The startup behavior might be slightly historical, it used to be a remote-only shell in the Classic Mac days and didn't really have a local shell. Back then there was always something needed (host name, whatever), and technically it is still possible to start sessions that way. But good point...I may change the built-in default.
In any case, the startup behavior is controlled by the contents of the Default Workspace (in Preferences -> Workspaces). So you can turn off all windows, or spawn certain windows that contain whatever you want.
EDIT: I've identified what caused the "appear and disappear" behavior you described. You can download the latest version from here and it will be fixed: http://macterm.net/updates/daily.html
Thanks for the font info. I'm not sure (as a free GPL program) how to package a font, but if I can find one that's compatible and OK to include I probably will. I've even tried Consolas myself. As for the rendering, that is very close to the top of my list and is quite complicated. As I mentioned earlier, the code has its roots in Classic and I'm not relying on modern drawing code completely. That is set to change, but it's slow work. :) Unicode rendering has the same problem; although the buffer and decoder work perfectly, and you can copy/paste/drag/print any Unicode, the terminal can't display every character and it's because the drawing code is too old.
I'm glad you like how Full Screen works. Also note there's a bunch of stuff in Preferences that you can tweak for that mode.
The startup behavior might be slightly historical, it used to be a remote-only shell in the Classic Mac days and didn't really have a local shell. Back then there was always something needed (host name, whatever), and technically it is still possible to start sessions that way. But good point...I may change the built-in default.
In any case, the startup behavior is controlled by the contents of the Default Workspace (in Preferences -> Workspaces). So you can turn off all windows, or spawn certain windows that contain whatever you want.
EDIT: I've identified what caused the "appear and disappear" behavior you described. You can download the latest version from here and it will be fixed: http://macterm.net/updates/daily.html
Thanks for the font info. I'm not sure (as a free GPL program) how to package a font, but if I can find one that's compatible and OK to include I probably will. I've even tried Consolas myself. As for the rendering, that is very close to the top of my list and is quite complicated. As I mentioned earlier, the code has its roots in Classic and I'm not relying on modern drawing code completely. That is set to change, but it's slow work. :) Unicode rendering has the same problem; although the buffer and decoder work perfectly, and you can copy/paste/drag/print any Unicode, the terminal can't display every character and it's because the drawing code is too old.
I'm glad you like how Full Screen works. Also note there's a bunch of stuff in Preferences that you can tweak for that mode.