Terminal app unfair to Monaco 9

Whenever I use BBEdit’s shell worksheet, I’m reminded how much it bugs me that Terminal doesn’t render Monaco 9 very well.

In the screen shot, Terminal is in front and BBEdit behind. Note the “to” in “total” and the “dr” in “drwx.” The rendering in Terminal is distracting.

(I’ve been using Monaco 9 for text editing, programming, etc. for at least 10 years, and I’m not going to switch now.)

Here’s what I want—and what I would pay for—in a Terminal app.

1. Good rendering of Monaco 9! (As in the BBEdit shell worksheet.)

2. Tabs. (Using space-saving widgets more like browser tabs, as in Transmit or Interarchy, or a drawer a la BBEdit or OmniWeb.)

3. Performance at least equal to Apple’s Terminal app. (Better is nice but not required.)

Sometimes I wish BBEdit had a terminal, not just shell worksheets. But that’s probably not appropriate for a text editor. (I could mention Emacs right here, but the thing about Emacs is that it can be used to prove both sides of the argument.)

(From time to time I’ve considered writing a Terminal app myself. But it would be one of those things where you get endless streams of requests like “I need the meta key to frobble the jim-nose when smatterizing the sleepnorp. On Tuesdays.”)

A really good terminal app would be wonderful for people who, for whatever reasons, spend a certain amount of their time every day in that world.