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> The Windows Console code-base is currently (July 2018) almost 30 years old ... older, in fact, than the developers who now work on it! Which really shows, es

> The Windows Console code-base is currently (July 2018) almost 30 years old ... older, in fact, than the developers who now work on it! Which really shows, especially since you still can't use a TTF-font without editing the registry.

flabbergast 8y ago
Yeah, this 30 years old code-base.. besides it is questionable only dev's below 30yr old are working on it (age discrimination, or accidental?), hardly anything changed. If I want to copy something I still have to do the ancient mark and copy sequence from the right click menu! What are they working on then? Still fixing bugs?
- nitinreddy88 8y ago
  Powershell. All of these shortcomings were fixed in it. Currently its also supported in Windows/*nix
  - ygra 8y ago
    PowerShell is a shell, thus a console application, buy not the console. So it's just the settings of the console window if you observe any differences. The PowerShell shortcut on the start menu may have different settings from the command prompt shortcut.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    I love Powershell, but it still uses the exact same ConHost as cmd and command.com before it. When scripting PS this is a non-issue, but using it interactively remains painful.
    - zadjii 8y ago
      May I ask what your specific pain points are? We've been doing a lot to try and improve our usability but there's so very much on our backlog that it's hard to prioritize. I'm always curious if people have specific requests edit: pain points with conhost*. I work on conhost, the "terminal", not PowerShell
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        Not the parent, but personally, my only real pet peeve with PowerShell as an IT admin is that the right click start menu replaced cmd with PowerShell despite it still being drastically slower to load on many PCs. There's a setting to change it back, but if you are working on other computers all the time, that's not useful at all. This is my main peeve with the Settings panel as well: It's slower to get things done with, but the legacy panels have been intentionally made harder to reach[1] before performance parity has been reached. My understanding is that improving PowerShell's start time is a big part of the next release of Windows 10, and that's great, but once that's done was the right time to put PowerShell as the default console on Windows, not before. 98% of why I open a prompt is to run "ping", and waiting for the prompt to actually show up in PS takes longer than a ping timeout. (Which is to say, if you need one takeaway from this post: Remember that no matter how cool you make PowerShell, most of us are only opening it to ping something, that's the most important experience to get right.) Especially some of the decisions with the install screens for Windows 10 seem to highlight that people at Microsoft aren't aware how some subtle changes cause significant pain/delay for IT folks. Like with 1803 being forced to come up with security questions when creating the local account on a PC you're about to domain join. [1]Example: Programs and Features from the legacy control panel no longer appears in search, even if you type it all the way out. Typing "appwiz.cpl" is the fastest way to see what's installed on a computer (and what versions) at a glance, but kinda a pro trick.
        rosege 8y ago
        You could change the right click back to cmd by using a group policy to change the registry. E.g. https://blogs.msmvps.com/russel/2016/11/18/defaulting-to-powershell-instead-of-cmd/ https://blogs.msmvps.com/russel/2016/11/18/defaulting-to-pow...
        ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        Also true, but there's a limit to how much nonsense you want to dump into GPOs. Most of what you throw in your Group Policy will inevitably end up sticking around for the next decade and a half long past its irrelevance, and regardless of whether you throw everything in one big GPO or have several dozen small GPOs, you will never remember where that stupid setting came from down the road. So I'm hesitant to go overboard on custom registry entry pushes (as opposed to the standard templates) for things that only affect IT experience.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  This is also not true as of Windows 10 build 16299/Fall Creator's Update (what I'm currently using), and may not be true of an earlier release or two. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V both work just fine in cmd. I found evidence it was considered an "experimental feature" available in the Command Prompt's Properties dialogue back in 2015, it looks like it's been folded into the default behavior at this point. Microsoft's done a lot of work on legacy components of Windows like cmd and notepad in the last few years, assumptions about behavior that has worked the same for the last twenty years may no longer be valid. ;)
