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Update Alacritty's description
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Alacritty's description in the readme and manpage has always been a bit
overly aggressive in its marketing. This new updated text should more
accurately describe Alacritty's current state without pointlessly
agitating people.
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chrisduerr authored Dec 29, 2020
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69 changes: 23 additions & 46 deletions README.md
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@@ -1,28 +1,24 @@
<h1 align="center">Alacritty</h1>
<p align="center">
<img width="200" alt="Alacritty Logo" src="extra/logo/compat/alacritty-term+scanlines.png">
</p>

Alacritty is the fastest terminal emulator in existence. Using the GPU for
rendering enables optimizations that simply aren't possible without it.
Alacritty currently supports macOS, Linux, BSD, and Windows.
<h1 align="center">Alacritty - A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator</h1>

<p align="center">
<img width="600"
alt="Alacritty running vim inside tmux"
src="https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/4285147/21585004/2ebd0288-d06c-11e6-95d3-4a2889dbbd6f.png">
src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8886672/103264352-5ab0d500-49a2-11eb-8961-02f7da66c855.png">
</p>

## About

Alacritty is a terminal emulator with a strong focus on simplicity and
performance. With such a strong focus on performance, included features are
carefully considered and you can always expect Alacritty to be blazingly fast.
By making sane choices for defaults, Alacritty requires no additional setup.
However, it does allow [configuration](#configuration) of many aspects of the
terminal.
Alacritty is a modern terminal emulator that comes with sensible defaults, but
allows for extensive [configuration](#configuration). By integrating with other
applications, rather than reimplementing their functionality, it manages to
provide a flexible set of [features](./docs/features.md) with high performance.
The supported platforms currently consist of BSD, Linux, macOS and Windows.

The software is considered to be at a **beta** level of readiness -- there are
The software is considered to be at a **beta** level of readiness; there are
a few missing features and bugs to be fixed, but it is already used by many as
a daily driver.

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -78,27 +74,26 @@ On Windows, the config file should be located at:

## Contributing

A full guideline about contributing to Alacritty can be found in the
A guideline about contributing to Alacritty can be found in the
[`CONTRIBUTING.md`](CONTRIBUTING.md) file.

## Issues (known, unknown, feature requests, etc.)

If you run into a problem with Alacritty, please file an issue. If you've got a
feature request, feel free to ask about it. Please just keep in mind Alacritty
is focused on simplicity and performance, and not all features are in line with
that goal.

Before opening a new issue, please check if it has already been reported.
There's a chance someone else has already reported it, and you can subscribe to
that issue to keep up on the latest developments.

## FAQ

**_Is it really the fastest terminal emulator?_**

In the terminals we've [benchmarked](http://github.com/alacritty/vtebench),
Alacritty is either faster or **way** faster than the others. If you've found a
case where this isn't true, please report a bug.
Benchmarking terminal emulators is complicated. Alacritty uses
[vtebench](https://github.com/alacritty/vtebench) to quantify terminal emulator
throughput and manages to consistently score better than the competition using
it. If you have found an example where this is not the case, please report a
bug.

Other aspects like latency or framerate and frame consistency are more difficult
to quantify. Some terminal emulators also intentionally slow down to save
resources, which might be preferred by some users.

If you have doubts about Alacritty's performance or usability, the best way to
quantify terminal emulators is always to test them with **your** specific
usecases.

**_Why isn't feature X implemented?_**

Expand All @@ -108,27 +103,9 @@ good fit for Alacritty. This means you won't find things like tabs or splits
(which are best left to a window manager or [terminal multiplexer][tmux]) nor
niceties like a GUI config editor.

**_macOS + tmux + vim is slow! I thought this was supposed to be fast!_**

This appears to be an issue outside of terminal emulators; either macOS has an
IPC performance issue, or either tmux or vim (or both) have a bug. This same
issue can be seen in `iTerm2` and `Terminal.app`. I've found that if tmux is
running on another machine which is connected to Alacritty via SSH, this issue
disappears. Actual throughput and rendering performance are still better in
Alacritty.

