Older Releases

Changes in 2011

New in 20111229:

  • Default color schemes (created only in brand new installations) have been tweaked slightly so that ANSI colors look better.

New in 20111228:

  • Preferences window now supports generic import and export for ALL types of collections. When any collection drawer is open you will now find an "Export to File…" command in the submenu of the gear button and an "Import from File…" command in the submenu of the "+" button. These files are in XML property list format.
  • Added Prefs.import_from_file() to Quills, allowing preference file imports to be requested from Python.
  • Help has been updated to describe how collections of preferences generally work.

New in 20111226:

  • Fixed command-click to once again be a short-cut for selecting and opening a URL. (It has always been possible to do this manually via the "Open URL" command in the File menu.)
  • Document icon artwork has significantly changed.

New in 20111225:

  • Fixed certain rare alert messages to omit Quit buttons because catastrophic errors had not occurred.
  • Alert messages for certain rare errors are now better at explaining the problem.

New in 20111224:

  • Servers panel now has a pop-over window style.

New in 20111206:

  • Fixed Growl notifications, which were accidentally disabled several builds ago. Also added support for version 1.3.x of Growl (the App Store version).

New in 20111130:

  • Preferences window Workspaces pane can now cause Full Screen to start automatically when a workspace is spawned. This also means that Full Screen begins at startup time if you enable the setting for your Default Workspace.

New in 20111126:

  • Fixed Servers panel so that the host lookup progress icon is animated.
  • Servers panel has been modified so that discovered hosts appear in the panel instead of in a bottom drawer.

New in 20111121:

  • Fixed minor behavioral problems with the new Find interface, such as when terminal windows were minimized.
  • The Rename menu command is now Cocoa-based and has a pop-over window style.

New in 20111116:

  • Animation for highlighting search results has been further enhanced.
  • Animation for "Find Cursor" has been further enhanced.

New in 20111114:

  • Terminal search is now Cocoa-based and has a more refined appearance and behavior.
  • Added Matt Gemmell's MAAttachedWindow to the project, which will be used to implement numerous pop-over windows.

New in 20111015:

  • Fixed a problem where tilde markers (~) appeared repeatedly if sessions were killed and restarted.
  • Preferences window Macros pane now leaves more space for editing the content of a macro.

New in 20111014:

  • Fixed a major inheritance problem where a collection (Macro Set, Workspace, Session, Terminal, Format or Translation) did not always fall back on the Default collection for undefined settings.
  • Fixed Preferences window Sessions pane Data Flow tab to save settings properly.
  • Preferences window Sessions pane Data Flow tab now contains a Line Insertion Delay setting, which is a graphical way to modify the recently-added low-level preference "data-send-paste-line-delay-milliseconds".
  • New "Force-Quit and Keep Window" command (hidden, requiring Control key in File menu); kills processes like "Restart Session" does, but without the restart.
  • New "Force Quit" toolbar item, which shares the space of the "Restart" item (based on whether or not anything is running). Note that regardless of the visibility of the Restart icon, the "Restart Session" command is always available in the File menu.
  • Preferences window Full Screen pane "Allow Force Quit command" setting now ensures that "Force-Quit and Keep Window" and "Restart Session" will not work in Full Screen mode (in addition to prohibiting the system-wide "Force Quit" command, as before).

New in 20111009:

  • The "Restart Session" command can now run at any time, not just when a session has ended. If appropriate, a confirmation warning is displayed prior to killing the active session.
  • The "Restart Session" command now has a toolbar icon.

New in 20111007:

  • Toolbar icon artwork has significantly changed.
  • Toolbar "Separator" item removed from customization sheets since it is not available on Mac OS X Lion.

New in 20111004:

  • Fixed Preferences window Sessions pane Keyboard tab (and Custom Key Sequences sheet) to save and restore the mapping settings at the bottom of the interface.
  • IMPORTANT NOTE: If new-lines now behave unexpectedly, use the Preferences window Sessions pane Keyboard tab (or Custom Key Sequences sheet) to update your new-line setting.
  • The Emacs meta key mapping "control + command" has been removed because this key combination is no longer detectable (perhaps it is reserved by the OS). The meta key can now be mapped to "shift + option" however.
  • Preferences window Sessions pane Keyboard tab (and Custom Key Sequences sheet) now provide more options for new-line definitions.
  • The factory default new-line definition is now "line feed only". Note that this will only be seen when creating preferences from scratch.

