Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video]

Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by eeks on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @02:48PM (#16268350)

I must concur. With an equivalent vim setup and code files, nothing beats X11/suckless terminal on my OpenBSD machine. Comparing to that, even Alacritty looks like a slug.

I must say however that things are looking a bit better in iTerm2 when switching the Metal renderer on. It's just a shame that an Nvidia GPU on OSX is necessary to compete with my $1000 Lenovo with its crappy Intel chip on OpenBSD when it comes to text editing latency.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by gnachman on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @05:09PM (#16269552)

iTerm2's design is saddled by some history. At the time I took it over, everything was done in a single thread. By the time I realized I was going to stay with the project and how bad the design was, it was too late to change it. I've moved as much work as possible off the main thread (parsing the bytestream and now rendering). I think Terminal gets very nice performance without resorting to Metal by doing only UI work on the main thread. I think the Metal renderer will prove to be worthwhile, even though it was a lot of work to create that could've been avoided (kinda) if the design had been fixed 8 years ago.

As for using CPU when idle, there was a bug where a background thread was doing the equivalent of running `ps` over and over. That's been fixed in the last few versions, but please file issues for such things and I'll get to them as soon as I'm able.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by jarpineh on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @05:42PM (#16269779)

I'll add my thank you. I'm also backer at Patreon.

With tmux control mode it's already very good and now with faster rendering coming...

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by acoard on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @07:00PM (#16270230)

I've got an unrelated question about tmux/iTerm2 - hope you don't mind me asking.

I'm a heavy iTerm2 user and always been curious about tmux. Is there any reason to try out tmux integration if I'm already comfortable with iTerm2's features and panelling? I kind of got the impression tmux integration was largely for people who love tmux and are migrating to iTerm2, so it just makes it more familiar. Or is it something I should take another look at?

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by jarpineh on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @07:29PM (#16270354)

Not at all, if only to tell about virtues iTerm2 and tmux to wider audience!

Short version: iTerm with tmux control mode (tmux -CC flag) is still iTerm, only now with tmux benefits like persistent shell sessions. iTerm translates regular commands like new window and split pane into tmux commands and acts otherwise like regular iTerm. Mac might crash or SSH get disconnected and tmux stays running to save you from losing anything (well, if it's running on a server..).

In addition you tmux gives you shell sharing and allows using different devices alltogether. I sometimes use iPad or iPhone with Blink.app to connect to my always running sessions. You can connect to existing tmux session attaching with CC mode and iTerm will open windows and panes to accommodate.

One caveat if you require Mosh for network issues: it and tmux control mode aren't compatible. Also, I'd like to open tmux windows as tabs instead of separate iTerm windows, but that's a minor thing.

This page on iTerm's wiki explains things in detail: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/wikis/TmuxIntegration

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by wingspan on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:19PM (#16271257)

Regarding Mosh and control mode, Eternal Terminal https://mistertea.github.io/EternalTCP/ provides the same resumable session, and works flawlessly with tmux control mode.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by AlexCoventry on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @12:46AM (#16271745)

ET may be insecure. It was recently possible to segfault it with corrupted network inputs.

https://github.com/MisterTea/EternalTCP/issues/79

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by AceJohnny2 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @07:15PM (#16270290)

I use tmux with iTerm regularly, and it's my killer feature in iTerm.

I don't think there's much benefit to using tmux integration for a local shell, other than possibly long-lasting sessions that will survive iTerm itself crashing (and maybe you logging out? I'm not sure), which isn't enough of a problem for me to have to work around.

The awesome benefit for me is when using a remote tmux. Tmux integration works over SSH, so thanks to this I can have native-looking tabs and windows that are actually terminals on a remote machine. And if I get disconnected (frequent, with a laptop, as I'm moving around), I can reconnect and get all the remote windows just fine.

Gone are all the usual tmux C-b prefixes to managing windows, non-integrated scrolling, etc. Everything behaves like a normal iTerm window. I can even split/move panes like normal iTerm panes (though that crashed iTerm until about a year ago).

