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xterm no title (buster)

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  xterm no title (buster) Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> - 2020-08-08 11:20 +0200
    Re: xterm no title (buster) Long Wind <longwind2@yahoo.com> - 2020-08-08 11:50 +0200
      Re: xterm no title (buster) Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> - 2020-08-08 13:10 +0200
        Re: xterm no title (buster) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-08-08 14:50 +0200
    Re: xterm no title (buster) "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2020-08-08 12:00 +0200
    Re: xterm no title (buster) Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2020-08-08 14:30 +0200
      Re: xterm no title (buster) Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> - 2020-08-08 18:30 +0200
        Re: xterm no title (buster) Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> - 2020-08-08 19:00 +0200
          Re: xterm no title (buster) mick crane <mick.crane@gmail.com> - 2020-08-08 21:00 +0200
          Re: xterm no title (buster) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-08-09 10:00 +0200
            Re: xterm no title (buster) Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> - 2020-08-10 12:20 +0200
              Re: xterm no title (buster) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-08-10 13:50 +0200
                Re: xterm no title (buster) Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> - 2020-08-10 19:10 +0200
                  Re: xterm no title (buster) Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> - 2020-08-10 19:20 +0200
                    Re: xterm no title (buster) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-08-10 19:40 +0200
                Re: xterm no title (buster) dickey@invisible-island.net - 2020-08-11 12:00 +0200
    Re: xterm no title (buster) Mike Kupfer <mkupfer@alum.berkeley.edu> - 2020-08-09 00:20 +0200
      Re: xterm no title (buster) Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> - 2020-08-09 00:20 +0200

#226004 — xterm no title (buster)

Hello,

I have a funny problem since I upgraded my laptop to buster: xterm does not
have any title.

It is the only window that has this problem. I did not see anything special in
the .Xresources.

Anyone having this issue ?

Thank you for pointers.

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#226005

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 have you looked at .bashrc?
below is in my .bashrc of home dir:
# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
    PS1="\[\e]0;${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1"
    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac
    On Saturday, August 8, 2020, 5:18:44 AM EDT, Marc SCHAEFER <schaefer@alphanet.ch> wrote:  
 
 Hello,

I have a funny problem since I upgraded my laptop to buster: xterm does not
have any title.

It is the only window that has this problem. I did not see anything special in
the .Xresources.

Anyone having this issue ?

Thank you for pointers.

  

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#226007

On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 09:47:56AM +0000, Long Wind wrote:
> have you looked at .bashrc?

Actually, I have sent the usual title escape sequence: it works in mate-terminal,
but xterm's title remains blank.

Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net>:
Also I tried the -T option, with no success.

Running MATE in marco (buster).

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#226011

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On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 01:09:13PM +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 09:47:56AM +0000, Long Wind wrote:
> > have you looked at .bashrc?
> 
> Actually, I have sent the usual title escape sequence: it works in mate-terminal,
> but xterm's title remains blank.

Xterm's title is most probably your window manager's job. What's yours?

Cheers
-- t

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#226006

Hi,

Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> buster: xterm does not have any title.
> Anyone having this issue ?

Not on my (provisory) LXDE desktop.

xterms from the "System Tools" menu come with title "xterm".
The same with xterms started by: xterm &
xterms started by: xterm -T '' &
come up with the title "Unnamed Window".

In order to get an xterm with empty title bar, i have to do
  xterm -T ' ' &


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

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#226010

Hi Marc, long time no see,

> I have a funny problem since I upgraded my laptop to buster: xterm does not
> have any title.
> It is the only window that has this problem. I did not see anything special in
> the .Xresources.

Does it affect other terminal emulators?
Have you checked whether the problem also shows up for a freshly created
user (i.e. without any config of your own)?
What about if you use another window-manager and/or desktop-environment?

> Anyone having this issue ?

I haven't seen this here (using `ctwm` in XFCE).


        Stefan

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#226016

On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 08:25:39AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> Does it affect other terminal emulators?

no, mate-terminal is not affected.

> Have you checked whether the problem also shows up for a freshly created
> user (i.e. without any config of your own)?

yes, it does.

> What about if you use another window-manager and/or desktop-environment?

