4 ms·

This is a hard problem for commandline applications unfortunately. Think about pasting text with Ctrl+V. Lots of existing commandline applications bind particul

by zadjii 7y ago

This is a hard problem for commandline applications unfortunately. Think about pasting text with Ctrl+V. Lots of existing commandline applications bind particular actions to Ctrl+V - should the terminal application always eat the Ctrl+V keypress to handle pasting? This is why we added support to optionally set Ctrl+Shift+V as the paste keybinding in conhost. Fortunately, the Windows Terminal doesn't have a lot of the legacy to maintain like conhost does, so it'll support setting paste to whatever keybinging you like :)

amyjess 7y ago
I don't even care about Ctrl+V. I just want the ability to right-click on selected text and bring up a menu with 'Copy', 'Paste', and maybe a few other operations on it. No Windows terminal I've ever seen has the ability to do this. Edit: Note that I haven't used the new terminal yet, so if it supports an actual right-click menu, than bravo!
- zadjii 7y ago
  Oh, you want an actual right-click menu? I honestly don't think I've ever heard that _specific_ request before. Fortunately, the Windows Terminal doesn't have any existing back-compat we have to support, so that's definitely a setting we can add to it :)
  - amyjess 7y ago
    Oh, that would be wonderful. Thank you!
  - yc-kraln 7y ago
    I would also like to subscribe to the right-click context menu, to include copy/cut/paste, clone terminal, etc.
  - vijucat 7y ago
    Thanks for responding here! Really appreciate the interaction. Pretty sure that this is one of the biggest requests / frustrations you will hear from users. The issue is that MS has normalized the right-click menu as the go-to method of choosing exactly what one wants to do with a selection of text (, or even anywhere, for that matter), and it's useful, and uniformly available in Office and other Windows apps, and missing ONLY in cmd. For example, when pasting in Excel, Paste vs. Paste Special vs. Keep Formatting vs. Keep Formulas, etc; via the right-click menu is just great. Going from that to a "We insist on a 1982 MS-DOS experience" in the cmd window is just annoying.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      I'm assuming that the main reason why the old terminal can't do this is because console apps can, in fact, handle right clicks. Far Manager is one example that does so for file selection, or alternatively to display its own (TUI) context menus. The terminal still has the menu commands, by the way. They're tucked away in the window system menu (the one with Minimize, Close etc, that you can open by clicking on the app icon in the title bar - it's all under Edit there).
  - einr 7y ago
    Oh, you want an actual right-click menu? I honestly don't think I've ever heard that _specific_ request before. You have never heard that people might want to use functionality that has worked on all editable text in the entire rest of the operating system since Windows 95?
    - zadjii 7y ago
      No, people have not specifically made that request to our team in the last 4 years we've owned the console. We get feature requests all the time, but I certainly haven't heard this version before. Feel free to file it over at https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal, and we'll triage as appropriate
    - willio58 7y ago
      This fundamentally sums up why I prefer macOS over windows. Things work consistently throughout not only the desktop experience, but the phone and watch experience too.
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    Hey me too! The number of times I've closed a terminal because "Close" and "Edit" are right next to each other. :( I do prefer X because of the PRIMARY selection style automatic copy/pasting, but this would go a long way to making my Windows experience more enjoyable. The Windows development experience is hugely improved and my rediscoveries of it in the last few months have been generally very enjoyable.
- yndoendo 7y ago