New in 20111003:

  • Fixed "Select All" and other editing problems for floating windows like the Command Line and the Servers panel.

New in 20110930:

  • Fixed certain timer-dependent features on Panther, such as updates to the Clipboard window.
  • Multiple-line text inserted by Paste or drag-and-drop is now sent line-by-line, and the target Session's preferred new-line sequence is inserted after each line that originally ended with a new-line character or sequence.
  • Multiple-line text inserted by Paste or drag-and-drop now supports more possible line separators; not just traditional sequences like CR or CR-LF, but even Unicode delimiters.
  • New low-level preference "data-send-paste-line-delay-milliseconds" to control the length of the short delay between lines during line-by-line Paste; the factory default is 10 (that is, it is nearly instantaneous).

New in 20110927:

  • "Reset Graphics Characters" has been removed, as this is no longer feasible to support with Unicode storage and it is no longer likely to be a problem in a pure UTF-8 terminal.

New in 20110925:

  • Fixed Preferences window Sessions pane Resource tab (and Custom New Session sheet) so that command lines won't be silently ignored in certain cases after being constructed by one of the top buttons or the predefined Sessions menu.

New in 20110924:

  • Preferences window Sessions pane Resource tab (and Custom New Session sheet) now allow a command line to be initialized from the Shell or Log-In Shell types. The previous "Server Settings…" option is still available but it is now called Remote Shell.
  • Preferences window Sessions pane Resource tab (and Custom New Session sheet) now allow a command line to be initialized by copying the command line of any other Session Favorite. Note that this is not a permanent association, it is akin to copying and pasting from another set of preferences; and the command line can still be customized afterwards.

New in 20110910:

  • Fixed Function Keys palette so that the pop-up menu is no longer killed by closing the window.
  • Fixed Function Keys palette so that the pop-up menu cannot be visible if the window is hidden.
  • Full Screen mode toolbar icon has been horizontally flipped for better consistency with Apple convention.

New in 20110902:

  • Animation for highlighting search results has been greatly enhanced.
  • Animation for opening URLs has been greatly enhanced.
  • Animation for "Find Cursor" has been greatly enhanced.

New in 20110831:

  • Fixed offscreen windows when "Duplicate Session" was used repeatedly during an animation.
  • Animation for hiding terminal windows has been greatly enhanced.
  • Animation for closing terminal windows now scales the window size down as well.

New in 20110829:

  • Animations for closing and duplicating terminal windows have been greatly enhanced.

New in 20110827:

  • Map menu now contains 4 layout choices for the "Function Keys" palette: VT220 / "multi-gnome-terminal", XTerm (X11), XTerm (XFree86) / "gnome-terminal" / GNU "screen", and "rxvt".
  • Function Keys palette now contains a pop-up menu in its title bar, offering the same 4 layout choices.
  • Function Keys palette now gives useful default behaviors to F1-F5 in all layouts.
  • Function Keys palette now contains up to 48 function keys (most new layouts use 48).
  • Function Keys palette may now be resized to show 24 or 48 keys, although selecting a layout does this automatically.
  • Floating keypad windows may now be minimized into the Dock when not in Full Screen mode.

New in 20110820:

  • Floating windows that were visible at last Quit are now redisplayed at startup time.

New in 20110817:

  • Fixed a problem with XTerm sequences (window titles and colors) in non-UTF-8 terminals.

New in 20110805:

  • Service "Open Folder in MacTerm" has been enhanced so that it works from folder contextual menus in the Finder.

New in 20110804:

  • Fixed terminal device allocation so that sessions cannot fail to open in multi-user environments where some devices are already in use.

New in 20110803:

  • Fixed a possible crash if the application was backgrounded after a session failed to open.
  • Fixed the font of alert message titles.
  • Session exit notification windows now include error descriptions for processes that return standard system exit status values.

