This is a feature request for xfce4-terminal I would like to ask for a non-wrap mode, which can quickly be turned on and off and can optionally show horizontal scrollbars. The reasons behind this: I often process large chunks of file in deep nested directories. Usually I expand the Terminal across 169x24 chars to keep a smooth seight on what's going on. Sometimes there are files (or text output) that are larger than the 169 chars and therefore wraps around to the next line. Quite often this distracts the other output that comes through the terminal. Therefore I would like to ask (and only if it's possible) to add a "no-wrap" or "wrap [x]" option to the right popup menu (there where you can also choose for fullscreen [x], read-only [x] or show menubar [x]. As soon as "wrap [x]" receives a selection, a horizontal scrollbar should show up either on the bottom or top of the VTE window allowing one to scroll right to left, left to right. the text that get's ouput should not wrap anymore but rather expand the scrollarea (for the scrollbar) to the right or left. The output of course continues as normally by each line going down the terminal by one line. The visibility of the horizontal scrollbar should be optionally as the vertical one and accessable through the terminal preferences. Maybe another dropdown window below "scrollbar is:" for "horizontal scrollbar:" (which might make the "scrollbar is:" name necessary to be changed to "vertical scrollbar:").
Hi, There's no way xfce4-terminal (or any other VTE-based app) could do it without VTE itself supporting it. And VTE is not going to support it, see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=769440 for explanation. Summary, quoting myself: "[...] terminal emulators as well as libraries and applications running inside would have to be built up differently from scratch." What a VTE-based app _could_ do, is to have a wider VTE widget, and show only a part of that along with a scrollbar in a viewport. The width of VTE would need to be set up in advance, though, and couldn't be automatic. What you could do: - Rely on "rewrap on resize", which is a feature that was mostly implemented for such cases. As soon as you see that the output has wrapped, you can widen your window accordingly to flat it out. - Use a designated viewer utility, such as "less", and scroll within that.
Thanks for the throughout explaination. My request was just an RFE (if possible) and if it's not possible then it's also ok. We can close this bugreport then...
Egmont, thanks for the explanation. Ali, sorry, but there isn't indeed much that I can do here. Hopefully, "less" could help you with your needs.