I haven't tried that yet.

also:

On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 02:42:18PM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> Xterm's title is most probably your window manager's job. What's yours?

MATE marco.

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#226019

> > What about if you use another window-manager and/or desktop-environment?
> 
> I haven't tried that yet.

I just tried twm and it says "Untitled" even with xterm -T abcd &

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#226022

On 2020-08-08 17:52, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
>> > What about if you use another window-manager and/or desktop-environment?
>> 
>> I haven't tried that yet.
> 
> I just tried twm and it says "Untitled" even with xterm -T abcd &

with Buster it looks like I have
window manager XFwm4
display manager lightdm
desktop environment xfce4

xterm has "mick@slinky:~" in the top left bit.

mick

-- 
Key ID    4BFEBB31

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#226032

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On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 06:52:22PM +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> > > What about if you use another window-manager and/or desktop-environment?
> > 
> > I haven't tried that yet.
> 
> I just tried twm and it says "Untitled" even with xterm -T abcd &

Oh, that is a hint: it seems xterm is failing to tell the window
manager about "its title".

To verify/falsify that, you might run xprop on your xterm window.
The property you are looking for is called WM_NAME. You can even
use xprop to /set/ the window property -- this way you can be sure
whether it's xterm who is forgetting to do the right thing (that
would be a bug to file against xterm) or it's your window manager
ignoring it.

Relevant search term for all of that is ICCCM [2]

HTH, cheers

[1] It's in the package x11-utils
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICCCM

 - t

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#226057

On Sun, Aug 09, 2020 at 09:59:12AM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> To verify/falsify that, you might run xprop on your xterm window.
> The property you are looking for is called WM_NAME. You can even

xprop | grep WM_NAME
WM_NAME(STRING) = "schaefer@reliand: /home/schaefer"

> use xprop to /set/ the window property -- this way you can be sure

xprop -f WM_NAME 8s -set WM_NAME "toto"

clicking on either the titleless xterm or an emacs changes nothing (*).

NB: the xterm window title is seen on MATE's taskbar.

> whether it's xterm who is forgetting to do the right thing (that
> would be a bug to file against xterm) or it's your window manager
> ignoring it.

As I am the only one to experience this, it must be some configuration
somewhere!

> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICCCM

Thank you, definitely is an interesting reference.

(*) examples often show xprop -set WM_NAME "toto" but it does not
    work (cannot convert WM_NAME argument to STRING or COMPOUND_TEXT),
    thus the -f

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#226058

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On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 12:14:30PM +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 09, 2020 at 09:59:12AM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > To verify/falsify that, you might run xprop on your xterm window.
> > The property you are looking for is called WM_NAME. You can even
> 
> xprop | grep WM_NAME
> WM_NAME(STRING) = "schaefer@reliand: /home/schaefer"

So xterm is "setting" [1] its title correctly.

> > use xprop to /set/ the window property -- this way you can be sure
> 
> xprop -f WM_NAME 8s -set WM_NAME "toto"

This is to be expected, after what you found out above.

[...]

Given that evidence, my guess is that the window manager is somehow
botching the title bar dispay. Either it tries to use some non-existent
font, or it's writing with the same background and foreground colour
or something.

Have you tried another "classic" X program? For example xmag or xeyes?

This may be a hint -- either your window manager is specifically treating
xterm in a special way, or the decorations of all "classic" X programs
fail in the same way.

Cheers

[1] Of course it cannot actually "set" the title. It just can ask
   politely the window manager to do it.

 - t

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#226072

On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 01:47:08PM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> Have you tried another "classic" X program? For example xmag or xeyes?

Yes, they fail miserably.

> xterm in a special way, or the decorations of all "classic" X programs
> fail in the same way.

I would guess that.

Should I try with another window-manager?  I will also double-check that
the other working buster MATE installation uses marco.

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#226073

On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 07:03:26PM +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> Should I try with another window-manager?  I will also double-check that
> the other working buster MATE installation uses marco.

The bug is NOT present with compiz.

The bug IS NOT present on a fresh buster install with marco.