- zadjii 8y ago
  Have you tried enabling QuickEdit mode in the Properties (right click on the titlebar)? Quick edit lets you use the mouse for selecting, and in Insider's releases we've even added support for Ctrl+Shift+C/V for copy paste (even in wsl!). We've been working on not only tons of bugs, but adding plenty of new features, including support for VT sequences, 256/RGB color, improving our unicode support, enhanced accessibility support. The fact that all of our devs are under 30 is merely coincidence :)
  - merinowool 8y ago
    Why do you need to select quick edit to be able to copy? That makes no sense.
    - mastazi 8y ago
      You don't need to but it makes it easier
  - sun41 8y ago
    > and in Insider's releases we've even added support for Ctrl+Shift+C/V for copy paste (even in wsl!) Insider's release only? Wow, that sounds like really advanced stuff for something totally basic! > we've even added support for Ctrl+Shift+C/V for copy paste So, you're from Microsoft, down voting everything that has the slightest touch of criticism? With the entire team maybe? You must be a very proud employee.
    - ygra 8y ago
      > Insider's release only? Wow, that sounds like really advanced stuff for something totally basic! This has nothing to do with how large or small the feature or change is. A feature, once ready to be publicly tested, will get in the pipeline to first get into the insider releases and eventually show up in a normal build. In what kind of release such a change is is purely based on how old the change is, I guess. But of course, don't let that detract you from snarking.
    - wila 8y ago
- pjmlp 8y ago
  What about learning to use the OS? Quick edit for UNIX style copy-paste with the mouse goes all the way back to Windows 9X. The only issue is that it was always disabled by default, until they changed to be enabled by default with the latest set of changes. Spending a couple of seconds after logging in to enable it, for the very first time on a new system, was never a big deal.
  - blkhawk 8y ago
    Its not quite UNIX style - it works like a weird frame selection instead of follow the text LtR like any *nix console I can think of. It would be super if that could be fixed as well with an option.
    - oblio 8y ago
      I'm pretty sure it's block/column selection instead of line selection. Why they made that design decision, we will never know. Maybe a dev was working with a lot of hex output? (even so, he should be slapped retroactively, unless he's Raymond Chen, cause Raymond Chen is amazing so we'll forgive his transgressions)
      - icc97 8y ago
        This is one of the major changes that happened since this team started working on the console. In Windows 10 it has line selection that flows correctly over line breaks.
      - tom_ 8y ago
        The console 'screen' is a grid of (character,attribute) pairs, so there are no lines as such... I'm not sure the box selection is super useful these days, but in the late 80s/early 90s, GUI-style interfaces were very popular, and a box selection makes a certain amount of sense, so you can avoid picking up borders and so on. Would have been nice if they'd got both types in from day 1 though...
zadjii 8y ago
That's just flat out wrong: https://i.imgur.com/ae1yyXI.png https://i.imgur.com/ae1yyXI.png We added support for TTF fonts a few releases ago.
- sun41 8y ago
  Wow, so that's fixed after almost 30 years! Flat out amazing, what a team!
  - royjacobs 8y ago
    ...so if they don't fix it, the console sucks. But if they do fix it you still find the need to be snarky?
    - code_duck 8y ago
      I think the concept is that if they had added it a long time ago, is that would be good or average. Adding it very late is not worthy of praise, and lacking it for years is still worthy of condemnation. While the change may be part of a broader positive trend, it does not absolve them of the past.
      - royjacobs 8y ago
        Why not, though? Is it really that useful to fill every Microsoft-related topic with comments that amount to "Micro$oft lol"-level trolling? I mean, they used to suck, we get it. They're actively trying to improve but that, too, is not enough. - "You used to be fat!" - "I'm thin now, though, through hard work. Isn't that worth something?" - "...but you used to be fat!"
        code_duck 8y ago
        The company has an almost 40 year history. When you’ve built up and miss trust over decades, peoples attitudes are not going to change overnight. Personally, while I was merely describing what I perceived other people’s viewpoints to be, I don’t know why it’s so hard for Microsoft to make a normal terminal app. People have the choice of a dozen adequate terminal apps on Linux. I guess this article explains any difficulty. As far as MS modernizing, one could look at it as, what would you think if 25 or 30 years ago, IBM said that they were turning around and we’re now a modern, agile company instead of a slow-moving relic of the previous era, and they built an awesome new console app for OS/2?

