9 ms·

I have never quite understood what the benefit of using kitty is. My default terminal emulator just isn’t using that many resources and I don’t get why I would

I have never quite understood what the benefit of using kitty is. My default terminal emulator just isn’t using that many resources and I don’t get why I would even want GPU rendering for text. What problem does it solve for you?

kzrdude 4y ago
Terminals have some infuriating limitations, like imagine not being able to tell the difference between Esc + A or Alt + A as an application. Or that tab and Ctrl + I produce identical input. Kitty has a new keyboard handling protocol, and Neovim supports it. So if you use kitty, you can use key mappings in neovim in a more predicatable and flexible way.
- kps 4y ago
  But xterm and xterm-compatibles have been able to do this for over a decade (CSI > 4 ; 2 m).
- nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  While that sounds like a good thing is Esc+<key> really that useful of a bind when you already have Ctrl/Alt + <key> and you can get twice the keys if you add shift in the mix. Of course your workflow is yours.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    When Alt+a looks the same as Esc+a, then the program has to wait biefly after it sees you press Esc - the continuation could mean it's really Alt+a you want to send. That latency interferes just with a plain Esc key press. There's no weird use case in this.
    - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
      Either my terminal does some magic or this is not true. Most of my vim & tmux commands are alt+something and these execute as soon as I press the bind. Or does tmux make them work automagically?
      - kzrdude 4y ago
        Maybe https://neovim.io/doc/user/options.html#'ttimeout' https://neovim.io/doc/user/options.html#'ttimeout' could be evidence that it's not a problem that I've made up, it exists in some terminals. My comment was about that latency of pressing a single Esc.
        nextlevelwizard 4y ago
        I also can't say I've noticed such latency
petepete 4y ago
It's _really_ responsive, whether you're in an editor or accidentally grepped a minified JavaScript file. I would be capable of working entirely in any modern terminal emulator, but Kitty makes it a pleasure.
- nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  Aren't these more about the tools you are using instead of the terminal emulator? Or does kitty use its own grep command? I use vim as my main editor and while I usually stick with default terminal I have tried others in the past and at least I cant tell a difference in normal usage.
  - petepete 4y ago
    It's not the grep that's slow, it's the printing of a hundred thousand character minified line of JavaScript. Unintentional, but every dev's done it or similar. I used to have to kill urxvt, which I used for nearly 15 years.
    - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
      >printing of a hundred thousand character minified line of JavaScript. Yeah... Terminal is not the issue, rather why you have 100000 line js file in the first place.
      - petepete 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minification_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minification_(programming)
        nextlevelwizard 4y ago
        Yes? Why do you need 100000 characters of JS? Maybe de-bloat your shit. Also grepping through that is even easier than 100_000 lines (which I assumed you meant since grepping over one line of 1_000_000 characters takes so little time that is not any kind of argument)
leephillips 4y ago
I’ve tried many terminal emulators, probably all available on Linux, and kitty is the best in my experience. Performance is excellent: keyboard latency, catting files. It’s sometimes convenient to use some of its tricks, such as viewing an image right in the terminal through ssh.
- AndyKluger 4y ago
  Have you tried wezterm as well?
  - leephillips 4y ago
    I don’t think so. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “all”.
ploum 4y ago
Also support displaying picture (try chafa with any jpg/png file inside kitty). That makes browsing with offpunk a completely different experience.
seri4l 4y ago
You can configure a key combination to run a pager on the last command output, color and everything. You can also configure it so that it pipes the output of a command to a pager automatically whenever it is more than a screen long.
gorgoiler 4y ago
In addition to what others have said, it is also freely licensed and open source, with ports to my daily drivers macOS and xorg/Linux. I wonder if a Windows port is in the works too?
- AndyKluger 4y ago
  FWIW Wezterm supports Windows.
nvarsj 4y ago
kitty is the most feature complete terminal emulator out there. It’s the only one that properly supports ligatures and variable width characters for instance. If you want faithful terminal reproduction with built in native tmux like functionality (including non broken mouse support), kitty is about the only option.
- NotEvil 4y ago
  Wezterm is feature parity with kitty. But can be configured in lua instead of a long custom text file with vim tag support
- tmtvl 4y ago
  No it isn't, I have version 0.27.1 installed and it reports itself as a VT220 rather than VT420 (like xterm), or VT520 (like Zutty). And even despite purporting to be a VT220 it still fails on LineFeed Mode, DSR, and SRM; which the developer of Zutty called out back in 2020: https://tomscii.sig7.se/2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-of-Zutty https://tomscii.sig7.se/2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-...
- AndyKluger 4y ago
  Are you saying that because you've found something missing from wezterm, or because you're not considering wezterm at all?
- nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  >It’s the only one that properly supports ligatures and variable width characters for instance. Are these like "powerline fonts" or what? Where are these used?
- leephillips 4y ago
  > variable width characters Do you mean such things as wide Unicode glyphs? Because it doesn’t seem to support variable-width fonts.
version_five 4y ago
Being able to display inline images in the terminal
- nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  How often do you need this? Feels a pretty niche need. Also not the only terminal emulator capable of this.
toastal 4y ago
Joining in questioning… kitty dev seems to hate tmux since kitty can perform many of it's behaviors. The thing that's most interesting to me is tmux for detaching and persisting a session on a remote host. Does kitty cover this functionality too? Is there like kittyd?
- kps 4y ago
  If persisting sessions is the only thing you use tmux or screen for (as it was for me), try `dtach`. Session management is all it does; terminal I/O is passed through just like a plain ssh session.
- toastal 4y ago
  its* behaviors
- galkk 4y ago
  I use tmux for remote and i3 for local use, so I don’t use kittys window management functions. I know author stance on tmux and do not share it
mftb 4y ago
Kitty renders more cases correctly, more stable, mainly I appreciate it's overall high quality. I don't use it's tmux-like features.
galkk 4y ago
Kitty is fast, configurable and support ligatures.

