commit 0d7624acfc4374326d0085822ae000ccd3b60d17
parent 0d22decc2273c8ee960ffe97fad9a40746e2b6f8
Author: Jake Bauer <jbauer@paritybit.ca>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2020 22:36:27 -0500
Publish new blog post
Diffstat:
7 files changed, 323 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
diff --git a/pages/blog.md b/pages/blog.md
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ thoughts and ideas. You can find links to other blogs that I follow on my
### 2020
<ul>
+ <li>2020-02-14 <a href="blog/urxvt-to-st">Switching from urxvt to st</a></li>
<li>2020-02-06 <a href="blog/website-redesign">Making My Website More Accessible</a></li>
</ul>
diff --git a/pages/blog/urxvt-to-st.md b/pages/blog/urxvt-to-st.md
@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
+## Switching from urxvt to st
+
+[//]: # "It's really important for me to have a terminal application that performs well, feels good to use, and has every feature that I need. Unfortunately, since I started using urxvt about a year ago now, I've slowly begun to notice things missing or not working quite right."
+
+[//]: # "main.min.css"
+
+[//]: #
+
+<div class="byline">
+<b>Written By:</b> Jake Bauer |
+ <b>Posted:</b> 2020-02-14 |
+ <b>Last Updated:</b> 2020-02-14
+</div>
+
+I spend most of my time working in the terminal. Whether it's email with
+Neomutt, music with ncmpcpp, programming with Neovim, or administrating my
+systems, I feel the most comfortable and in control when using the terminal.
+That's why it's really important for me to have a terminal application that
+performs well, feels good to use, and has every feature that I need without me
+noticing that something isn't working or doesn't look quite right.
+
+Unfortunately, since I started using urxvt about a year ago now, I've slowly
+begun to notice things missing or not working quite right. For example, despite
+being called "rxvt-unicode-256color", urxvt doesn't really handle unicode
+characters that well. Take a look at the example below:
+
+<figure>
+ <a href="urxvt-vim.png"><img src="/img/urxvt-vim.png" alt="A screenshot of neovim
+ in urxvt showing the statusline with two boxes where unicode characters
+ should be."/></a>
+</figure>
+
+This was really noticeable and, even though those unicode characters aren't
+super important, it would still annoy me when I saw boxes where characters
+should be. This was even worse when I was browsing the Internet using lynx in
+urxvt (this page is the [W3 Schools HTML5 Symbols
+Reference](https://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_utf_symbols.asp):
+
+<figure>
+ <a href="urxvt-lynx.png"><img src="/img/urxvt-lynx-thumb.png" alt="A screenshot
+ of lynx in urxvt on an HTML5 symbols reference page showing boxes where
+ unicode symbols should be."/></a>
+</figure>
+
+Not to mention, urxvt doesn't have truecolour support which, while not super
+important to me, is definitely a bonus in st's favour. The screenshot below
+shows urxvt's output for [this truecolour test](https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728):
+
+<figure>
+ <a href="urxvt-tc.png"><img src="/img/urxvt-tc.png" alt="A screenshot of urxvt's
+ output when tested for truecolour support where there isn't a smooth colour
+ gradient and many characters don't look right."/></a>
+</figure>
+
+I heard about st from other people on the Internet and from videos that I came
+across on Youtube and it intrigued me because of Suckless' (the creators of st)
+unique philosophy regarding software development. I also gave other terminals a
+try but either found them to need far too many dependencies (e.g. konsole,
+xfce4-terminal) or to just have far too many unnecessary features or feel slow
+to load (e.g. kitty). So I decided to give st a shot.
+
+Once I got done configuring it, and patching it with the couple additions that I
+wanted (a scrollback buffer and the ability to copy URLs so that I could open
+them in my browser), I compiled it and started playing around with it.
+Immediately I noticed that it felt just as fast as urxvt, it used less
+RAM (something like 10-15M per window instead of 20-25M), and, when testing
+side-by-side with urxvt, I would sometimes forget which terminal was which
+because st looked and felt just like urxvt. It was essentially a drop-in
+replacement even for the scripts that I have which launched applications using
+urxvt.
