Comment by osmsucks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by osmsucks | Hacker News Reader

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> I don't think I understand this example. There's only so many keybindings and clashes aren't uncommon.

That's precisely my point! Many terminals these days try to do too much and by default end up capturing keybindings that I want to use for something else. The terminal should allow me to do that something else, not get in the way. A simple terminal wouldn't get in my way and I could insert tmux in the more complex scenarios (even for local sessions). I know I can reconfigure most terminals, but not everything is configurable, plus everyone knows the best tools are the ones that don't require to be reconfigured to be great. :)

Thankfully my main editor is Helix and by default it doesn't clash with anything because it's a modal editor where commands are regular keystrokes and not key combinations.

> Foot is a barebones solution, so that might be good for you

I'm aware of foot, and it works fine, but it doesn't correctly display the fancy icons used by foot (and other programs). For a visual comparison, here's foot on the left, Ghostty on the right: <https://v1.imgpaste.net/images/public/21baee04-b4a5-4693-8a8...>

> I'm aware of foot, and it works fine, but it doesn't correctly display the fancy icons used by foot (and other programs).

These are icon glyphes. You have to set the font setting for the terminal to have them. By default, foot uses whatever you set for the monospace family (you can use the command `fc-match monospace` to find out which font). You may want to use a Nerd Font instead.

[0]: https://www.nerdfonts.com/

I think they are caught off-guard by the fact that (IIRC) ghostty and kitty (and wez?) come bundled with (or load) nerdfonts by default.

Also good command to know `fc-list`. It'll list the fonts on your system (you may want to pipe it into a pager: `fc-list | less`). There's a few fc- commands that deal with fonts for anyone facing these types of issues.

Yep, and that's all configuration I'd rather not have to spend time on. I was giving the Ghostty example to show how one of them Just Works™. (But the project goals might just be different, I'm not here to discredit Foot which is a really good terminal emulator.)

In defense of Foot, I installed the corresponding Nerd Font and it worked with no extra configuration at all. Well done!

  > The terminal should allow me to do that something else, not get in the way.

What terminal gets in the way? If there's a clash you do a remap.

I mean I really don't understand. Do you expect the terminal developer to know all the keybindings you currently use and will use in the future? That's a really big ask! Or are you asking that the terminal comes with no keybindings? I can understand that one, but I think it is not going to be popular. For most people that means more configuration. You can disable anything you don't like.

  > Thankfully my main editor is Helix

FWIW I don't have clashes with vim despite vim having both of those

  > I'm aware of foot

What font is foot using? It's been awhile, but I don't remember having this issue with foot. But IIRC on foot, and some other terminals, they don't know to use a nerd font by default or maybe just fail to find or prioritize.

Do you expect the terminal developer to know all the keybindings you currently use

i expect terminal developers to keep keybindings to a minimum.

come to think of it, i can't think if a single keybinding that i need from a gui terminal. the only keybindings i need from a terminal are those for tmux, so if a terminal replaces tmux (like wezterm is able to) then those are ok, but otherwise when i run tmux in a gnome terminal then there isn't a single key binding that i need for gnome, except possibly copy and paste.

  > i expect terminal developers to keep keybindings to a minimum.

This seems to be one of the goals of ghostty. I don't think keybinding for moving tabs/splits is excessive (as a default). I'd expect every emulator to come with defaults for those.

  > there isn't a single key binding that i need for gnome, except possibly copy and paste.

You don't use new tab? New window? You physically click the tab to move tabs?

I mean I'm not trying to harp on your preferences, but I think you have unreasonable asks. I haven't used an emulator where you cannot change or remove those keybindings, so I think that solves your asks. But I think your asks are unreasonable because they don't match the requests of the majority of users. You're totally right that "sane defaults" are not going to be "sane" for everyone. But why isn't that fine? I mean that's why we have configs, right? So that we can make them our own? "Sane defaults" are just an attempt to minimize configuration by trying to match average demand, not try to match every person. I mean we all have dotfiles, right?

I'm just really lost in what you're asking for. You're asking that *defaults* match *your* needs, right?

Because it sounds like you're upset that keybindings exist so... disable them? Is there something you can't disable? I'm really lost here...

I don't think keybinding for moving tabs/splits is excessive

agreed.

You don't use new tab? New window? You physically click the tab to move tabs?

in gnome terminal i don't use tabs at all. i use tmux for that.

gnome has a number of keybindings, most of which start with shift-control, which is a rare combination not used elsewhere. in tmux all bindings start with a leader which is configurable, making it easy to stay away from other key combinations. wezterm can do that too. i am not the person you are originally responding to. i am happy if all keybindings can be changed with a single setting. i don't know if gnome terminal can do that, but it appears that gnome does exactly what we ask for: choose keybindings that don't get in the way.

Precisely this. With OSC-52 you don't even need copy/paste keybindings under tmux.

sadly, i haven't been able to get this to work. whenever i turn mouse support on in tmux or in vim, copy-paste stops working completely. it works within tmux, but i can't copy anything from the terminal to other windows. i tried this with gnome terminal and wezterm. i could not find any setting in gnome terminal to change that. (wezterm i still need to check if there is a configurable option to turn this on).

also, very annoyingly, when i select something in tmux, the selection doesn't stay highlighted. i find that a serious issue that makes tmux selection annoying. another problem: clicking on urls to open them, which is a terminal feature, stops working too.

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