In all GUI text editors, web browsers and IDE’s you can move a cursor:
- left/right arrows - move by char;
- ctrl+left/right - move by word;
- home/end - move to start/end of line.
Add Shift to any of above combination and everything you jumped through now is selected and you can: Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X,Delete to copy/cut/delete selection.
Also, you can Ctrl+Delete and Ctrl+Backspace to delete a next/previous word.
Also, you can Ctrl+Home/End to jump to start of first line or end of last line.
I want this to work when I type in a command in my Terminal.
Is it possible in Linux? It’s a vanilla experience in Windows+Powershell, thanks to default PSReadlLine extension. It works both in conhost.exe and in Windows Terminal, but doesn’t work in WT + cmd.exe, which makes me think it’s PSReadLine which is responsible for this technological perfection.
“But you can’t copy with Ctrl+C, it’s…” - You can. When something is selected It copies selection to clipboard, otherwise it sends SIGINT.
I’m not bound to any distro or terminal application, but right now I don’t see these incredible text editing techniques working even in Ubuntu+Powershell+PSReadLine, to say nothing about the Bash. I’ve tried installing WezTerm, but it doesn’t have text selection either, at least by default. And I’m inclined to think it has nothing to do with terminal emulators at all, since it works in conhost.exe+Powershell.
Here it is. What I’m asking for is not sophisticated at all, quite the opposite. I ask for keybindings which work in almost all text editing areas, in all applications, all operating systems. Vi and eMacs are steps in opposite direction. I think I even used a vi-mode in terminal a couple of years ago. I doubt it’s possible to simplify command editing with it.
The thing is that vi and emacs have existed since long before those other new editors came around.
What you want is possible to do by configuring your
~/.inputrc(see readline manual page for details), it’s just that the defaults are different because they are from a time when many keyboards didn’t even have arrow keys (and the ones that had them were in non-standard positions) so most of the shortcuts that became standard in those days are completely different than the ones common today. Given that the terminal is meant to emulate old style DEC VT100 terminals (that’s why it’s called terminal “emulator”) it made sense to use those default that people had grown used to.Personally, I’ve grown used to Ctrl+a, Ctrl+k, Ctrl+w, Ctrl+e and Ctrl+y …I dont have to reach to wherever the Home key is in whatever keyboard I happen to be using at the moment (specially with modern 75%/60%-sized keyboards today). Or use a combination that also requires shift and having to hold so many keys together. In fact I went the opposite direction and customized my Powershell profile while I’m on windows to keep many of those old shortcuts in the Windows pwsh terminal as well.
What a weird thing to say… So what that they existed before? Who cares?
Ctrl/Shift modifiers work in a very consistent way in the entirety of Windows, most of Mac, and… everywhere in Linux except the terminal.
It boggles my mind that there isn’t a simple switch to toggle between “classic” and “modern” style for keybinds.
Is it weird to explain the reason why something is as it is? If you were already aware of it then it shouldn’t be as baffling.
There are also modern terminals and shells that do things the way you expect in a more convenient way, but maybe you also know this, OP mentioned powershell, he just use that (pwsh) in Linux, and personally I haven’t tried the more GUI-friendly terminals, but I’m sure there are those that support this paired with an appropriate shell. It’s just that this hasn’t been a focus for traditional and slim/lightweight terminals coupled with traditional shells which is typically the popular combination amongst heavy terminal users, many of the slim terminal apps stay away from GUI toolkits that are what normally give consistency in settings to the GUI apps. And because they are slim and try to eliminate non-features, typically they don’t do configuration profiles… specially given that it’s relatively easy in Linux to backup and reuse your configuration across installs. It’s more of a job of the OS or maybe the sysadmin.
There’s also not a real standardized setup in Linux as a whole. There are environments that default using the Super (Windows) key for all window management, or use TUI terminal apps for most things so they get terminal navigation keys for all their apps. Some people even configure Gtk/Qt to use vim/emacs style for navigation in text boxes because for them it’s the other way around, all their apps use terminal shortcuts because… well… they are terminal apps.
Imagine this conversation:
You see how weird that is?
Clearly, neither me nor the OP know this. If that wasn’t the case, I would’ve provided OP with an answer to the question they posted!
PowerShell still runs inside a terminal emulator (e.g. Fish), so it changes nothing in the input/output behaviour.
“GUI-friendly terminals”? What does that mean, in the context of the conversation?
Why are you talking about GUI?
You are either very new or you’re being intentionally obtuse, this is absolutely not true. The CMD “terminal” in Windows, for instance, don’t behave anywhere close to the rest of the system with regard to cp/paste, tab completion, etc.
Terminals are used for more than installing packages and editing files. If I login to the old solaris boxes at work via serial console and all the key bindings are fucked, I’m not getting the job done. I and most of my contemporaries rely on the way VT 100 terminal emulators work, which is why we can’t use kitty, alacrity, etc.
If you want that “consistency”, use one of those terminal emulators that allows these behaviours.
Do I need to record a screencap from conhost.exe for you to believe me when I say you’re wrong?
Where did that come from? I never said anything about tab completion or “etc”. I was talking specifically about Ctrl/Shift combinations with arrows/backspace/home/end, and such.
Did you even read what I wrote? I said that there should be an option to switch between “modern” and “classic” keybinds. With the default being set to “classic” everywhere, how exactly would that cause any problems for you?
Mate, are you high? That’s what the OP is asking for. Do you know any such terminal emulators? Post some names!