tmux VS alacritty

> tmux/screen do not break copy-paste

Tmux breaks interacting with the clipboard so much that it has its own dedicated Wiki page dealing with all of the different issues and settings: https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Clipboard

If so, tmux in control mode [1] plus iTerm2 could be what you're looking for. You would use the -CC flag when starting tmux either locally or on a remote host.

This brings all the niceties of an iTerm shell session, but still allow you to detach from tmux and reattach at a later point whilst still using the native iTerm features. Almost indefinite scrollback, as you mentioned. Also good terminal search facilities, and features to filter text in the session to display only lines that contain a keyword. Instant Replay lets you drag a slider and replay old TUI output that may have been erased from the screen [2]. And the configurable hotkeys are very convenient for pane splitting, which I find to be more convenient than the leader-plus-command of tmux. I find the toolbelt window useful, and sometimes define snippets of long cumbersome commands where it isn't possible or maybe appropriate to define aliases on a remote host. For local tmux sessions, I like some of the features of the iTerm shell extensions, like jumping back to the points of previous commands entered, which helps navigate through large amounts of console output. Or the directory name picker based on frecency, which is useful for adding directory names when composing long commands or to jump to a directory when using Zsh (which lets you omit the 'cd' command).

[1] https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Control-Mode

[2] https://iterm2.com/features.html

You can follow this guide to install Tmux on your system: Tmux Installation Guide

"Nvim 0.10 can now use the OSC 52 escape sequence to write to (or read from) the system clipboard."

This is a big deal! (it shouldn't be, but it is)

My main complaints about vim/emacs in the past was at the sheer complexity of getting something that should not even be a concern (clipboard integration) working properly, when other text/code editors did not have this problem at all.

Searching online, it seems like tmux has some nice documentation related to OSC 52 usage:

https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Clipboard

I will be playing around with this for a bit to understand it more. But honestly, this is the sort of thing that should "Just Work TM".

"VTE terminals (GNOME terminal, XFCE terminal, Terminator) do not support the OSC 52 escape sequence."

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/2495

That's a shame, but I'm not against using a different terminal emulator. Up until now I did not really have a good reason to.

This got me thinking about my recent pivot, my switch to Neovim by way of LazyVim to write most of my code, and using tmux to keep terminal states alive after closing a session.

I use Tmux. It's a terminal-agnostic multiplexer. Gives you persistence and automation superpowers.

https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki

Having a common set of tools already set up in different windows or sessions in Tmux or Zellij is obviously an option, but there is a subset of us ( 👋 ) that would rather just have fingertip access to our common tools inside of our editor.

Once you have your Mac or Linux machine ready, make sure to downlaod and install TMUX (Terminal Mulitplexer). A lot of our scripts are going to be running headless inside of a TMUX session as it's an incredibly clean way to manage and organise different workspaces simultaneously. A lot of our scripts will help us to interact with TMUX so don't worry if it looks a little intimidating at first. You can install TMUX using your package manager in the terminal, use whichever applies to you:

After having spent too much time trying to get the simple https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/ features into mainline tmux (last November https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/3753), maybe it'd be easier to jump ship as use zellij?

Could anyone offer recommendations on "riced" zellij configuations, or just a demo where it shows doing with (say charts of disk usage per folder), watching a movie with mpv + keeping a vim to type on?

The Alacrity terminal is incredibly fast and customizable. Try working with a large project in Vim using, for example, iTerm. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Wezterm gives you basic stuff like scrollbars that Alacritty refuses to do: https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/issues/775

It's opinionated, which comes with upsides and downsides. I won't blame the maintainer to keep things focused, feature creep (even for worthy features) can kill a FOSS project.

Another example is sixel support, there's a fork where it all works but is not sufficiently "proven" (code quality just as well as sixel being the best fit for the problem)

https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/pull/4763#issuecommen...

It may be annoying but I get the reasoning, and there are other terminals.

alacritty (Linux, Macos & Windows)

> Ligatures: ok, nice, possible in terms too (hopefully Alacritty one day)

I wouldn't hold my breath. Seems like its getting the iPad calculator treatment[0]. Which is to say rather than ship something working that can be improved, they're leaving a UX void.

[0] https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/issues/50

IME, this is like the golden age of terminal apps in general and macOS-compatible ones in particular. There are several really good terminals for macOS:

[iTerm2 app](https://iterm2.com/)

[Kitty terminal](https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/)

[WezTerm terminal](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/index.html)

[Alacritty](https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty)

My daily driver is WezTerm…

- Runs on Linux, macOS, Windows 10 and FreeBSD

- [Multiplex terminal panes, tabs and windows on local and remote hosts, with native mouse and scrollback](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/multiplexing.html)

- [Ligatures](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode#fira-code-monospaced-font...), Color Emoji and font fallback, with true color and [dynamic color schemes](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/appearance.html#colors).

- [Hyperlinks](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/hyperlinks.html)

- [Searchable Scrollback](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/scrollback.html) (use mouse wheel and `Shift-PageUp` and `Shift PageDown` to navigate, Ctrl-Shift-F to activate search mode)

- xterm style selection of text with mouse; paste selection via `Shift-Insert` (bracketed paste is supported!)

- SGR style mouse reporting (works in vim and tmux)

- Render underline, double-underline, italic, bold, strikethrough (most other terminal emulators do not support as many render attributes)

- Configuration via a [configuration file](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/files.html) with hot reloading

- Multiple Windows (Hotkey: `Super-N`)

- Splits/Panes (Split horizontally/vertically: `Ctrl-Shift-Alt-%` and `Ctrl-Shift-Alt-"`, move between panes: `Ctrl-Shift-ArrowKey`)

- Tabs (Hotkey: `Super-T`, next/prev: `Super-Shift-[` and `Super-Shift-]`, go-to: `Super-[1-9]`)

- [SSH client with native tabs](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/ssh.html)

- [Connect to serial ports for embedded/Arduino work](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/serial.html)

- Connect to a local multiplexer server over unix domain sockets

- Connect to a remote multiplexer using SSH or TLS over TCP/IP

- iTerm2 compatible image protocol support, and built-in [imgcat command](https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/imgcat.html)

- Kitty graphics support

- Sixel graphics support (experimental: starting in `20200620-160318-e00b076c`)

# We use Alacritty's default Linux config directory as our storage location here. mkdir -p ~/.config/alacritty/themes git clone https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty-theme ~/.config/alacritty/themes

if by 'in the terminal' you mean 'in a program emulating an ascii terminal' then no, because ascii terminals don't support anything that looks better than ascii art. they don't support sixel either. there are a variety of proposals for how to add graphics to ascii terminal emulators in a backwards-compatible way, such as mgr and notty https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/issues/51

but the 'terminal' that a terminal emulator is emulating is a device which provides a user access to a remote computer. normally nowadays this is a laptop or cellphone. in that case, yes, you can use x-windows, xpra, vnc, or a web browser

A decent terminal application (i.e: iterm2, alacritty, etc.)