flabbergast 8y ago

Yeah, this 30 years old code-base.. besides it is questionable only dev's below 30yr old are working on it (age discrimination, or accidental?), hardly anything changed. If I want to copy something I still have to do the ancient mark and copy sequence from the right click menu! What are they working on then? Still fixing bugs?

nitinreddy88 8y ago
Powershell. All of these shortcomings were fixed in it. Currently its also supported in Windows/*nix
- ygra 8y ago
  PowerShell is a shell, thus a console application, buy not the console. So it's just the settings of the console window if you observe any differences. The PowerShell shortcut on the start menu may have different settings from the command prompt shortcut.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  I love Powershell, but it still uses the exact same ConHost as cmd and command.com before it. When scripting PS this is a non-issue, but using it interactively remains painful.
  - zadjii 8y ago
    May I ask what your specific pain points are? We've been doing a lot to try and improve our usability but there's so very much on our backlog that it's hard to prioritize. I'm always curious if people have specific requests edit: pain points with conhost*. I work on conhost, the "terminal", not PowerShell
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      Not the parent, but personally, my only real pet peeve with PowerShell as an IT admin is that the right click start menu replaced cmd with PowerShell despite it still being drastically slower to load on many PCs. There's a setting to change it back, but if you are working on other computers all the time, that's not useful at all. This is my main peeve with the Settings panel as well: It's slower to get things done with, but the legacy panels have been intentionally made harder to reach[1] before performance parity has been reached. My understanding is that improving PowerShell's start time is a big part of the next release of Windows 10, and that's great, but once that's done was the right time to put PowerShell as the default console on Windows, not before. 98% of why I open a prompt is to run "ping", and waiting for the prompt to actually show up in PS takes longer than a ping timeout. (Which is to say, if you need one takeaway from this post: Remember that no matter how cool you make PowerShell, most of us are only opening it to ping something, that's the most important experience to get right.) Especially some of the decisions with the install screens for Windows 10 seem to highlight that people at Microsoft aren't aware how some subtle changes cause significant pain/delay for IT folks. Like with 1803 being forced to come up with security questions when creating the local account on a PC you're about to domain join. [1]Example: Programs and Features from the legacy control panel no longer appears in search, even if you type it all the way out. Typing "appwiz.cpl" is the fastest way to see what's installed on a computer (and what versions) at a glance, but kinda a pro trick.
      - rosege 8y ago
        You could change the right click back to cmd by using a group policy to change the registry. E.g. https://blogs.msmvps.com/russel/2016/11/18/defaulting-to-powershell-instead-of-cmd/ https://blogs.msmvps.com/russel/2016/11/18/defaulting-to-pow...
        ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        Also true, but there's a limit to how much nonsense you want to dump into GPOs. Most of what you throw in your Group Policy will inevitably end up sticking around for the next decade and a half long past its irrelevance, and regardless of whether you throw everything in one big GPO or have several dozen small GPOs, you will never remember where that stupid setting came from down the road. So I'm hesitant to go overboard on custom registry entry pushes (as opposed to the standard templates) for things that only affect IT experience.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
This is also not true as of Windows 10 build 16299/Fall Creator's Update (what I'm currently using), and may not be true of an earlier release or two. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V both work just fine in cmd. I found evidence it was considered an "experimental feature" available in the Command Prompt's Properties dialogue back in 2015, it looks like it's been folded into the default behavior at this point. Microsoft's done a lot of work on legacy components of Windows like cmd and notepad in the last few years, assumptions about behavior that has worked the same for the last twenty years may no longer be valid. ;)
zadjii 8y ago
Have you tried enabling QuickEdit mode in the Properties (right click on the titlebar)? Quick edit lets you use the mouse for selecting, and in Insider's releases we've even added support for Ctrl+Shift+C/V for copy paste (even in wsl!). We've been working on not only tons of bugs, but adding plenty of new features, including support for VT sequences, 256/RGB color, improving our unicode support, enhanced accessibility support. The fact that all of our devs are under 30 is merely coincidence :)
- merinowool 8y ago
  Why do you need to select quick edit to be able to copy? That makes no sense.
  - mastazi 8y ago
    You don't need to but it makes it easier
- sun41 8y ago
  > and in Insider's releases we've even added support for Ctrl+Shift+C/V for copy paste (even in wsl!) Insider's release only? Wow, that sounds like really advanced stuff for something totally basic! > we've even added support for Ctrl+Shift+C/V for copy paste So, you're from Microsoft, down voting everything that has the slightest touch of criticism? With the entire team maybe? You must be a very proud employee.
  - ygra 8y ago
    > Insider's release only? Wow, that sounds like really advanced stuff for something totally basic! This has nothing to do with how large or small the feature or change is. A feature, once ready to be publicly tested, will get in the pipeline to first get into the insider releases and eventually show up in a normal build. In what kind of release such a change is is purely based on how old the change is, I guess. But of course, don't let that detract you from snarking.
  - wila 8y ago
pjmlp 8y ago
What about learning to use the OS? Quick edit for UNIX style copy-paste with the mouse goes all the way back to Windows 9X. The only issue is that it was always disabled by default, until they changed to be enabled by default with the latest set of changes. Spending a couple of seconds after logging in to enable it, for the very first time on a new system, was never a big deal.
- blkhawk 8y ago
  Its not quite UNIX style - it works like a weird frame selection instead of follow the text LtR like any *nix console I can think of. It would be super if that could be fixed as well with an option.
  - oblio 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's block/column selection instead of line selection. Why they made that design decision, we will never know. Maybe a dev was working with a lot of hex output? (even so, he should be slapped retroactively, unless he's Raymond Chen, cause Raymond Chen is amazing so we'll forgive his transgressions)
    - icc97 8y ago
      This is one of the major changes that happened since this team started working on the console. In Windows 10 it has line selection that flows correctly over line breaks.
    - tom_ 8y ago
      The console 'screen' is a grid of (character,attribute) pairs, so there are no lines as such... I'm not sure the box selection is super useful these days, but in the late 80s/early 90s, GUI-style interfaces were very popular, and a box selection makes a certain amount of sense, so you can avoid picking up borders and so on. Would have been nice if they'd got both types in from day 1 though...

