terminal shortcut

Try the following but read user comments before you install it:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30591/right-zoom

How To Set Up Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

Or depending on exactly what you're up to, the Dterm tool might be useful to you.

> I need a real terminal, actually.

VT100's are hard to come by, and attaching the serial RS232 cable requires special adapters :)

There are some alternate Terminal "Emulators" available.

iTerm (my choice)

xterm (part of the X11 install)

A bunch of other X11 based terminal emulators, many of which can be installed via MacPorts.org, or you can build them yourself from sources.

I do not know if any of these alternate terminal emulators will meet your needs vs the Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal (emulator).

Note: I spend all day at work inside a terminal emulator, with about 30 sessions going, with most of those sessions ssh'ed into Linux, Solaris and AIX systems.

If I need a extra large session window, I generally open a new window and stretch it to suit my needs, then trash it when I don't need it any more.

But I do know my terminal session usage is not for everyone.

You should be able to create hotkeys that map any menu entry via System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Application Shortcuts -> [+] -> Other -> (find Terminal)

I then mapped "Zoom" to Control-Option->Command-> +

And "Return to Default Size" to Control-Option-Command-> -

They both worked as expected.

You do have to be careful to not pick a hotkey combo that already has a meaning.

I have also found that the Terminal Green button (upper left corner of the window) will toggle between the last 2 manually resized window sizes.

iTerm has a premapped Option-Command-R for return to default size. If you wanted Zoom to be a hotkey on iTerm you would need to do the above hotkey mapping. While I do prefer iTerm, it has its own quirks that you may or may not enjoy, and some of the features I prefer need to be enabled (such as selecting any text automatically puts it into the copy buffer, no need to Command-C; I can specify what characters constitute a word, so I can include _.-/~ as part of a word, so double-clicking on a file path, generally selects the entire path; etc...). But my likes are not everyones.

If you are using a Trackpad, you may find the BetterTouchTool as besides allowing you to create dozen's of trackpad gestures, it also has a feature that allows you to drag a window to a screen edge, where BetterTouchTool will resize the window to full screen or quarter screen depending on where you drag the window to the edge (window snap). The BetterTouchTool author has a separate program just for the "window snap" feature, along with "SecondBar" if you use multiple monitors and want a 2nd menu bar on the 2nd monitor.

I was just playing with the BetterTouchTool "window snap" feature. And if you use its snap to full screen, as soon as you drag the window, it will snap back to its original size.

You may find this very useful for your needs.

The quarter size feature allows you get quickly place 4 windows on the screen without overlapping any window.

I have just noticed that the green button on Leopard's default Terminal toggles between normal and maximum useable screen. Normal is as set in preferences or modified later by dragging.

Is this what you want?

Does it change with OS as well as Terminal emulation?

I don't have a trackpad, and I'm considering getting one. I'm not sure how useful it is since I'm working in the terminal most of time. But thanks for the info on BetterTouchTool!

As mentioned above I live in terminal sessions. But on a GUI based system, you need the mouse/trackpad a lot, no matter how much you master hotkeys for navigation.

I use a 27" iMac with an attached 24" monitor rotated into Portrait mode.

Until I got my Apple bluetooth Trackpad, I had been using a Logitech 9-button wireless mouse. After I got the Trackpad (last Christmas), I put my mouse on its charger and it has only left the charger maybe 4 or 5 files in the past year.

Using BetterTouchTool, I can have way more than 9 multi-finger gestures and it is so much easier to do things with my trackpad. I showed the trackpad to another Mac uses in the group, and on the way home they stopped at an Apple store and got their own, and have not used a mouse since.

I have a single gesture for switching tabs (left or right) in Terminal, iTerm, Firefox, Thunderbird, X11 xterm, and Adium. Each of these apps have their own hotkey to switch tabs, but via BetterTouchTool, I can use 1 gesture to switch no matter what app I'm in. I have another gesture to Copy selected text and a gesture to paste. I've got a gesture to Refresh a browser page, a different gesture to go back to the previous page. etc...

A multi-touch trackpad and BetterTouchTool are a great power user pair. I suggest you put it on your Christmas or Birthday wish list 🙂