Zterm

Introduction

Zterm (pronounced Zed-Term) is a simple terminal emulator using Vte and Gtk+ written using the Zig programming language. Some useful features of Zterm are:

• Multiple terminals can be open in tabs and panes within a single tab
• Configurable keybindings
• Comprehensive theming options
• Control over colors used
• Choice of backgrounds - solid color, transparent, image or gradient
• Simple and small graphical interface taking up less screen space than other similarly functional terminals

Installing

• Arch Linux and derivatives - Zterm is in the aur
• FreeBSD - A binary tarball is provided for the latest release of FreeBSD (at the time of release) on the releases page over at codeberg.org.

Other Linux distros or operating systems will have to build from source, see Building.

=> Zterm aur package | Releases on Codeberg

Building

You will need the Zig compiler, version 0.9.0, available from ziglang.org. You will also need the Gtk-3.x and vte libraries plus development headers installed on your system.

=> https://ziglang.org

Zterm is built using the Zigmod) package manager for Zig.

=> Zogmod

zigmod ci
zig build -Drelease-safe=true

This will place the executable in zig-out/bin and the icon and .desktop file in the appropriate subdirectories of zig-out/share. To Install somewhere else, one can simple set the prefix like so.

zig build -Drelease-safe=true --prefix /some/directory

The data directory can also be adjusted if necessary. For instance, if one wanted to install Zterm in their home directory, with the executable in ~/bin and the data files in ~/.local/share, it can be done like so.

zig build -Drelease-safe=true --prefix $HOME -Ddatadir=".local/share"

Assuming one has ~/bin in their $PATH, this should be sufficent to add a menu entry and icon in most modern Unix desktop environments, without needing root permissions.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The following table gives the default keybindings. If any customization is desired, see configuration.

| Shortcut         | Action                  |
| ---------------- | ------                  |
| Ctrl/Shift/T     | New Tab                 |
| Ctrl/Shift/Enter | New Pane                |
| Alt/R            | Change Pane Orientation |
| Alt/[1-9]        | Goto [num] Tab          |
| Alt/UpArrow      | Previous Tab            |
| Ctrl/PageUp      | Previous Tab            |
| Alt/DownArrow    | Next Tab                |
| Ctrl/PageDown    | Next Tab                |
| Alt/RightArrow   | Next Pane               |
| Alt/LeftArrow    | Previous Pane           |
| Ctrl/Shift/Q     | Quit                    |

Command line options

Usage: zterm [-h] [-e ] [-t