zadjii 8y ago

That's just flat out wrong: https://i.imgur.com/ae1yyXI.png https://i.imgur.com/ae1yyXI.png We added support for TTF fonts a few releases ago.

sun41 8y ago
Wow, so that's fixed after almost 30 years! Flat out amazing, what a team!
- royjacobs 8y ago
  ...so if they don't fix it, the console sucks. But if they do fix it you still find the need to be snarky?
  - code_duck 8y ago
    I think the concept is that if they had added it a long time ago, is that would be good or average. Adding it very late is not worthy of praise, and lacking it for years is still worthy of condemnation. While the change may be part of a broader positive trend, it does not absolve them of the past.
    - royjacobs 8y ago
      Why not, though? Is it really that useful to fill every Microsoft-related topic with comments that amount to "Micro$oft lol"-level trolling? I mean, they used to suck, we get it. They're actively trying to improve but that, too, is not enough. - "You used to be fat!" - "I'm thin now, though, through hard work. Isn't that worth something?" - "...but you used to be fat!"
      - code_duck 8y ago
        The company has an almost 40 year history. When you’ve built up and miss trust over decades, peoples attitudes are not going to change overnight. Personally, while I was merely describing what I perceived other people’s viewpoints to be, I don’t know why it’s so hard for Microsoft to make a normal terminal app. People have the choice of a dozen adequate terminal apps on Linux. I guess this article explains any difficulty. As far as MS modernizing, one could look at it as, what would you think if 25 or 30 years ago, IBM said that they were turning around and we’re now a modern, agile company instead of a slow-moving relic of the previous era, and they built an awesome new console app for OS/2?