## IRC

Alacritty discussion can be found in `#alacritty` on freenode.

## Wayland

Wayland is used by default on systems that support it. Using XWayland may
circumvent Wayland specific issues and can be enabled through:

```sh
env WINIT_UNIX_BACKEND=x11 alacritty
```
Alacritty discussions can be found in `#alacritty` on freenode.

## License

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2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion alacritty/Cargo.toml
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Expand Up @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ name = "alacritty"
version = "0.7.0-dev"
authors = ["Christian Duerr <[email protected]>", "Joe Wilm <[email protected]>"]
license = "Apache-2.0"
description = "GPU-accelerated terminal emulator"
description = "A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator"
readme = "README.md"
homepage = "https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty"
edition = "2018"
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14 changes: 6 additions & 8 deletions extra/alacritty.man
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@@ -1,14 +1,13 @@
.TH ALACRITTY "1" "August 2018" "alacritty 0.7.0-dev" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
alacritty \- a cross-platform, gpu-accelerated terminal emulator
Alacritty \- A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
alacritty [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]
.SH DESCRIPTION
Alacritty is a terminal emulator with a strong focus on simplicity and
performance. With such a strong focus on performance, included features are
carefully considered and you can always expect Alacritty to be blazingly fast.
By making sane choices for defaults, Alacritty requires no additional setup.
However, it does allow configuration of many aspects of the terminal.
Alacritty is a modern terminal emulator that comes with sensible defaults, but
allows for extensive configuration. By integrating with other applications,
rather than reimplementing their functionality, it manages to provide a flexible
set of features with high performance.
.SH "FLAGS"
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -67,8 +66,7 @@ Start the shell in the specified working directory
See the alacritty github repository at https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty for the full documentation.
.SH "BUGS"
Found a bug? Please report it at https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/issues.
.SH "AUTHORS"
Maintainers:
.SH "MAINTAINERS"
.sp
.RS 4
.ie n \{\
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2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion extra/linux/Alacritty.desktop
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Expand Up @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ Categories=System;TerminalEmulator;

Name=Alacritty
GenericName=Terminal
Comment=A cross-platform, GPU enhanced terminal emulator
Comment=A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator
StartupWMClass=Alacritty
Actions=New;

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19 changes: 10 additions & 9 deletions extra/linux/io.alacritty.Alacritty.appdata.xml
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -7,18 +7,19 @@
<project_license>APACHE-2.0</project_license>
<metadata_license>APACHE-2.0</metadata_license>
<!-- Translators: The application's summary / tagline -->
<summary>A cross-platform, GPU enhanced terminal emulator</summary>
<summary>A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator</summary>
<description>
<p>Alacritty is a terminal emulator with a strong focus on simplicity and
performance. With such a strong focus on performance, included features are
carefully considered and you can always expect Alacritty to be blazingly fast.
By making sane choices for defaults, Alacritty requires no additional setup.
However, it does allow configuration of many aspects of the terminal.</p>
<p>
Alacritty is a modern terminal emulator that comes with sensible defaults,
but allows for extensive configuration. By integrating with other
applications, rather than reimplementing their functionality, it manages
to provide a flexible set of features with high performance.
</p>
</description>
<screenshots>
<screenshot type="default">
<image>https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/4285147/21585004/2ebd0288-d06c-11e6-95d3-4a2889dbbd6f.png</image>
<caption>Alacritty is a cross-platform, GPU enhanced terminal emulator</caption>
<image>https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8886672/103264352-5ab0d500-49a2-11eb-8961-02f7da66c855.png</image>
<caption>Alacritty - A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator</caption>
</screenshot>
</screenshots>
<keywords>
Expand All @@ -31,5 +32,5 @@ However, it does allow configuration of many aspects of the terminal.</p>
<release version="0.7.0-dev" date="2019-06-16" unix_timestamp="1560694196"/>
</releases>
<update_contact>https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#contact</update_contact>
<developer_name>Joe Wilm</developer_name>
<developer_name>Christian Duerr</developer_name>
</component>

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