  I would prefer the X11 method of being able just to highlight the text and using middle mouse to to paste. Nice having two easily accessible copy & paste containers.
  - amyjess 7y ago
    I've always hated middle-click paste. It's a nightmare waiting to happen. I'm terrified that, when I'm scrolling, I'll accidentally push down just a little bit too hard on the scroll wheel, and it'll do something awful like paste PII into a chat or paste a passage of text into my terminal and one line of it gets parsed as a valid command. I'd rather just use my middle button for autoscroll. It's safe, and it's my preferred way to scroll in the few applications that supported it.
    - AgentME 7y ago
      I accidentally middle-click paste into terminals all the time while scrolling. I would love to just disable middle-click paste in Linux. Juggling two different clipboards with different behavior is terrible. If it were a good idea, some other product not encumbered by history would have adopted it by now.
      - squiggleblaz 7y ago
        Well, Wayland adopted it. I understand they didn't want to, but the users want it. It's basically drag-and-drop where you don't need both things to be visible at the same time and continuity of movement becomes optional. Drag and drop isn't widely used because it's awkward. But PRIMARY is probably used by a much higher proportions of the users who have it available since it fixes all the problems with it. Btw. If you want to disable it, you can. But I think you need to be more specific than "Linux" to find instructions, since Linux doesn't have anything to do with your gui. There's presently two major tools responsible for taking applications and putting them on screen, and several other environments responsible for providing you with a useful working environment in terms of the graphical display. But you're probably a troll, because a real Linux user would actually make a useful complaint.
- com2kid 7y ago
  > I don't even care about Ctrl+V. I just want the ability to right-click on selected text and bring up a menu with 'Copy', 'Paste', and maybe a few other operations on it. The existing windows terminal has supported that for ages. Click the upper left icon of a terminal window Properties->Options->Quick Edit Mode. Uncheck. It isn't 100% the same, after selecting text right clicking will auto copy it, but other than that, mostly the same.
- dublin 7y ago
  It seems to be almost a secret (despite being right up there in the menubar), but VS Code has a great terminal tool built into it, which, until we get this new Windows Terminal in a few months, is by far the best terminal experience I've ever had on Windows. Another way MS really is trying to reduce developer friction...
deckar01 7y ago
It's not a hard problem. The problem is that the less common use case is being given the nicer UX. I use copy and paste 100x more often than the interrupt codes produced by CTRL+V/C. Put those interrupts in the context menu instead of copy/paste. If the use case needs to be inverted, make it a user preference.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Sometimes when I need ctrl+C, I really need ctrl+C right now. Being able to immediately cancel whatever stupidity I just typed is a very valuable thing.
  - deckar01 7y ago
    > If the use case needs to be inverted, make it a user preference.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      Fair enough. This might be a case of https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
  - OJFord 7y ago
    Which came first on Windows Clipboard UX is a bit of a mess on Linux, but notably on macOS copy is Cmd+C and SIGINT Ctrl+C, so this isn't an issue at all.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      The conflict long predates Windows. Ctrl+C to interrupt was inherited from TOPS (via DOS and CP/M). Ctrl+C to copy selected text was introduced on Xerox PARC, the granddaddy of all modern UIs. In DOS, some text-mode UI apps were already using it, although IBM CUA was more common.
thatoneuser 7y ago
Just do like vim and let users decide. Bind it to paste cuz you're windows and power users can modify a file in 2 sec. This isn't hard. This shouldn't be the issue it is.