kzrdude 4y ago

Terminals have some infuriating limitations, like imagine not being able to tell the difference between Esc + A or Alt + A as an application. Or that tab and Ctrl + I produce identical input. Kitty has a new keyboard handling protocol, and Neovim supports it. So if you use kitty, you can use key mappings in neovim in a more predicatable and flexible way.

kps 4y ago
But xterm and xterm-compatibles have been able to do this for over a decade (CSI > 4 ; 2 m).
nextlevelwizard 4y ago
While that sounds like a good thing is Esc+<key> really that useful of a bind when you already have Ctrl/Alt + <key> and you can get twice the keys if you add shift in the mix. Of course your workflow is yours.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  When Alt+a looks the same as Esc+a, then the program has to wait biefly after it sees you press Esc - the continuation could mean it's really Alt+a you want to send. That latency interferes just with a plain Esc key press. There's no weird use case in this.
  - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
    Either my terminal does some magic or this is not true. Most of my vim & tmux commands are alt+something and these execute as soon as I press the bind. Or does tmux make them work automagically?
    - kzrdude 4y ago
      Maybe https://neovim.io/doc/user/options.html#'ttimeout' https://neovim.io/doc/user/options.html#'ttimeout' could be evidence that it's not a problem that I've made up, it exists in some terminals. My comment was about that latency of pressing a single Esc.
      - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
        I also can't say I've noticed such latency

petepete 4y ago

It's _really_ responsive, whether you're in an editor or accidentally grepped a minified JavaScript file. I would be capable of working entirely in any modern terminal emulator, but Kitty makes it a pleasure.