New in 20110802:

  • Fixed "Show Clipboard" so that it can be invoked at any time, not just when a terminal window is active.
  • Service "Open Folder in MacTerm" is now available; System Preferences (Keyboard) may be used to enable it.
  • Services are now implemented using Cocoa, which makes them slightly more robust on newer OS versions.

New in 20110731:

  • Since Mac OS X Lion has its own meaning for Option-resizing a window, MacTerm now requires the Control key to activate its "swap resize preference" behavior.

New in 20110729:

  • Fixed a possible startup failure on older versions of Mac OS X.
  • Application-modal alert windows are now Cocoa-based and have a more refined appearance and behavior, including animation on Mac OS X Lion.

New in 20110728:

  • Terminal views now correctly render diagonal line characters and the diagonal cross character.

New in 20110727:

  • Fixed UTF-8 decoder corner cases based on problems discovered by Markus Kuhn's decoder stress test, http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/UTF-8-test.txt.
  • Fixed terminals to decode UTF-8 up front (when enabled by the current Translation) instead of at echo time.
  • Fixed VT220 and higher emulators to interpret 8-bit/unescaped control sequences correctly, even in UTF-8 terminals.
  • Terminals now recognize the sequences for entering and exiting "UTF-8 mode", as registered with ISO 2022.
  • On later versions of Mac OS X, UTF-8 sessions now configure pseudo-terminal devices so that backspace will remove as many bytes as necessary to delete the previous code point.

New in 20110723:

  • The command for full-screen terminals is now named "Enter Full Screen" and has the key equivalent of control-command-F to match the convention of Mac OS X Lion.

New in 20110721:

  • Preferences window General pane Options tab has a new "Fade in background" preference that makes all terminal windows semi-transparent when the application is in the background.
  • New low-level preference "terminal-fade-alpha" (float, in Formats), to determine the amount of fading in background windows; the factory default is 0.4.

New in 20110714:

  • Fixed Preferences window Formats pane ANSI Colors tab so that a reset uses the right colors.

New in 20110713:

  • Fixed color boxes to recognize non-RGB colors from the Colors panel.

New in 20110707:

  • Fixed a problem where sliders in the Fonts panel or Colors panel could erase MacTerm windows.

New in 20110702:

  • Renamed! MacTelnet on Mac OS X will be known as "MacTerm" from now on.

New in 20110701:

  • Fixed a problem with the time calculation that determines when to display a Check for Updates warning.

New in 20110629:

  • Preferences have migrated to the "net.macterm" domain, in preparation for a widescale renaming of the project.
  • Converter utility that runs for out-of-date preferences will move all "com.mactelnet" settings to the new domain.
  • The automatically-imported customization module must now be named "customize_macterm", not "customize_mactelnet".

New in 20110622:

  • Fixed Full Screen mode when the scroll bar is set to hidden so that the terminal occupies all extra space on the side.

New in 20110619:

  • Fixed alert messages that showed a miniature application icon in the wrong corner of the larger icon.
  • Notification windows (background alerts) are now Cocoa-based and have a more refined appearance and behavior.
  • Now displays a background message at launch time if its version is more than 2 months old. The message has an Ignore button that quells future warnings.

New in 20110618:

  • Fixed a problem with the Servers panel where user IDs were unreasonably limited to only letters and numbers.

New in 20110609:

  • Fixed constraints on window resizing in certain sheets.

New in 20110608:

  • Preferences window Macros pane now has an "Insert Control Key Character…" button, which simplifies escape code entry in macros that allow substitution.

New in 20110607:

  • Fixed a preferences problem that caused blank collections to be saved under the old names of renamed collections.

New in 20110606:

  • Preferences window Terminals pane Emulation tab now offers the tweak "XTerm Background Color Erase", which is enabled by default. This setting greatly improves the appearance of text editors and other "full window" programs that set their own terminal colors.

New in 20110605:

  • Saved session files now remember and restore the name of the active macro set.
  • Preferences window Macros pane now uses no key mapping as a factory default instead of overriding function keys.

