Update (12/2009): Terminal.app colors in Snow Leopard
Original post (6/2008): The Mac OS X Terminal gets a little better with each release of the OS, and the version in 10.5 (Leopard) was no exception. But there are still a few little problems. Like the fact that by default the backspace and delete keys don't work properly and consistently when sshing to machines running different unix variants. And problems with color working consistently with apps that use ncurses. All of this hearkens back to some sort of inconsistent/buggy implementation of the turtles-all-the-way-down unix terminal emulation that underlies it all. There isn't really a "solution" to this problem in the traditional sense, but you can get close enough if you (kind of) understand the issues at play. Some advice from over the years:
- 2004: grant: backspace/delete
- 2004: evan_tech -- Debian, Terminal.app, backspace, and color
- 2006: Setting up the Mac OS X 10.4 Terminal.app
- 2007: Fixing the delete key in Terminal.app
- 2008: OS X Terminal Emulation Woes
I ultimately just took the advice of the last article and set my terminal to identify itself as dtterm in the Advanced tab of the Settings pane in the preferences. This (mostly) did the trick. I also selected Delete sends Ctrl-H in the Advanced tab and Use option as meta key in the Keyboard tab. This makes backspace more consistent a and allows me to eg use Meta-B and Meta-F to move backward and forward on word boundaries in the shell.
Another helpful tool to get a more readable black Terminal theme is this SIMBL hack which allows customization of ANSI colors. After installing it I used this terminal theme as a starting point for my own theme customization.
