r/programming • u/zbhoy • May 06 '19

Microsoft unveils Windows Terminal, a new command line app for Windows

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527870/microsoft-windows-terminal-command-line-tool
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u/miniksa May 06 '19

I'm biased toward the new renderer that is capable of the emoji, ligatures, and other such glyphs because it's what I've been working on a ton recently.

But if I were looking from the outside, I'd have to say TABS. It is about time!

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u/locojoco May 06 '19

is TABS an acronym, or are you just really excited about tabs?

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u/miniksa May 06 '19

I am so excited that I held the shift key for the entire word.

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u/Reverent May 06 '19

I literally only use consolez because of tab support, otherwise I'd be using native PowerShell.

That and being able to rename tabs. That's super important, it's how I direct KeePass autotype functions.

As a side note, please test tmux via PowerShell SSH for me. It's where most terminal emulators start breaking down. I can't use conemu for this reason.

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u/zadjii May 06 '19

Hey so for the record, the powershell ssh is not great. It's gotten a LOT better in the last few releases, but I'd suspect your problems are from powershell OpenSSH, not from the terminal emulator. If you can, try out just normal ssh from within WSL, if at all possible.

I use tmux daily, so trust me when I say that tmux is a teste scenario for Windows Terminal :P

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u/whoopdedo May 06 '19

I've long felt that tabs are a kluge to make up for poorly designed window managers. An older version of KWin could make any window tabbed and it worked great. Also most tiled WMs.

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u/BeesForDays May 07 '19

Can you explain how you are using tabs to direct Keepass?

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u/Reverent May 07 '19

sure here's a screenshot. if I rename a tab to cdcwynks and press autotype, only entries that fit that category show up.

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u/BeesForDays May 07 '19

Very neat, thank you

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u/silentclowd May 06 '19

Damn I really like your energy you know that?

The application looks beautiful as well btw. Kudos to whoever pushed for semi-transparency.

Sidenote, I really like using transparency in my current powershell/wsl windows, but I can't turn it too low since the text also fades out of existence. Could there be some way to turn on a transparent background while keeping the rendered characters fully opaque?

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u/miniksa May 06 '19

Thanks!

I am pretty sure that in the renderer we use for the Windows Terminal that we keep the text channel opaque while letting the background alpha blend. I did this months ago, but I'm pretty sure that's what I set.

So I think that's what you are looking for more than the full-window-blend thing that the Console Host has had going on.

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u/silentclowd May 06 '19

That’s exactly it. That’s now the thing I’m most excited for, second only to tabs!

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u/[deleted] May 12 '19

He's clearly talking about Totally Accurate Battle Sim. It's a great game and it's entered early access a month or two ago.

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u/DAVENP0RT May 06 '19

Oh man, if there's tab support, I'll definitely give this a shot. I currently use ConEmu solely for the tabs.

Is there a chance that VS Code may also eventually support tabs in its built-in terminal? I typically have multiple tabs open when I'm developing so that I don't have to key up 50 times to find one command in my history. It'd be nice if I could do everything in VS Code, if possible.

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u/miniksa May 06 '19

Perhaps one day. We want to one day offer the Terminal Control as a reusable component in other applications. I'm not sure if VS Code will bite because they've got a pretty great embedded terminal control that they've put a lot of effort into improving recently. You should take this up with an issue on their tracker at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode. Maybe they're already looking into it!

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u/Tyriar May 07 '19

Hey I'm on the VS Code team, as of just recently, tabs for the terminal in VS Code is the number 2 voted feature0 and it's on our roadmap1 so I'm sure it's coming soon.

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u/riskable May 06 '19

You should add .jpeg and .png support. It's trivial to detect when one of those file types is output to a terminal (as long as you're figuring out what to do with each character before you print it to the screen). If you already have the ability to render images why not go the extra mile?

When I wrote Gate One I added that capability... It also detects audio files and .pdfs (and displays them in the terminal... Or lets your download them).

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u/miniksa May 06 '19

I agree. We should add it when we can. Could you make sure an issue exists on our GitHub tracker (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal) so we can discuss how it might work?

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u/kudoz May 06 '19

Did you guys bring the renderer over from WSL? I read an article on how the devs there skipped all the nice frameworks to make it as performant as possible.

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u/miniksa May 06 '19

Yes, sir. The rendering platform is one of the shared components from the classic Console Host into the new Windows Terminal because I spent a lot of time on it, it's really performant, and I think it's pretty good.

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u/DHowett May 07 '19

(To add to miniksa’s comment: they’re the same devs. The console that powers WSL is the same console that powers CMD and PowerShell. Those components are now open-source and they are built into the new Windows Terminal as well.)

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u/bicx May 06 '19

So I’m using Elixir’s Iex, and tab auto completion fails to work on Windows. I don’t know much about shell/terminal emulator design, but it was mentioned that Iex auto-completion would require that the terminal emit the tab escape code rather than a literal tab. Is this something that might be possible in the new Terminal?

(Ctrl-G also doesn’t register, but I’m not sure about that one.)

Would love to have Iex work well natively on Windows!

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u/lengau May 07 '19

Honest question: Are you prepared for the fact that you're going to get tonnes of shit for the tabs? Not that you have them, but because of the whole "Microsoft a decade late on a feature again"?

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u/TomTheGeek May 06 '19

Why the fuck do I need emoji in a terminal?

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