by zadjii 7y ago

amyjess 7y ago

I don't even care about Ctrl+V. I just want the ability to right-click on selected text and bring up a menu with 'Copy', 'Paste', and maybe a few other operations on it. No Windows terminal I've ever seen has the ability to do this. Edit: Note that I haven't used the new terminal yet, so if it supports an actual right-click menu, than bravo!

zadjii 7y ago
Oh, you want an actual right-click menu? I honestly don't think I've ever heard that _specific_ request before. Fortunately, the Windows Terminal doesn't have any existing back-compat we have to support, so that's definitely a setting we can add to it :)
- amyjess 7y ago
  Oh, that would be wonderful. Thank you!
- yc-kraln 7y ago
  I would also like to subscribe to the right-click context menu, to include copy/cut/paste, clone terminal, etc.
- vijucat 7y ago
  Thanks for responding here! Really appreciate the interaction. Pretty sure that this is one of the biggest requests / frustrations you will hear from users. The issue is that MS has normalized the right-click menu as the go-to method of choosing exactly what one wants to do with a selection of text (, or even anywhere, for that matter), and it's useful, and uniformly available in Office and other Windows apps, and missing ONLY in cmd. For example, when pasting in Excel, Paste vs. Paste Special vs. Keep Formatting vs. Keep Formulas, etc; via the right-click menu is just great. Going from that to a "We insist on a 1982 MS-DOS experience" in the cmd window is just annoying.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    I'm assuming that the main reason why the old terminal can't do this is because console apps can, in fact, handle right clicks. Far Manager is one example that does so for file selection, or alternatively to display its own (TUI) context menus. The terminal still has the menu commands, by the way. They're tucked away in the window system menu (the one with Minimize, Close etc, that you can open by clicking on the app icon in the title bar - it's all under Edit there).
- einr 7y ago
  Oh, you want an actual right-click menu? I honestly don't think I've ever heard that _specific_ request before. You have never heard that people might want to use functionality that has worked on all editable text in the entire rest of the operating system since Windows 95?
  - zadjii 7y ago
    No, people have not specifically made that request to our team in the last 4 years we've owned the console. We get feature requests all the time, but I certainly haven't heard this version before. Feel free to file it over at https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal, and we'll triage as appropriate
  - willio58 7y ago
    This fundamentally sums up why I prefer macOS over windows. Things work consistently throughout not only the desktop experience, but the phone and watch experience too.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  Hey me too! The number of times I've closed a terminal because "Close" and "Edit" are right next to each other. :( I do prefer X because of the PRIMARY selection style automatic copy/pasting, but this would go a long way to making my Windows experience more enjoyable. The Windows development experience is hugely improved and my rediscoveries of it in the last few months have been generally very enjoyable.
yndoendo 7y ago
I would prefer the X11 method of being able just to highlight the text and using middle mouse to to paste. Nice having two easily accessible copy & paste containers.
- amyjess 7y ago
  I've always hated middle-click paste. It's a nightmare waiting to happen. I'm terrified that, when I'm scrolling, I'll accidentally push down just a little bit too hard on the scroll wheel, and it'll do something awful like paste PII into a chat or paste a passage of text into my terminal and one line of it gets parsed as a valid command. I'd rather just use my middle button for autoscroll. It's safe, and it's my preferred way to scroll in the few applications that supported it.
  - AgentME 7y ago
    I accidentally middle-click paste into terminals all the time while scrolling. I would love to just disable middle-click paste in Linux. Juggling two different clipboards with different behavior is terrible. If it were a good idea, some other product not encumbered by history would have adopted it by now.
    - squiggleblaz 7y ago
      Well, Wayland adopted it. I understand they didn't want to, but the users want it. It's basically drag-and-drop where you don't need both things to be visible at the same time and continuity of movement becomes optional. Drag and drop isn't widely used because it's awkward. But PRIMARY is probably used by a much higher proportions of the users who have it available since it fixes all the problems with it. Btw. If you want to disable it, you can. But I think you need to be more specific than "Linux" to find instructions, since Linux doesn't have anything to do with your gui. There's presently two major tools responsible for taking applications and putting them on screen, and several other environments responsible for providing you with a useful working environment in terms of the graphical display. But you're probably a troll, because a real Linux user would actually make a useful complaint.
com2kid 7y ago
> I don't even care about Ctrl+V. I just want the ability to right-click on selected text and bring up a menu with 'Copy', 'Paste', and maybe a few other operations on it. The existing windows terminal has supported that for ages. Click the upper left icon of a terminal window Properties->Options->Quick Edit Mode. Uncheck. It isn't 100% the same, after selecting text right clicking will auto copy it, but other than that, mostly the same.
dublin 7y ago
It seems to be almost a secret (despite being right up there in the menubar), but VS Code has a great terminal tool built into it, which, until we get this new Windows Terminal in a few months, is by far the best terminal experience I've ever had on Windows. Another way MS really is trying to reduce developer friction...

deckar01 7y ago

It's not a hard problem. The problem is that the less common use case is being given the nicer UX. I use copy and paste 100x more often than the interrupt codes produced by CTRL+V/C. Put those interrupts in the context menu instead of copy/paste. If the use case needs to be inverted, make it a user preference.

DuskStar 7y ago
Sometimes when I need ctrl+C, I really need ctrl+C right now. Being able to immediately cancel whatever stupidity I just typed is a very valuable thing.
- deckar01 7y ago
  > If the use case needs to be inverted, make it a user preference.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    Fair enough. This might be a case of https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- OJFord 7y ago
  Which came first on Windows Clipboard UX is a bit of a mess on Linux, but notably on macOS copy is Cmd+C and SIGINT Ctrl+C, so this isn't an issue at all.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    The conflict long predates Windows. Ctrl+C to interrupt was inherited from TOPS (via DOS and CP/M). Ctrl+C to copy selected text was introduced on Xerox PARC, the granddaddy of all modern UIs. In DOS, some text-mode UI apps were already using it, although IBM CUA was more common.

thatoneuser 7y ago

Just do like vim and let users decide. Bind it to paste cuz you're windows and power users can modify a file in 2 sec. This isn't hard. This shouldn't be the issue it is.