I have the following alias defined:

    ssh -t elf.example.com /opt/local/bin/tmux -u -CC attach

The -t is the SSH option to force pseudo-terminal allocation, which some versions of ssh fail to do when passing a command (in this case tmux) rather than starting a shell.

I'm specifying the /opt/local/bin version of tmux, because that's an updated one I've installed from MacPorts. Unfortunately Apple continues to bundle old versions of tmux in macOS, and last I checked the one that was bundled didn't actually support the Control Channel required by iTerm integration.

-u is a tmux option to force it in Unicode mode, required by iTerm's Tmux integration

-CC tells tmux to start a control channel and disable echo (required by iTerm's tmux integration)

`attach` attaches to the default session that I created prior.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by hultner on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @07:20PM (#16270307)

I’d say it’s the opposite as an die hard tmux-user. I don’t really use the integration since I’m more comfortable with my terminal in full screen and my own tmux config. The integration services seems more appropriate for someone who doesn’t already have their tmux-bindings and workflow stamped into muscle memory but rather just want the benefits of detaching their terminal sessions from their terminal application while retaining iterm native tabs, windows and panes.

I’ve tried out the integration mode a few times but it just doesn’t fit my workflow (often switching sessions, highly customized tmux configuration, etc).

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by Myrmornis on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:17PM (#16271030)

Exactly. For people who already use tmux heavily, and use it on linux as well as macos, the iterm2 integration isn’t going to be an attractive direction. Partly because it will lose the uniform experience across OSs, and partly because they’re happy with session/window/pane management using tmux’s UI.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by kokey on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @02:14AM (#16272148)

I'm the same, but with screen. I usually have an iTerm2 tab for each screen session. I have a screen session on a work machine and one on a personal machine, each usually with close to 10 virtual terminals. I connect to both with mosh. I haven't seen a compelling reason for me to switch to tmux, yet.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by wll on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @05:31PM (#16269694)

Thank you for your work on iTerm2, George!

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by bronxbomber92 on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:26PM (#16270844)

Did you hit any pain points using Metal?

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by wincent on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @11:55PM (#16271442)

So looking forward to the Metal renderer. Any idea when it will makes into a release?

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by Philipp__ on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @03:17PM (#16268618)

Wow, just gave iTerm2 Nightly with Metal renderer a spin! Holy shiet it's fast and smooth! FINALY! Opened 20k C file in Vim (stock vim 8 that comes with macOS High Sierra), pushed that scroll down and let it roll, it was soooo smooth! Amazing!

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by bhoeting on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @08:49PM (#16270708)

I tried it after reading this comment. You weren't kidding. Unfortunately, my Vim isn't rendering properly. About 10 lines in the middle of the screen are blank for some reason. Both in and out of Tmux. Oh well. I'm just happy that I can look forward to Metal rendering being merged into stable.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by neoncontrails on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @10:32PM (#16271069)

Not sure if it's the same issue I had recently with iTerm2 periodically going black, but consider disabling the Core Text renderer with the following command:

$ defaults write org.vim.MacVim MMUseCGLayerAlways -bool YES

This was the developers' suggestion and it solved my issue. There's an informative discussion of the root causes here: https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/issues/557.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by bhoeting on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @02:30PM (#16276786)

Hmm, that didn't see to work for me. I think I have a different issue. Thanks, though!

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by wyclif on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @08:36PM (#16270662)

Is there a way to install that with homebrew?

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by bhoeting on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @08:40PM (#16270675)

    brew cask install iterm2-nightly

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by myko on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @09:06PM (#16270762)

I had to:

    brew tap caskroom/versions

as well

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by wyclif on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @01:13AM (#16271867)

Thanks guys, I was a bit embarrassed to ask that question but I suspected the answer wasn't quite intuitive.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by tomjakubowski on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @05:08PM (#16269541)

Have you tested iTerm2's Metal renderer performance with the integrated Intel GPU?

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by eeks on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @09:08AM (#16273893)

Yes, however matter-of-factly while moving about the office. I did not perceive any difference between the Mac plugged in and on the go.

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Re:Xi: an editor for the next 20 years [video] by bowmessage on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @06:52PM (#16270203)

Thank you so much for mentioning the new experimental metal renderer feature. This has dramatically improved my development setup.

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