New in 20110527:

  • Fixed some menu commands so that they are disabled when no terminal windows are open.
  • Terminal window toolbars now have a different default arrangement of items.

New in 20110521:

  • Fixed display glitches on Mac OS X Panther in the "Servers" window and the "IP Addresses of This Mac" window.
  • Alert messages now have a slightly different title style.

New in 20110427:

  • The factory default for "Treat backquote key like Escape" has changed to be false (though existing user preferences will not change).

New in 20110423:

  • Fixed a crash that occurred on some versions of Mac OS X when the Dock icon was updated from the background (Trac #41).
  • The "Paste Buffering" preference has been removed, and buffering is now managed automatically.

New in 20110420:

  • Significantly improved the performance of string transmissions, such as Paste, drag-and-drop and macros.
  • Alert messages now have a slightly different style.

New in 20110417:

  • Fixed major bug affecting programs that inherit signal masks (like "bash"); they now handle control-C correctly.
  • Since IPv4 addresses are still quite common, the "IP Addresses of This Mac" window now shows both IPv4 and IPv6.

New in 20110412:

  • Fixed Custom Key Sequences sheet so that clicks in the Control Keys palette do not affect the terminal window.

New in 20110411:

  • Preferences window Terminals pane Emulation tab now offers XTerm as a Base Emulator type (incomplete).
  • Note that XTerm tweaks may still be enabled for other terminal types (like VT220), and this is recommended.

New in 20110408:

  • Fixed a problem where erased parts of lines would not automatically refresh (was triggered in programs like "lynx").
  • Fixed VT220 to handle character insert and erase ("ICH" and "ECH") even if XTerm features are not enabled.
  • Fixed VT220 to support selective erase ("DECSCA", "DECSED", "DECSEL").

New in 20110406:

  • Fixed Local Echo to only float special key names, and insert all other text into the terminal.

New in 20110405:

  • VT220 soft-reset sequence is now recognized.

New in 20110404:

  • VT220 sequences for selecting 7-bit or 8-bit responses ("DECSCL", "S7C1T", "S8C1T") are now implemented.

New in 20110403:

  • Fixed terminal window keyboard rotation on Mac OS X 10.6 so that only windows in the active Space can be chosen.
  • Fixed VT220 to correctly parse the software compatibility level sequence.

New in 20110331:

  • Fixed Preferences window Sessions pane Data Flow tab to save and restore the Paste Buffering setting correctly.

New in 20110330:

  • Fixed Local Echo to generate text in a few cases where echoes were previously suppressed.
  • Terminal text that is written by Local Echo now floats above the cursor instead of occupying the space of normal text.
  • Terminal text that is written by Local Echo is now converted into special symbols or key descriptions when appropriate.
  • Terminal text that is written by Local Echo now appears before equivalent text is sent to the session.

New in 20110329:

  • Fixed VT220 device status reports.
  • Fixed VT220 "identify" sequence.
  • Fixed VT220 device attribute reports to include printer port information.
  • Fixed Local Echo for text sent by Paste, the floating command line and macros.

New in 20110328:

  • Fixed terminal emulators to not try to render skipped characters, such as the VT100 null (0) and delete (127).
  • Fixed VT220 (and above) emulators to recognize various sequences for switching character sets.
  • Fixed VT220 device attribute reports.

New in 20110326:

  • Fixed Full Screen mode to remove the resize control from the lower-right corner of the window.
  • Fixed Full Screen mode to disable scroll wheel actions that adjust the window size.
  • Fixed Full Screen mode to disable scroll wheel scrolling if the preference to hide the scroll bar is set.

New in 20110324:

  • Fixed Full Screen mode so that a variety of menu commands are disabled (as they mess with the full screen view).

New in 20110323:

  • Fixed some minor consistency issues with margins in terminal windows.
  • Fixed text zooming (such as in Full Screen) to properly take character width scaling into account.
  • Fixed a possible performance problem when resizing windows.
  • Selecting the name of a Format from the View menu now uses Default values for inherited settings.