nextlevelwizard 4y ago
Aren't these more about the tools you are using instead of the terminal emulator? Or does kitty use its own grep command? I use vim as my main editor and while I usually stick with default terminal I have tried others in the past and at least I cant tell a difference in normal usage.
- petepete 4y ago
  It's not the grep that's slow, it's the printing of a hundred thousand character minified line of JavaScript. Unintentional, but every dev's done it or similar. I used to have to kill urxvt, which I used for nearly 15 years.
  - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
    >printing of a hundred thousand character minified line of JavaScript. Yeah... Terminal is not the issue, rather why you have 100000 line js file in the first place.
    - petepete 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minification_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minification_(programming)
      - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
        Yes? Why do you need 100000 characters of JS? Maybe de-bloat your shit. Also grepping through that is even easier than 100_000 lines (which I assumed you meant since grepping over one line of 1_000_000 characters takes so little time that is not any kind of argument)

leephillips 4y ago

I’ve tried many terminal emulators, probably all available on Linux, and kitty is the best in my experience. Performance is excellent: keyboard latency, catting files. It’s sometimes convenient to use some of its tricks, such as viewing an image right in the terminal through ssh.

AndyKluger 4y ago
Have you tried wezterm as well?
- leephillips 4y ago
  I don’t think so. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “all”.

ploum 4y ago

Also support displaying picture (try chafa with any jpg/png file inside kitty). That makes browsing with offpunk a completely different experience.

seri4l 4y ago

You can configure a key combination to run a pager on the last command output, color and everything. You can also configure it so that it pipes the output of a command to a pager automatically whenever it is more than a screen long.

gorgoiler 4y ago

In addition to what others have said, it is also freely licensed and open source, with ports to my daily drivers macOS and xorg/Linux. I wonder if a Windows port is in the works too?

AndyKluger 4y ago
FWIW Wezterm supports Windows.

nvarsj 4y ago

kitty is the most feature complete terminal emulator out there. It’s the only one that properly supports ligatures and variable width characters for instance. If you want faithful terminal reproduction with built in native tmux like functionality (including non broken mouse support), kitty is about the only option.

NotEvil 4y ago
Wezterm is feature parity with kitty. But can be configured in lua instead of a long custom text file with vim tag support
tmtvl 4y ago
No it isn't, I have version 0.27.1 installed and it reports itself as a VT220 rather than VT420 (like xterm), or VT520 (like Zutty). And even despite purporting to be a VT220 it still fails on LineFeed Mode, DSR, and SRM; which the developer of Zutty called out back in 2020: https://tomscii.sig7.se/2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-of-Zutty https://tomscii.sig7.se/2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-...
AndyKluger 4y ago
Are you saying that because you've found something missing from wezterm, or because you're not considering wezterm at all?
nextlevelwizard 4y ago
>It’s the only one that properly supports ligatures and variable width characters for instance. Are these like "powerline fonts" or what? Where are these used?
leephillips 4y ago
> variable width characters Do you mean such things as wide Unicode glyphs? Because it doesn’t seem to support variable-width fonts.

version_five 4y ago

Being able to display inline images in the terminal

nextlevelwizard 4y ago
How often do you need this? Feels a pretty niche need. Also not the only terminal emulator capable of this.

toastal 4y ago

Joining in questioning… kitty dev seems to hate tmux since kitty can perform many of it's behaviors. The thing that's most interesting to me is tmux for detaching and persisting a session on a remote host. Does kitty cover this functionality too? Is there like kittyd?

kps 4y ago
If persisting sessions is the only thing you use tmux or screen for (as it was for me), try `dtach`. Session management is all it does; terminal I/O is passed through just like a plain ssh session.
toastal 4y ago
its* behaviors
galkk 4y ago
I use tmux for remote and i3 for local use, so I don’t use kittys window management functions. I know author stance on tmux and do not share it

mftb 4y ago

Kitty renders more cases correctly, more stable, mainly I appreciate it's overall high quality. I don't use it's tmux-like features.

galkk 4y ago

Kitty is fast, configurable and support ligatures.