I was getting strange problems when trying to 'make menuconfig' on a kernel, so I tried all the version of gnome-terminal, to no adiue. Upgrading ncurses made the problem worse, but upgrading vte to 0.11.10 fixed the problem [not yet released]. No ebuild change is needed, just copy over the ebuild...
0.11 is development series.. will be added when the 2.4 series goes into portage.
in portage ~ now