Use as a drop-down terminal ¶

A drop-down terminal (sometimes called Quake-style) is one that can be quickly invoked and hidden with a keystroke.

This can be easily done by setting up a system keybinding for either domterm window toggle-minimize or domterm window toggle-hide. These currently only work for the Electron front-end.

These commands will create a window if it doesn’t exist, make it visible if it is minimized/hidden, and minimize/hide it if it is visible. The difference between toggle-minimize and toggle-hide is that an minimized window may be still visible in the task bar, as an icon on the desktop, or during an “windows expose” operation; a hidden window is not. (This depends on the desktop environment.)

Configuring for Gnome desktop manager ¶

If you’re using the Gnome desktop (common on GNU/Linux systems), enter the system (desktop) Settings application, and select Devices and Keyboard shortcurs. Click the + at the bottom to add a new custom shortcut. You can then bind your preferred keybinding (F5 in the screenshot) to the domterm toggle-minimizew (or toggle-hide) command. (The screenshot uses a fully-qualifed path for domterm, just in case.)

Configuring for Windows/WSL ¶

We need to bind a shortcut key (hotkey) to a command like:

wsl -e /mnt/c/path-to-domterm/bin/domterm --geometry=775x600+20+10 window toggle-minimize

where the --geometry option is an optional geometry specifier, and /mnt/c/path-to-domterm is the location of your DomTerm installation. Note this needs to be a Unix-style path (since it is executed by wsl) to a Windows directory (so Electron can find the needed files).

(The -e flag is an optimization so WSL doesn’t create a shell to parse the command arguments; remove that flag if shell expansion is needed.)

We will look at some possible ways to bind the “hot-key”.

Using AutoHotkey ¶

AutoHotkey is a popular, flexible and somewhat complex tool. After downloading and installing it, you need to create a script (in a file with extension .ahk).

The following .ahk script file will toggle domterm when you type Ctrl+Alt+t, specified by the ^!t pattern:

^!t::
run, wsl -e "/mnt/c/path-to-domterm/bin/domterm" --geometry=775x600+20+10 window toggle-minimize,,hide
return

The hide option prevents briefly flashing a temporary console window.

Using myhotkey ¶

A simpler application is myhotkey. A minor disadvantage (compared to AutoHotkeys) is that you can’t hide the flash of the temporary console window.

Using standard desktop shortcuts ¶

Using standard Windows desktop shortcuts is simple and doesn’t require installing new tools. Unfortunately, they are are suspectible to multi-second delays, because of because of this issue.

One way is to do define a desktop shortcut. (This article with screenshots as well on this article may be helpful.) Start by right clicking on the desktop and select New->Shortcut. At Type the location of the item: type the above wsl ... command, and the Next screen I suggest a name like toggle-domterm. This add a new entry on the desktop. Right-click it, select Properties->Shortcut. In the Shortcut key field, type T which is converted to Ctrl + Alt + T (or use some other key you prefer). In the Run field, select Minimized (to avoid the flicker of a temporary command window).

Unfortunately, you are likely to experience a multi-second delay, because of this issue.

Specifying initial position ¶

By default the terminal will have a default size and position, though if you resize and move the window, it should remember the size and position if you then hide and unhide it. You can use a geometry specifier to give an explicit position when it is created, either in the Settings file, or with a --geometry option:

domterm --geometry 775x600+20+10 window toggle-minimize