+
+But of course, I was really after better unicode and truecolour support. St
+delivered perfectly, despite only being told to use my regular font (fallback
+fonts aren't supported in st without a patch). Have a look:
+
+<figure>
+ <a href="st-vim.png"><img src="/img/st-vim.png" alt="A screenshot of neovim in st
+ showing the statusline with the correct characters displayed."/></a>
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+ <a href="st-lynx.png"><img src="/img/st-lynx-thumb.png" alt="A screenshot of lynx
+ in st on an HTML5 symbols reference page showing the right unicode
+ symbols."/></a>
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+ <a href="st-tc.png"><img src="/img/st-tc.png" alt="A screenshot of st's output
+ when tested for truecolour support where there is the expected smooth colour
+ gradient."/></a>
+</figure>
+
+I am very happy with st and I don't at all mind the fact that I have to
+re-compile it when I want to make changes or if a new version is released. It
+feels like a personal build of the software tailored to my needs without
+anything else that I don't need or don't want.
+
+If you want to try out st, follow this link to the [st
+website](https://st.suckless.org/). You can view my build of st in [my dotfiles
+repository](https://git.sr.ht/~jbauer/dotfiles).
diff --git a/pages/home.md b/pages/home.md
@@ -16,6 +16,8 @@ through the links at the top of the page.
src="/img/feed-icon.png" width="15" height="15" alt="Click for RSS Feed"/>
</a>
</div>
+2020-02-14 <a class="feed-item" href="blog/urxvt-to-st">New Blog Post: Switching from urxvt to st</a>
+
2020-02-06 <a class="feed-item" href="blog/website-redesign">New Blog Post: Making My Website More Accessible</a>
2020-01-08 <a class="feed-item" href="guides/firefox-new-tab-dark">New Guide: How to Make the New Tab Page Dark Themed in Firefox</a>
diff --git a/pages/uses.md b/pages/uses.md
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
[//]: # "Hardware; sub:Desktop; sub:Laptop; sub:Tablets; sub:Phone; sub:Server Equipment; Software"
-This page is for those whom are curious about the programs and equipment I use
+This page is for those who are curious about the programs and equipment I use
to get work done. It is inspired by [uses.tech](https://uses.tech/).
### Hardware
@@ -166,9 +166,13 @@ use them pretty much everywhere.
#### Terminal
-I use [urxvt](http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html) as my terminal
-emulator. I like how it can be configured with Xresources and that it's really
-simple and light. No frills.
+I use [st](https://st.suckless.org/) (aka Simple Terminal). I actually really
+like the model of patching a minimal piece of software with the features that I
+need and enjoy the simplicity, speed, and light feeling of it.
+
+I used to use [urxvt](http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html) but it
+didn't handle unicode that well and lacked truecolour support so [I switched to
+st](/blog/urxvt-to-st).
#### File Manager
@@ -178,10 +182,13 @@ manager.
#### Text Editor/IDE
-[Neovim](https://neovim.io/). I got used to the keybindings and can't switch now
-as they have been burned into my brain and muscles. I use a select few plugins
-and a colour scheme to make things the way I like them. Vim is quite powerful as
-both a text editor and a language-agnostic IDE.
+[Neovim](https://neovim.io/). I am very comfortable with the keybindings and
+modal nature of vim and vim-like editors. I use a select few plugins and a
+colour scheme but try to keep things as small and manageable as possible. Vim is
+quite powerful as both a text editor and a language-agnostic IDE. For example,
+its LaTeX support with the various LaTeX plugins (I use
+[LaTeX-Box](https://github.com/LaTeX-Box-Team/LaTeX-Box) as part of
+[vim-polyglot](https://github.com/sheerun/vim-polyglot)) is top notch.
#### Web Browser
@@ -247,10 +254,10 @@ application I want (e.g. open a Youtube feed in MPV).
#### Document Creation
-I use [LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/) for those tasks which require
-spreadsheets or when someone "requires" that something be submitted in .docx
-format but otherwise I use Neovim with either LaTeX, markdown, groff, or just
-plain text.
+I will typically write documents in either markdown or LaTeX. I use
+[LibreOffice](https://www.libreoffice.org/) for those tasks which require
+spreadsheets (I have a fairly complex budgeting spreadsheet) or when someone
+"requires" that something be submitted in .docx format.
#### Day Planning/Organization/Notes
diff --git a/public/feeds/blog-feed.xml b/public/feeds/blog-feed.xml
@@ -7,6 +7,106 @@
<description>The latest blog posts from paritybit.ca.
</description>
<item>
+ <title>New Blog Post: Switching from urxvt to st</title>
+ <link>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/urxvt-to-st</link>
+ <guid>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/urxvt-to-st</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 14 Feb 2020 22:34:26 -0500</pubDate>
+ <description><![CDATA[<h2>Switching from urxvt to st</h2>
+
+<div class="byline">
+<b>Written By:</b> Jake Bauer |
+ <b>Posted:</b> 2020-02-14 |
+ <b>Last Updated:</b> 2020-02-14
+</div>
+
+<p>I spend most of my time working in the terminal. Whether it's email with
+Neomutt, music with ncmpcpp, programming with Neovim, or administrating my
+systems, I feel the most comfortable and in control when using the terminal.
