you have any other ideas about the indication?
Can vte_terminal_match_set_cursor_type() be used to alter the cursor for the tag of the regex that matched to highlight the URL in the first place?
I've already tried vte_terminal_match_set_cursor_type() - it sets cursor per regexp i.e. all URLs (no matter visited or not) would be shown with the same cursor. Or, we could store a list of visited URLs within the app and change the cursor when mouse pointer gets over an URL from the list. But, this still would require repeated pointing to the same URL for the cursor wouldn't change immediately.
I was thinking on the click of the URL, at which point one can get the tag of the regexp that matched, change the pointer type for that existing regexp to see if it has immediate effect, i.e. whilst the pointer is still over it. Change it back to HAND2, which xfce4-terminal set it to earlier, after N milliseconds. If it doesn't have immediate effect, e.g. the cursor has to move before it's re-checked, then perhaps VTE need prodding to point out UI feedback would be a nice to have so they can consider a means to provide it.
Hi Ralph, what do you think about this kind of popover as an indication? https://ibb.co/draxFk
Ralph?
Hi Igor, I think it's better than nothing, but not great, sorry. Feedback for something clicked is normally the clicked item. Because it seems that VTE is the hurdle, I opened https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=782256 recently to see if they could either offer ideas or see the need for VTE's interface to grow to provide clients with that feature.
Ralph, no, I agree it isn't perfect. Thanks for asking vte guys, let's see what there response will be.
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