Having recently created a custom terminal app to fit my usage needs, I quickly became aware of two issues with the terminal application that really bothered me.

1. when running screen, backspace didn't work. Since I typically have a screen session running when I'm using a terminal, this was a high priority problem. Fortunately, a bit of research in the VTE documentation turned up the class function "set_backspace_binding", which sets what type of input is sent when a user presses the backspace key. I opted for sending an ASCII Backspace character.

2. Being able to copy and paste from a terminal window is a feature that I have become accustomed to, yet muterm was definitely lacking. Easy enough, check key-presses and if the user has pressed "control+shift+c", copy the selected text in the terminal to the clipboard. Do I really need to mention what "control+shift+v" does? OK, it pastes text from the clipboard to the terminal.

Here is the new code with the fixes

using Gtk;
using Vte;
private class Term
{
    private Terminal term;
    private Term()
    {
        //start with a gtk window
        Window w;
        //we also need a vte terminal
        //create our new window
        w = new Window(Gtk.WindowType.TOPLEVEL);
        //create the new terminal
        term = new Terminal();
        //connect exiting on the terminal with quiting the app
        term.child_exited.connect ( (t)=> { Gtk.main_quit(); } );
        //connect keypress events from the window
        term.key_press_event.connect((w,event) => {this.process_event(event); } );
        //fork a command to run when the terminal is started
        term.fork_command(null,null,null,null, true, true,true);
        //set the default terminal backspace binding
        term.set_backspace_binding(TerminalEraseBinding.ASCII_BACKSPACE);
        //add the terminal to the window
        w.add(term);
        //maximize the window
        w.maximize();
        //undecorate the window
        w.set_decorated(false);
        //try to set the icon
        try{
            w.set_icon_from_file("/usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-term.png");
        }catch(Error er)
        {
            //we don't really need to print this error
            stdout.printf(er.message);
        }
        //show our window and all children of our window
        w.show_all();
    }
    private bool process_event(Gdk.EventKey event)
    {
        uint keyval;
        uint state;
        //we are looking for control+shift+c and control+shift+c
        keyval = event.keyval;
        state = event.state;
        //print some data
        if(keyval>0 && state>0)
        if(state==5)
        {
            if(keyval==67)
            {
                //this is a copy request
                term.copy_clipboard();
                return true;
            }else if(keyval==86)
            {
                //this is a paste request
                term.paste_clipboard();
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    }
    private void run()
    {
        //start the gtk mainloop
        Gtk.main();
    }

    private static void main(string[] args)
    {
        Term t;
        Gtk.init(ref args);
        t = new Term();
        t.run();
    }

}