I spent some time switching between gnome-terminal, xfce4-terminal, and lxterminal trying to find the perfect configuration. Eventually I decided to cut out the middleman and use libvte directly. I published it mostly as a reference for others who want to do the same.

sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev libvte-2.91-dev
make
sudo make install
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator x-terminal-emulator /usr/bin/xiterm 100
echo ". /etc/profile.d/vte-2.91.sh" >> ~/.bashrc

• configure by changing the code
• custom color scheme
• change font scale with Ctrl-+|-|0
• open http URLs with right click
• new tabs open after current one
• switching tabs does not wrap around