•‘Change font size when maximised’: when the window is resized, the number of rows and columns will change, except when the window is maximised (or restored), when the font size will change. (In this mode, holding down the Alt key while resizing will also cause the font size to change.)
•‘Forbid resizing completely’: the terminal will refuse to be resized at all.
4.7.3 Controlling scrollback
These options let you configure the way PuTTY keeps text after it scrolls off the top of the screen (see
section 3.1.2
).
The ‘Lines of scrollback’ box lets you configure how many lines of text PuTTY keeps. The ‘Display scrollbar’ options allow you to hide the scrollbar (although you can still view the scrollback using the keyboard as described in
section 3.1.2
). You can separately
configure whether the scrollbar is shown in full-screen mode and in normal modes.
If you are viewing part of the scrollback when the server sends more text to PuTTY, the screen will revert to showing the current terminal contents. You can disable this behaviour by turning off ‘Reset scrollback on display activity’. You can also make the screen revert when you press a key, by turning on ‘Reset scrollback on keypress’.
4.7.4 ‘Push erased text into scrollback’
When this option is enabled, the contents of the terminal screen will be pushed into the scrollback when a server-side application clears the screen, so that your scrollback will contain a better record of what was on your screen in the past.
If the application switches to the alternate screen (see
section 4.6.4
for more about this), then the contents of the primary screen
will be visible in the scrollback until the application switches back again.
This option is enabled by default.
4.8 The Appearance panel
The Appearance configuration panel allows you to control aspects of the appearance of PuTTY's window.
•
4.8.1 Controlling the appearance of the cursor
•
4.8.2 Controlling the font used in the terminal window
•
4.8.3 ‘Hide mouse pointer when typing in window’
•
4.8.4 Controlling the window border
4.8.1 Controlling the appearance of the cursor
The ‘Cursor appearance’ option lets you configure the cursor to be a block, an underline, or a vertical line. A block cursor becomes an empty box when the window loses focus; an underline or a vertical line becomes dotted.
The ‘Cursor blinks’ option makes the cursor blink on and off. This works in any of the cursor modes.
4.8.2 Controlling the font used in the terminal window
This option allows you to choose what font, in what size, the PuTTY terminal window uses to display the text in the session.
By default, you will be offered a choice from all the fixed-width fonts installed on the system, since VT100-style terminal handling expects a fixed-width font. If you tick the box marked ‘Allow selection of variable-pitch fonts’, however, PuTTY will offer variable-width fonts as well: if you select one of these, the font will be coerced into fixed-size character cells, which will probably not look very good (but can work OK with some fonts).
4.8.3 ‘Hide mouse pointer when typing in window’
If you enable this option, the mouse pointer will disappear if the PuTTY window is selected and you press a key. This way, it will not obscure any of the text in the window while you work in your session. As soon as you move the mouse, the pointer will reappear.
This option is disabled by default, so the mouse pointer remains visible at all times.