Re:Helix: a post-modern modal text editor
by vbezhenar on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @04:25PM
(#27360815)
That's my main issue with terminal emulators. Why can't I click anywhere to put a cursor in there? Why can't I delete a selected text? Some hotkeys work as expected (e.g. Ctrl+Delete), but others don't (e.g. Ctrl+Backspace). Those are simple things from a user standpoint. Terminal could be so much more usable. I'm not even talking about integrating real GUI into terminal, for example pressing Tab should open dropdown list, not emulate it with text.
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Re:Helix: a post-modern modal text editor
by SpaceNugget on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @04:49PM
(#27361078)
You can use the mouse to select things in the terminal. In vim/neovim `:set mouse=a` and you can scroll around, select things and move the cursor just like you can in a regular GUI editor.
Thanks for this, you finally got me to look at the mouse options in vim, which I've always preferred off, as it's extremely annoying when using multiple windows and a click to focus window manager (like explorer, for the most part) when it places me somewhere else.
Now that I know how to enable it for specific modes, I'll definitely be using it for visual mode, and maybe insert mode (we'll see how much that annoys me). Now I'm off to see if I can get the mouse wheel to work at all times but click to place cursor off except when I want it, which would be ideal.
Re:Helix: a post-modern modal text editor
by Per_Bothner on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @01:47PM
(#27371742)
In DomTerm, you can click to move the cursor. This is simulated by converting the click to a series a arrow-keystrokes. If you set up "shell integration" (https://domterm.org/Shell-prompts.html) it just works with a regular click (for bash, fish, or zsh). Otherwise you can can do Alt-click (to avoid risk of mass confusion if you accidentally click outide an application that can handle arrow-key movement).
Deleting selected text works if you're in line-editing mode. It could be made to work in normal char mode, but it's a bit tricky.
Setting mouse-reporting by the application (emacs, vim, mc, etc) works pretty well, but it means the application has to simulate the selection (which may or may not be integrated with the desktop selection), context (right-click) menus, etc.