I tried

  for i in .???*; do find $i -name '*marco*' -print; done

to see if any local marco-specific config existed, but could not find any.

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#226075

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On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 07:16:34PM +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 07:03:26PM +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> > Should I try with another window-manager?  I will also double-check that
> > the other working buster MATE installation uses marco.
> 
> The bug is NOT present with compiz.
> 
> The bug IS NOT present on a fresh buster install with marco.
> 
> I tried
> 
>   for i in .???*; do find $i -name '*marco*' -print; done
> 
> to see if any local marco-specific config existed, but could not find any.

Marco has a man page (online here [1]). In a typical [censored]
style, Marco has no config file: its config is woven into the
dumpster fire^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H gconf database. As to
which config items there are relevant and what effect they
have, the man page implicitly seems to have the words "good
luck".

But perhaps, just perhaps, you manage to find there how title
bar fonts and colouring.

My favourite hypotheses are those two: Marco is using a font
to render those titles which it somehow can't display or it
is displaying things fine, but with the same foreground and
background colours.

But I'm more than willing to take a third hypothesis into my
collection :)

Cheers
[1] https://manpages.debian.org/buster/marco/x-window-manager.1.en.html
 - t

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#226104

On Monday, August 10, 2020 at 7:50:04 AM UTC-4, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 12:14:30PM +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 09, 2020 at 09:59:12AM +0200, tomas wrote:
> > > To verify/falsify that, you might run xprop on your xterm window.
> > > The property you are looking for is called WM_NAME. You can even
> > 
> > xprop | grep WM_NAME
> > WM_NAME(STRING) = "schaefer@reliand: /home/schaefer"
> 
> So xterm is "setting" [1] its title correctly.
> 
> > > use xprop to /set/ the window property -- this way you can be sure
> > 
> > xprop -f WM_NAME 8s -set WM_NAME "toto"
> 
> This is to be expected, after what you found out above.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Given that evidence, my guess is that the window manager is somehow
> botching the title bar dispay. Either it tries to use some non-existent
> font, or it's writing with the same background and foreground colour
> or something.
> 
> Have you tried another "classic" X program? For example xmag or xeyes?
> 
> This may be a hint -- either your window manager is specifically treating
> xterm in a special way, or the decorations of all "classic" X programs
> fail in the same way.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> [1] Of course it cannot actually "set" the title. It just can ask
>    politely the window manager to do it.

While you can set the title for xmag and xeyes using the X Toolkit option "-title", it seems that OP may be doing something different.  For instance, if OP's shell sends escape sequences to set the title, that could be in UTF-8, which has been a problem (a) because the original protocol uses ISO-8859-1 and (b) because the corresponding X properties have to be handled as multibyte rather than strings.

EWMH sort-of fixes the problem by providing a different set of properties which hold UTF-8.  buster has xterm patch #344.  The most recent fix for xterm in this area is from patch #350:

https://packages.debian.org/buster/xterm
https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.log.html#xterm_350

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#226024

Marc SCHAEFER wrote:

> I have a funny problem since I upgraded my laptop to buster: xterm does not
> have any title.
> 
> It is the only window that has this problem. I did not see anything special in
> the .Xresources.
> 
> Anyone having this issue ?

I can't reproduce the problem (MATE, marco, xterm).  xterm comes up with
a title of "xterm", and I can set it to something else via an escape
sequence.

I assume you're using the system xterm, not something in /usr/local or
$HOME.

Could the problem be locale-related?  I have

  LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  XTERM_LOCALE=en_US.UTF-8

regards,
mike

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#226026

On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 02:22:44PM -0700, Mike Kupfer wrote:
> I assume you're using the system xterm, not something in /usr/local or
> $HOME.

yes
schaefer@reliand:~$ which xterm
/usr/bin/xterm

(BTW was working nice before upgrade to buster)


> Could the problem be locale-related?  I have
> 
>   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
>   XTERM_LOCALE=en_US.UTF-8

I tried setting the locale to

LANG=fr_CH.UTF-8
XTERM_LOCALE=fr_CH.UTF-8

and clearing the other settings to no avail.

I will do some tests tomorrow on a fresh buster install.

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