I understand that xfce-terminal polls .config/xfce4/terminal/terminalrc for changes. I would like to use this behavior in my advantage, e.g. to edit the config file automatically to implement zooming or change the colors with keybindings. If I make a trivial change and save, the running terminal reverts to the default settings. If I then close all terminals and restart the terminal, the settings _do_ come through as intended. This last check tells me that the updated file is correct, and that there seems to be something wrong in the "hot reloading" of the preferences.
Just as extra clarification, by reverting to the default settings I mean: settings revert to "clean install", as if the settings file had been deleted entirely!
I figured out some more parts... up to the maintainer to call this a bug or a feature :-) I just noticed that the problem does not happen when editing the file in a temporary location, and then moving the file over the old location. The problem can also be recovered from by simply touching the file terminalrc after the reset-to-defaults happens. I suppose xfce-terminal is so quick to poll that it sees the half-written file that vim produces while saving before the saving is finished; but this is conjecture. A few last details... I tried to produce the original problem on an Ubuntu 14.04 system (which also has terminal 0.6.3) but was not succesful (in reproducing the bug). The original bug happened on a NixOs system.
Hi, I cannot reproduce this on current git version running on Ubuntu 16.04, with any of the following editors: mcedit, nano, vim. This must be a NixOs issue. BTW, they should upgrade xfce4-terminal package: the latest released version is 0.8.5.1, and 0.6.3 was released 3.5 years ago.
Just adding a final remark here if anyone ever stumbles across this: the problem is not reproducible for me today, even though I'm still running the same system. Weird indeed.