New in 20110313:

  • Fixed a possible crash after clicking in the terminal window margin near the window's size box.

New in 20110311:

  • Help has been updated to include examples of mapping various function keys to macros.

New in 20110227:

  • Fixed a problem with colors and formatting not being cleared in certain programs when lines were scrolled.
  • XTerm sequences that request bright colors will now work even if the corresponding text is not boldface.

New in 20110226:

  • XTerm compatibility has significantly improved with this build, as detailed in the following notes.
  • XTerm sequences for character insert and erase ("ICH" and "ECH") are now implemented.
  • XTerm sequences for cursor positioning ("CHA", "HPA", "VPA", "CNL" and "CPL") are now implemented.
  • XTerm sequences for jumping by tab stop ("CHT" and "CBT") are now implemented.
  • XTerm sequences for arbitrary scrolling of lines ("SU" and "SD") are now implemented.
  • XTerm window and icon title sequences now allow new-style string terminators in addition to old-style bell terminators.
  • Help style and layout have improved, including changes to the font, text wrapping and headings.

New in 20110224:

  • Fixed menus so that command keys for disabled items are no longer typed into the active terminal window.
  • Fixed "Make Text as Big as Possible" command so that the window frame stays on the screen.
  • Added a 4th default color scheme (only installed when no other Formats exist).

New in 20110223:

  • Preferences window Formats pane now creates default color schemes if NO other custom Formats are in the list.

New in 20110212:

  • Toolbar icon artwork has been completely redone; colors have been removed, and icons are crisper and flatter.

New in 20110210:

  • Fixed a display problem that could cut off lines at the bottom when text was zoomed (such as in Full Screen).

New in 20110201:

  • Fixed "Speak Incoming Lines of Text" command, though speech behavior is simplistic and improvements are planned.

New in 20110131:

  • Fixed Macros menu key equivalents to stay in sync with the active macro set even if the menu is never opened.

New in 20110125:

  • The "Log-In Shell" command in the File menu is now visible by default; the Control key shows the Shell command.
  • Terminal windows now join the frontmost tab stack when they first appear, if the frontmost window has tabs.
  • Terminal windows spawned by a tabbed workspace now use a separate tab stack instead of joining the frontmost one.
  • Terminal windows now use new workspaces if the Option key is down when a session is chosen from the File menu.

New in 20110124:

  • Fixed Preferences window Macros pane to prevent new collections from copying part of the Default set.

New in 20110116:

  • Fixed redundant Window menu items on older versions of Mac OS X.

New in 20110115:

  • Fixed console warnings about unrecognized preferences.
  • The internal preferences version has been changed to 5, and a few obsolete settings will be automatically deleted.

New in 20110114:

  • Fixed various problems that could occur when sessions fail (due to unreachable servers, etc.).
  • Preferences window General pane Notifications tab can now open the Growl preferences pane, if it is installed.

New in 20110112:

  • Fixed a possible crash when certain windows were opened, especially at startup time.
  • Fixed a problem that could spam warnings about missing preferences to the console.

New in 20110111:

  • Fixed Macros menu to display all macro sets from Preferences.
  • Preferences window Formats pane Character Width setting may now be adjusted from 60% to 140%.

New in 20110108:

  • A special customization module is now imported implicitly if it exists.

New in 20110107:

  • Added keyword parameter for Base.all_init() to Quills, allowing Python code to customize the startup workspace.

New in 20110104:

  • Fixed a problem where it was too hard to select text or otherwise use the mouse when close to the edge of a terminal.
  • Fixed text display when inserting in the middle of a line.
  • Fixed Paste to convert new-line characters (^J) into carriage returns (^M), to avoid confusing some programs.

New in 20110101:

  • Fixed a problem where floating windows could not transfer keyboard focus back to terminal windows that were clicked.
  • Fixed various cases of menu commands being enabled when they were not meant to be.
  • Certain terminal window commands, such as macros, nudging, printing, notification and suspend, are now available even while a sheet is open in the foreground.
  • Terminal views that use proportional fonts now look better, thanks to a letter-sensitive heuristic for manual alignment.