In bash, if you set $EDITOR to your favorite text editor, you can send the current line to $EDITOR with ctrl-x ctrl-e. After editing the command you can save and exit for the command to execute.
And for the fish folk, it's Alt-e
Entering text in the terminal is complicated
51–60 of 229 posts
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#52So when I use Windows Terminal and I press Ctrl-C, it always does the right thing: If I’m selecting text I want to copy it, if I’m not selecting text I want to kill the running process.
On Linux, every Terminal app I’ve used stubbornly refuses to copy when I press Ctrl-C, demanding I press Ctrl-Shift-C. When I paste, if I forget my manners and use Ctrl-V instead of Ctrl-Shift-V, I am punished by getting a weird character when I start typing again. And I am constantly pressing Ctrl-V because of muscle memory since no other app works this way.
Is there any terminal app for Linux that does things the Windows Terminal way and won’t slap me on the wrist for Improper Teletype Usage?
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#53> took me maybe 15 years of using the terminal every single day to get used to using Ctrl+A to go to the beginning of the line (or Ctrl+E for the end). And the curse of bad defaults strikes again (daily). After the realization that this is a weird default you don't train yourself for 15 years, but change it to your comfortable/common keybinds!
If you were an Emacs user you would find this to be a good and useful default. ;)
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#54[dead]
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you love cars, popping the hood is probably part of the experience. For everyone else, it’s the sign of a very frustrating day ahead. As computer lovers, I feel we must endeavour to remain mindful that almost everyone else aren’t like us. They’re trying to get a task done. They don’t want to maintain or talk with the computer.
> As computer lovers, I feel we must endeavour to remain mindful that almost everyone else aren’t like us. They’re trying to get a task done. They don’t want to maintain or talk with the computer. This was pretty much my point. 95% of the population isn't like us, and don't need to interact with the terminal; thus, thinking the terminal is what's keeping Linux back doesn't make much sense to me
Sorry if I was vague! I was commenting in complete agreement with you.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#56I plan to make one day an alternative to terminals. My idea is not fully fleshed out, but I would like to try to forgo TTYs altogether. Use only pipes, file descriptors and job control. The closest thing I saw to what I have in mind is this: https://github.com/letoram/cat9/ but more in a way of interface.
One thing to start with is to not throw the user into a screen consisting of a grid of fixed width character cells at the very beginning. This is what immediately sends a signal of discomfort to most users not already familiar with terminal emulators. There's no real reason why the default experience of having a dialog with your system installation couldn't take place within an interface that resembles iMessage or ChatGPT or something like Quicksilver. Things like /bin/rm certainly don't care whether they're being invoked from a terminal emulator that has the conventional look or whether it's in a chat-like interface—it doesn't rely on any line drawing characters or output alignment. Even the Python REPL doesn't depend on that sort of thing a great deal, except for stuff like ASCII art arrows pointing to syntax errors. Only when you want to use stuff like vi or ps and ls helpfully trying to put things into columns will you start running into trouble if your terminal emulator has an non-traditional UI. This can be ameliorated to some degree with heuristics to detect e.g. spaces being used for alignment and cursor positioning escape sequences in the output stream.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#57Wirth showed us decades ago how to do UIs using text in a modern way yet we remain firmly tied to digital analogues of teletype terminals.
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#58See also the same blog's previous article, "What happens when you press a key in your terminal?"
https://jvns.ca/blog/2022/07/20/pseudoterminals/
(It's a great article, and I'm fairly surprised the post doesn't directly link to it)
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#59> license reasons, if the program’s license is not GPL-compatible – readline is GPL-licensed, not LGPL The older I get, the less patient I become with finding out some user experience sucks because of GPL / non-GPL knife fights. It's been thirty-nine years now. I think the GPL was useful at its origin, but now the benefits of open-source are proven out, the world is deeply interconnected via the Internet, and it's a…
@shadowgovt Genuine question: if i wanted to create new software nowadays, and i wished for it to be as you noted "mmaximally unencumbered from interoperation", which license should i choose for my software? Which license would you use? Again, not trying to be snarky; just wanting to learn and understand. :-)
Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated
#60> took me maybe 15 years of using the terminal every single day to get used to using Ctrl+A to go to the beginning of the line (or Ctrl+E for the end). And the curse of bad defaults strikes again (daily). After the realization that this is a weird default you don't train yourself for 15 years, but change it to your comfortable/common keybinds!
These defaults are not bad if you use Emacs :) Or if you use macOS that (gasp) supports the very same ^A and ^E shortcuts in all edit controls.