+That's why it's really important for me to have a terminal application that
+performs well, feels good to use, and has every feature that I need without me
+noticing that something isn't working or doesn't look quite right.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, since I started using urxvt about a year ago now, I've slowly
+begun to notice things missing or not working quite right. For example, despite
+being called "rxvt-unicode-256color", urxvt doesn't really handle unicode
+characters that well. Take a look at the example below:</p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="urxvt-vim.png"><img src="/img/urxvt-vim.png" alt="A screenshot of neovim
+ in urxvt showing the statusline with two boxes where unicode characters
+ should be."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p>This was really noticeable and, even though those unicode characters aren't
+super important, it would still annoy me when I saw boxes where characters
+should be. This was even worse when I was browsing the Internet using lynx in
+urxvt (this page is the <a href="https://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_utf_symbols.asp">W3 Schools HTML5 Symbols
+Reference</a>:</p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="urxvt-lynx.png"><img src="/img/urxvt-lynx-thumb.png" alt="A screenshot
+ of lynx in urxvt on an HTML5 symbols reference page showing boxes where
+ unicode symbols should be."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p>Not to mention, urxvt doesn't have truecolour support which, while not super
+important to me, is definitely a bonus in st's favour. The screenshot below
+shows urxvt's output for <a href="https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728">this truecolour test</a>:</p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="urxvt-tc.png"><img src="/img/urxvt-tc.png" alt="A screenshot of urxvt's
+ output when tested for truecolour support where there isn't a smooth colour
+ gradient and many characters don't look right."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p>I heard about st from other people on the Internet and from videos that I came
+across on Youtube and it intrigued me because of Suckless' (the creators of st)
+unique philosophy regarding software development. I also gave other terminals a
+try but either found them to need far too many dependencies (e.g. konsole,
+xfce4-terminal) or to just have far too many unnecessary features or feel slow
+to load (e.g. kitty). So I decided to give st a shot.</p>
+
+<p>Once I got done configuring it, and patching it with the couple additions that I
+wanted (a scrollback buffer and the ability to copy URLs so that I could open
+them in my browser), I compiled it and started playing around with it.
+Immediately I noticed that it felt just as fast as urxvt, it used less
+RAM (something like 10-15M per window instead of 20-25M), and, when testing
+side-by-side with urxvt, I would sometimes forget which terminal was which
+because st looked and felt just like urxvt. It was essentially a drop-in
+replacement even for the scripts that I have which launched applications using
+urxvt.</p>
+
+<p>But of course, I was really after better unicode and truecolour support. St
+delivered perfectly, despite only being told to use my regular font (fallback
+fonts aren't supported in st without a patch). Have a look:</p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="st-vim.png"><img src="/img/st-vim.png" alt="A screenshot of neovim in st
+ showing the statusline with the correct characters displayed."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="st-lynx.png"><img src="/img/st-lynx-thumb.png" alt="A screenshot of lynx
+ in st on an HTML5 symbols reference page showing the right unicode
+ symbols."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="st-tc.png"><img src="/img/st-tc.png" alt="A screenshot of st's output
+ when tested for truecolour support where there is the expected smooth colour
+ gradient."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p>I am very happy with st and I don't at all mind the fact that I have to
+re-compile it when I want to make changes or if a new version is released. It
+feels like a personal build of the software tailored to my needs without
+anything else that I don't need or don't want.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to try out st, follow this link to the <a href="https://st.suckless.org/">st
+website</a>. You can view my build of st in <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~jbauer/dotfiles">my dotfiles
+repository</a>.</p>]]></description>
+</item>
+<item>
<title>New Blog Post: Making My Website More Accessible</title>
<link>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/website-redesign</link>
<guid>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/website-redesign</guid>
diff --git a/public/feeds/sitewide-feed.xml b/public/feeds/sitewide-feed.xml
@@ -7,6 +7,106 @@
<description>The feed that covers all notable additions, updates, announcements,
and other changes for the entire paritybit.ca website.</description>
<item>
+ <title>New Blog Post: Switching from urxvt to st</title>
+ <link>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/urxvt-to-st</link>
+ <guid>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/urxvt-to-st</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 14 Feb 2020 22:34:26 -0500</pubDate>
+ <description><![CDATA[<h2>Switching from urxvt to st</h2>
+
+<div class="byline">
+<b>Written By:</b> Jake Bauer |
+ <b>Posted:</b> 2020-02-14 |
+ <b>Last Updated:</b> 2020-02-14
+</div>
+
+<p>I spend most of my time working in the terminal. Whether it's email with
+Neomutt, music with ncmpcpp, programming with Neovim, or administrating my
+systems, I feel the most comfortable and in control when using the terminal.
