Default Profile for Common Profile Settings

[damianpowell]

Default Profile for Common Profile Settings

Allow settings which the user would like applied to all profiles to be specified in a profile with a well-known name, such as "name" : "_default". All settings in this profile will be applied before they are overridden from individual profiles. This would be helpful to allow all profiles to have acrylic applied with a certain opacity where those settings are not specified.

[snip]
{
    "name" : "_default",
    "useAcrylic" : true,
    "acrylicOpacity" : 0.5,
    "closeOnExit" : true,
    "colorScheme" : "Campbell",
    "cursorColor" : "#FFFFFF",
    "cursorShape" : "bar",
    "fontFace" : "Consolas",
    "fontSize" : 10,
    "historySize" : 9001,
    "padding" : "0, 0, 0, 0",
    "snapOnInput" : true,
    "startingDirectory" : "%USERPROFILE%"
},
{
    "name" : "PowerShell Core",
    "commandline" : "C:\\Program Files\\PowerShell\\6\\pwsh.exe",
    "guid" : "{574e775e-4f2a-5b96-ac1e-a2962a402336}",
    "icon" : "ms-appx:///ProfileIcons/{574e775e-4f2a-5b96-ac1e-a2962a402336}.png",
},
{
    "name" : "cmd",
    "commandline" : "cmd.exe",
    "guid" : "{0caa0dad-35be-5f56-a8ff-afceeeaa6101}",
    "icon" : "ms-appx:///ProfileIcons/{0caa0dad-35be-5f56-a8ff-afceeeaa6101}.png",
    "useAcrylic" : false
},
[snip]

[mcpiroman]

Sounds like subset of #1258 (comment)

[carlos-zamora]

Tagging @zadjii-msft for ideas regarding Cascading Settings.

Personally, I think that the current spec covers this functionality in a cleaner way, but @zadjii-msft might catch something I'm missing here. :)

[zadjii-msft]

So I'm gonna leave this open (unless there's another issue we've got already tracking this bit).

This is one of the things I refer to in the #1258 spec, but I specifically don't cover to try and keep that spec as atomic as possible. I absolutely want to be able to include a default profile to the settings that's used as the prototype for all the other profiles you might have.

This is probably something that'll be spec'd up once #754 is more ironed out.

[DHowett-MSFT]

@zadjii-msft this probably only needs a very light spec, if one at all. Proposal to change type to Issue-Task?

[zadjii-msft]

Done. I might just skip the spec tbh. I'll prototype and feel out if it really needs the spec, I think we all understand what we want from this feature.

[zadjii-msft]

Let's have a discussion: Where should these settings be layered?

For defaults, dynamic profiles, should these "global default" settings be applied:

1. _immediately after the Profile is constructed (so that settings from defaults.json and dynamic profile generators) should override them?
2. Or after settings from defaults.json and dynamic profile generators are applied? (this feels wrong to me)
3. Should it be after defaults.json but before DPGs?

• Settings from dynamic profiles layer on top of "global default" settings, but "global default" settings override things from defaults.json

@microsoft/windows-console-team thoughts?

---

Hypothetical settings:

{
    "$schema": "https://aka.ms/terminal-profiles-schema",
    "defaultProfile": "{61c54bbd-c2c6-5271-96e7-009a87ff44bf}",
    "defaultSettings": 
    {
        "padding" : "2",
        "useAcrylic" : true,
        "fontFace" : "Cascadia Code",
        "icon" : "myIcon.png"
    },
    "profiles":
    [
        {
            // Make changes here to the powershell.exe profile
            "guid": "{61c54bbd-c2c6-5271-96e7-009a87ff44bf}",
            "name": "Windows PowerShell",
            "commandline": "powershell.exe",
            "hidden": false
        },
        {
            // Make changes here to the cmd.exe profile
            "guid": "{0caa0dad-35be-5f56-a8ff-afceeeaa6101}",
            "name": "cmd",
            "commandline": "cmd.exe",
            "hidden": false
        },
        {
            "guid": "{c6eaf9f4-32a7-5fdc-b5cf-066e8a4b1e40}",
            "hidden": false,
            "name": "Ubuntu-18.04",
            // recall that the WSL DPG sets the icon to the tux png.
            "source": "Windows.Terminal.Wsl"
        },
    ],

    "schemes": [],
    "keybindings": []
}

If we do 1, then "useAcrylic" would have no affect on the powershell, cmd default profiles, since they set "useAcrylic" themselves. Same with the padding value.

If we do 2, then the icon we set in the defaults will blow away the default cmd, powershell icons, as well as the icons set by the DPGs we currently have. However, the useAcrylic, padding settings apply correctly.

If we do 3, then the icon for the DPG still works, since it gets applied after the global defaults, but the icon for cmd, powershell is still overridden.

[DHowett-MSFT]

2 feels right to me- how would the user say “I want Cascadia Code everywhere” if the Profile constructor or the Default profiles set it to Consolas? The user’s preferred defaults IMO trump any app generated data, so if they want to set a default icon it’s on them?

I can see why that would not be ideal.

To properly handle option 1 we would need to remove everything from defaults.json that is also matched by the constructor, and that reduces the absolute value of defaults.json.

[miniksa]

If you do 3, is there any way to override the icon for the DPG or is it now toast?

I think it's either 2 or 3.

[zadjii-msft]

With both 2 and 3, we can still override the icon from a DPG by setting the icon within the profile manually. The other profiles in profiles.json are always applied last, so settings from those will always override default, global, or dynamically-generated properties.

[miniksa]

In that case, I think if you expressly set an icon at this user-set-defaults level, it should kill the DPG icons unless you again go further and override one of the DPGs to have an icon.

So that's a 2, I believe.

[zadjii-msft]

2 it is then :)

Thanks all for the pseudo-spec review. We can debate naming in the PR, and if I run into any other issues I'll ping this thread. Though, that won't be till at least the end of the month :P

[jwhipp]

I don't know if this is related for sure, but build 0.5.2762.0 from the store on a fresh profile resulted in a near empty settings json with only profiles information. The settings for everything else is seemingly gone.

[DHowett-MSFT]

@jwhipp That's the point! You should give a closer read to the settings file -- it explains what to do and what you should be looking for. 😄

[jwhipp]

I see... my bad. My eyes immediately started scanning for the portions I wanted to edit and I didn't even notice that comment line.

[ghost]

🎉This issue was addressed in #3892, which has now been successfully released as Windows Terminal Preview v0.8.10091.0.:tada:

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