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One of the first things that I worked on here at DebConf11 is supporting the HTML target in gnome-terminal. This means that if you copy a part of the screen and paste it into some application that handles HTML (such as evolution or my blog’s edit field), attributes such as color and boldness are preserved. Here are some examples:

A man page

MAN(1)                           Manual pager utils                           MAN(1)

NAME
       man - an interface to the on-line reference manuals

SYNOPSIS
       man [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale] [-m
       system[,...]] [-M path] [-S list] [-e extension] [-i|-I] [--regex|--wildcard]
       [--names-only]  [-a]  [-u]  [--no-subpages]  [-P  pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E
       encoding]   [--no-hyphenation]   [--no-justification]   [-p   string]    [-t]
       [-T[device]] [-H[browser]] [-X[dpi]] [-Z] [[section] page ...] ...
       man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
       man -K [-w|-W] [-S list] [-i|-I] [--regex] [section] term ...
       man -f [whatis options] page ...
       man  -l [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale]
       [-P pager] [-r prompt] [-7]  [-E  encoding]  [-p  string]  [-t]  [-T[device]]
       [-H[browser]] [-X[dpi]] [-Z] file ...
       man -w|-W [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
       man -c [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
       man [-hV]

DESCRIPTION
       man is the system's manual pager. Each page argument given to man is normally
       the name of a program, utility or function.  The manual page associated  with
       each  of these arguments is then found and displayed. A section, if provided,
 Manual page man(1) line 1 (press h for help or q to quit)

A coloured diff from git

commit 55c514ae6a714abcfa818c33f00a2c051412c3d9
Author: Joachim Breitner <mail@joachim-breitner.de>
Date:   Thu Jul 21 12:08:56 2011 +0200

    Refactor vte_terminal_determine_colors_internal
    
    to work on VteCellAttr instead of VteCell, and use it in
    vte_terminal_cellattr_to_html.

diff --git a/src/vte.c b/src/vte.c
index 8bcc95d..7d4a6f1 100644
--- a/src/vte.c
+++ b/src/vte.c
@@ -6532,19 +6532,18 @@ swap (guint *a, guint *b)
 
 static void
 vte_terminal_determine_colors_internal(VteTerminal *terminal,
-                                      const VteCell *cell,
+                                      const VteCellAttr *attr,
                                       gboolean selected,
                                       gboolean cursor,
                                       guint *pfore, guint *pback)
 {
        guint fore, back;

Midnight commander

  Links     Datei     Befehl     Optionen     Rechts
┌<─ ~/build/gnome-terminal/vte ───────────.[^]>┐┌<─ ~/build/gnome-terminal/vte ────────────.[^]>┐
│'n        Name          │ Größe │Modifikations││'n         Name          │ Größe │Modifikations│
│/..                     │ÜBERVZ.│20. Jul 18:23││/..                      │ÜBERVZ.│20. Jul 18:23│
│/.git                   │   4096│22. Jul 12:42││/.git                    │   4096│22. Jul 12:42│
│/autom4te.cache         │   4096│22. Jul 11:20││/autom4te.cache          │   4096│22. Jul 11:20│
│/doc                    │   4096│22. Jul 11:20││/doc                     │   4096│22. Jul 11:20│
│/glade                  │   4096│22. Jul 11:20││/glade                   │   4096│22. Jul 11:20│
│/gnome-pty-helper       │   4096│22. Jul 09:47││/gnome-pty-helper        │   4096│22. Jul 09:47│
│/perf                   │   4096│22. Jul 11:20││/perf                    │   4096│22. Jul 11:20│
│/po                     │   4096│22. Jul 11:20││/po                      │   4096│22. Jul 11:20│
│/src                    │  12288│22. Jul 12:41││/src                     │  12288│22. Jul 12:41│
│/termcaps               │   4096│22. Jul 11:20││/termcaps                │   4096│22. Jul 11:20│
│ .gitignore             │    935│22. Jul 11:20││ .gitignore              │    935│22. Jul 11:20│
│ AUTHORS                │     41│20. Jul 18:25││ AUTHORS                 │     41│20. Jul 18:25│
│ COPYING                │  35068│22. Jul 11:11││ COPYING                 │  35068│22. Jul 11:11│
│ ChangeLog.pre-git      │ 433051│20. Jul 18:25││ ChangeLog.pre-git       │ 433051│20. Jul 18:25│
│ HACKING                │    905│20. Jul 18:25││ HACKING                 │    905│20. Jul 18:25│
│ MAINTAINERS            │    118│20. Jul 18:25││ MAINTAINERS             │    118│20. Jul 18:25│
│ Makefile               │  30512│22. Jul 11:20││ Makefile                │  30512│22. Jul 11:20│
│ Makefile.am            │   1247│22. Jul 11:11││ Makefile.am             │   1247│22. Jul 11:11│
│ Makefile.in            │  28812│22. Jul 11:20││ Makefile.in             │  28812│22. Jul 11:20│
│ NEWS                   │  43910│20. Jul 18:25││ NEWS                    │  43910│20. Jul 18:25│
│ README                 │    496│20. Jul 18:25││ README                  │    496│20. Jul 18:25│
│ aclocal.m4             │ 377874│22. Jul 11:20││ aclocal.m4              │ 377874│22. Jul 11:20│
│*autogen.sh             │    610│20. Jul 18:25││*autogen.sh              │    610│20. Jul 18:25│
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┤├───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ÜBERVZ.                                       ││ÜBERVZ.                                        │
└────────────────────────────── 10G/104G (9%) ─┘└─────────────────────────────── 10G/104G (9%) ─┘
Hint: To look at the output of a command in the viewer, use M-!
~/build/gnome-terminal/vte $
 1Hilfe   2Menü    3Ansicht  4Bear~ten 5Kopieren 6Ver~ben 7Mkdir    8Löschen  9Menüs   10Beenden

These changes are discussed in GNOME Bugzilla bug #365121 and can be downloaded in my git repository. Unfortunately, I later found out that I was not basing my work on the current development version, which has changed considerably, so we will see how and when my changes will actually make it into GNOME. Also note that my blog’s HTML editor actually modifies the HTML code, so looking at the source of this page does not give you the code that I generate.

Update: I ported my changes onto the vte-next branch, so they could be merged now. Please follow the bug report if you want to know more.