Comment by em-bee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by em-bee | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

i tried using kitty a year ago. i was not impressed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40478732

kovid is talking about how tmux gets in the way of terminals adding new features. i agree with that, but what about the features that tmux offers that i have yet to see in any gui terminal. (multiple sessions. the ability to connect to the same session from multiple terminals. scriptability, including sending characters into a terminal. splitting windows into multiple panes...)

can kitty do any of those? if you want to add features to the terminal, then you have to content that tmux does as well, and maybe tmux features are more interesting to me than kittys. so if you want to win me over, then you have to actually implement some of the features of tmux that i use.

(watching the interview, it looks like kitty does indeed implement some of tmux features, because interestingly the interviewer asks just the right questions. but i need to look for a more comprehensive introduction to see how kitty can replace tmux locally.)

It seems that WezTerm can do what you asked

all right, a year ago i tried kitty: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40478732 maybe it's time to try wezterm now:

first impression: dark background. no good. i want light. no gui to change. now where is that theme setting? ah, here: https://wezterm.org/config/appearance.html there are 1000 color schemes available! wut? ok, this seems to be all i am looking for: https://wezterm.org/config/lua/wezterm.gui/get_appearance.ht... gee, that's a lot of code for a single setting.

ok, that's better. now let's explore how wezterm handles sessions and windows/tabs.

it seems sessions would be domains, and so for a bunch of local sessions i need to configure some unix domains: https://wezterm.org/multiplexing.html#unix-domains

there is more about sessions here: https://wezterm.org/recipes/workspaces.html but it's all very abstract.

and where does this stuff go? ah, here: https://wezterm.org/config/files.html

turns out that the config example for the color scheme conflicts with setting other config values. i need

    config.color_scheme = ...
    return config

 not 

    return { color_scheme = ... }

that could have been explained better.

and finally, how do i switch sessions or tabs? no word about that on the multiplex page. or elsewhere.

fortunately, i found this article which describe an elaborate setup to make wezterm behave somewhat like tmux, with familiar keybindings. maybe i can get this to work: https://mwop.net/blog/2024-07-04-how-i-use-wezterm.html

oh, one last issue: there are no resize handles, or a titlebar, although according to the descriptions they should be there. where did they go?

Hahahaha this was a fun read ;)

When I first tried to port my tmux config to wezterm it took about a day to learn about all the wezterm concepts, map them to their tmux equivalents, and reach an mvp. I tend to be on the slower side to pick things up though.

Locally - I far prefer wezterm now. The only issue for me was that getting persistent server side sessions seemed to come at the cost of some weird neovim gui refresh and latency issues which I'm not sure are fully solved yet, so I still use tmux for that. Looking at the issue tracker, maybe I should try again, seems that at least some refresh issues have been addressed since I last checked https://github.com/wezterm/wezterm/issues/4607

would you mind sharing your configuration, so i can compare it to what i have now?

my family keeps me busy enough that learning new tech comes out of my work time, and i can't afford to spend a day to learn how to configure an application just to make it do the things i need just to replace another application that already works. especially not when it is uncertain if what i want is even possible. knowing that it is possible does help though, and the article i found allowed me to get close to the configuration i am looking for (the mvp) without having to spend all that time learning. it doesn't have to be perfect from the start, just mostly usable, so that i can dive in and use it while i learn the few things that i am missing. for a tmux replacement that means it needs to have the interactive ability to create and switch sessions and tabs.

Sorry, I don't always see replies immediately. Yeah you can take a look at mine, it's somewhat customized so I'm not sure how useful it will be and I don't have time to add comments, but I've uploaded it to https://pastebin.com/zM2bYHD2

The big thing this might be missing from your perspective is I don't usually have multiple tmux (or wezterm) sessions going on simultaneously. Not sure if or how that influences the wezterm side of things.

i found the titlebar: https://github.com/wezterm/wezterm/issues/6296

it's ugly as hell. but that's partly gnomes fault for not supporting server side decorations. and, at least they are already working on something nicer.

but now i have two sets of titlebar buttons. one set in the titlebar, and a somewhat nicer looking set in the tabbar. but i found a workaround: if i turn window_decorations off, then i get nothing, but i can turn it back on without restarting and then i only get the integrated buttons in the tabbar without the ugly titlebar. now i only need to find a way to script this...

in the meantime i'll just run it without a titlebar. i figured out how to maximize the terminal on startup: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78738575/how-to-maximize... , that will do for now. i rarely need to resize or close it anyways.

more fun stuff. the terminal bell does not work under wayland. because On Wayland systems, which have no system beep function, it does not produce a sound. which is of course an entire logical solution. blame wayland instead of just playing a sound.

fortunately, wezterms scriptability allows for a workaround:

    wezterm.on('bell', function(window, pane)
        wezterm.background_child_process({
            '/usr/bin/play', '/usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/click.ogg'
        })
    end)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com