+That's why it's really important for me to have a terminal application that
+performs well, feels good to use, and has every feature that I need without me
+noticing that something isn't working or doesn't look quite right.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, since I started using urxvt about a year ago now, I've slowly
+begun to notice things missing or not working quite right. For example, despite
+being called "rxvt-unicode-256color", urxvt doesn't really handle unicode
+characters that well. Take a look at the example below:</p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="urxvt-vim.png"><img src="/img/urxvt-vim.png" alt="A screenshot of neovim
+ in urxvt showing the statusline with two boxes where unicode characters
+ should be."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p>This was really noticeable and, even though those unicode characters aren't
+super important, it would still annoy me when I saw boxes where characters
+should be. This was even worse when I was browsing the Internet using lynx in
+urxvt (this page is the <a href="https://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_utf_symbols.asp">W3 Schools HTML5 Symbols
+Reference</a>:</p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="urxvt-lynx.png"><img src="/img/urxvt-lynx-thumb.png" alt="A screenshot
+ of lynx in urxvt on an HTML5 symbols reference page showing boxes where
+ unicode symbols should be."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p>Not to mention, urxvt doesn't have truecolour support which, while not super
+important to me, is definitely a bonus in st's favour. The screenshot below
+shows urxvt's output for <a href="https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728">this truecolour test</a>:</p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="urxvt-tc.png"><img src="/img/urxvt-tc.png" alt="A screenshot of urxvt's
+ output when tested for truecolour support where there isn't a smooth colour
+ gradient and many characters don't look right."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p>I heard about st from other people on the Internet and from videos that I came
+across on Youtube and it intrigued me because of Suckless' (the creators of st)
+unique philosophy regarding software development. I also gave other terminals a
+try but either found them to need far too many dependencies (e.g. konsole,
+xfce4-terminal) or to just have far too many unnecessary features or feel slow
+to load (e.g. kitty). So I decided to give st a shot.</p>
+
+<p>Once I got done configuring it, and patching it with the couple additions that I
+wanted (a scrollback buffer and the ability to copy URLs so that I could open
+them in my browser), I compiled it and started playing around with it.
+Immediately I noticed that it felt just as fast as urxvt, it used less
+RAM (something like 10-15M per window instead of 20-25M), and, when testing
+side-by-side with urxvt, I would sometimes forget which terminal was which
+because st looked and felt just like urxvt. It was essentially a drop-in
+replacement even for the scripts that I have which launched applications using
+urxvt.</p>
+
+<p>But of course, I was really after better unicode and truecolour support. St
+delivered perfectly, despite only being told to use my regular font (fallback
+fonts aren't supported in st without a patch). Have a look:</p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="st-vim.png"><img src="/img/st-vim.png" alt="A screenshot of neovim in st
+ showing the statusline with the correct characters displayed."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="st-lynx.png"><img src="/img/st-lynx-thumb.png" alt="A screenshot of lynx
+ in st on an HTML5 symbols reference page showing the right unicode
+ symbols."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p><figure>
+ <a href="st-tc.png"><img src="/img/st-tc.png" alt="A screenshot of st's output
+ when tested for truecolour support where there is the expected smooth colour
+ gradient."/></a>
+</figure></p>
+
+<p>I am very happy with st and I don't at all mind the fact that I have to
+re-compile it when I want to make changes or if a new version is released. It
+feels like a personal build of the software tailored to my needs without
+anything else that I don't need or don't want.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to try out st, follow this link to the <a href="https://st.suckless.org/">st
+website</a>. You can view my build of st in <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~jbauer/dotfiles">my dotfiles
+repository</a>.</p>]]></description>
+</item>
+<item>
<title>New Blog Post: Making My Website More Accessible</title>
<link>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/website-redesign</link>
<guid>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/website-redesign</guid>
diff --git a/public/sitemap.xml b/public/sitemap.xml
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
<url><loc>https://www.paritybit.ca</loc></url>
<url><loc>https://www.paritybit.ca/home</loc></url>
<url><loc>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog</loc></url>
+ <url><loc>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/urxvt-to-st</loc></url>
<url><loc>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/website-redesign</loc></url>
<url><loc>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/automating-publishing</loc></url>
<url><loc>https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/arguing-effectively</loc></url>
