Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for all the work you do! I had used terminal just a few dozen times before November — and now i am in terminal more than any app (even more than the web browser).

It’s common for me to have 15-25 different terminal windows open for using Claude code. I shifted to Ghostty because I was looking for more features.

Unfortunately, none of the features I wanted are available anywhere (though I’ve come to appreciate Ghostty anyway). Here’s what I had wanted:

1. Basic text editing features (ie click to place cursor in the text input field; highlight to delete)

2. Change colors or fonts mid session (to make it easier to find particular windows)

3. Window management and search (eg, a way to find my windows when I lose them and to otherwise control them)

Apparently, it is really hard to develop features like these for terminal emulators. I’d love to understand why…

The next release includes a way to use a command palette to search for and jump between surfaces (windows, panes), which sounds like it partially addresses your third point. I had a small hand in it, by building the initial UI for the Linux version.

IMO this isn’t the job of the emulator. You can do this all in `tmux` for example.

As for editing text, ghostty+tmux most definitely supports editing text with the mouse (even an in terminal right click menu!) although sounds like your intended use of select to delete isn’t common so you’ll need to do some customizations.

What makes you say that isn't the job the emulator? Sure it is. In fact, tmux itself is a terminal emulator that you just so happen to run inside of another terminal emulator that you want to multiplex.

I’ve been using scroll back search for 15+ years with Terminal.app and iTerm2, and there’s no way that’s not the job of the terminal. You don’t know how good that is until you use it.

Tmux does it better

What am I missing?

+1

For 1, take a look at https://github.com/alex-903/zsh-mouse-and-flex-search. It runs as a zle-line-init hook, so it works in any terminal. A full terminal app implementation would be cleaner, however.

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