back to article Open-source Windows Terminal does the splits: There ain't no party like a multi-pane party

A fresh preview of Microsoft's open-sourced Windows Terminal landed overnight with a couple of standout features to make the app a handy addition to the toolkit of Windows 10 shell-botherers. The release, 0.7, adds the ability to split the terminal window into multiple panes, which means multiple command prompts within the …

  1. Blockchain commentard

    "an attempt to indulge in some drag-and-drop shenanigans as administrator will result in a crash" - but isn't Terminal for keyboard botherers? Keep those pesky mice at bay.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You never use a mouse in a shell to quickly copy a long string of text avoiding typing errors?

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        alt+space and then 'copy' after highlighting the text in the regular windows console. I hope they don't make it harder in any way. NOT having hot keys would be irritating.

        But with Cygwin terminal you need to use ctrl-insert to copy, shift-insert to paste [I think that's right]. I remember it's different, and somewhat necessarily so, because of the Linux-like use of keystrokes in Cygwin.

        What would be REALLY nice is if the console allowed ctrl+insert and shift+insert as well, similar to what you get in Cygwin's console. But I think that only people who LIVE IN THE COMMAND SHELL would even consider such things...

        1. Kobblestown

          "What would be REALLY nice is if the console allowed ctrl+insert and shift+insert as well, similar to what you get in Cygwin's console."

          Hey, I didn't know that. I'm using its Unix heritage which mandates that selection is copying and just middle-click to paste.

        2. phuzz Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Fortunately for you Bob you can remap practically every keyboard shortcut in Windows Terminal, as long as you're ok editing config files?

          You'd just need the following:

          (elReg's comment code mangles the formatting, sorry)

          {

          "command" : "copy",

          "keys" :

          [

          "ctrl+insert"

          ]

          },

          {

          "command" : "paste",

          "keys" : [

          "shift+insert"

          ]

          }

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hello Microsoft!

    And welcome to over 15 years ago.

    Not to worry, you'll soon catch up and begin to provide basic features like clipboard history, sensible mouse focus, properly implemented virtual workspaces and so on.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Hello Microsoft!

      "Not to worry, you'll soon catch up and begin to provide basic features like clipboard history, sensible mouse focus, properly implemented virtual workspaces and so on."

      which is a lot like what Linux and FreeBSD had around 15 years ago. Heh.

      1. nagyeger
        Trollface

        Re: Hello Microsoft!

        15? Make that 25+! I had virtual workspaces with fvwm in the mid-nineties. (when RAM was about 100quid per megabyte).

        Pet peeve: Why do all X11 window managers default with click to focus these days? Don't they

        know the one-true system is focus follows mouse? (Focus follows eyes being a pain when you're looking out of the physical window).

      2. oldcoder

        Re: Hello Microsoft!

        Actually, it is what Unix had in 1988/1989.

        The old xview terminal emulator did this with something like a 64K terminal window buffer for text.

        Excellent for capturing sequences for documentation.

    2. jelabarre59

      Re: Hello Microsoft!

      And welcome to over 15 years ago.

      Not to worry, you'll soon catch up and begin to provide basic features like clipboard history, sensible mouse focus, properly implemented virtual workspaces and so on.

      And if MS keeps adding functionality, and (most likely) GNOME continues in it's quest to remove any functionality from *it's* components, eventually they'll pass each other heading in opposite directions.

    3. phuzz Silver badge
      Gimp

      Re: Hello Microsoft!

      Clipboard history and virtual workspaces have been in Win10 for about a year now. As for 'sensible' mouse focus, I suspect we all have a different idea of what 'sensible' is.

  3. heyrick Silver badge

    "These days, crashing less seems to be all we can hope for from most applications."

    While it may be sad-but-true, do remember that an entire word processor from yesteryear would fit in a single floppy with plenty of space for examples, files, printer drivers, etc and run happily in under half a meg of memory (often much less).

    Nowadays? A DVD and hundreds of megabytes of memory...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      *gets off this person's lawn before he notices*

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      "Nowadays? A DVD and hundreds of megabytes of memory..."

      That's called "progress". </snark>

      I blame '.Net', UWP, arrogant millenial developers and the older devs who ENABLE them, feature creep, javascript, "it has OBJECTS now" thinking, garbage collection vs malloc/free, and outright LAZY programming.

      This new bunch of "programmers" needs to spend some time working on a minicomputer with 64kb of RAM [maximum], floppy drives, a card reader and line printer [no console coding], etc.. It builds character and the desire to get it right the FIRST time to avoid hours-long turnarounds between job submission and the box of paper you accidentally generated (and a bill for the paper if it's at a college).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Not convinced whipper snapper coders could actually do without n layers of libraries, frameworks etc.

      2. Maventi

        Hey! Many of us millennials grew up playing on Apple IIs, Commodore 64 and others. I also have fond memories of the Amiga and Atari ST.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ...at the annual Techie Platform party...

    *thumping music and various platforms gathered around chatting and having a good time*

    *door bursts open and Uncle Microsoft bursts in and struts about, the music stops and everyone looks round in silence*

    Uncle Microsoft: Yay! Wooooooo! Paaaaartay! Woop woop!

    Everyone else: *cringe*

    *Uncle Microsoft leaves the room, music comes back on and everyone goes back to partying and chatting*

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: ...at the annual Techie Platform party...

      That's very Prince Andrewish, AC.

      Would anyone/anything* else like to agree or disagree?

      *Well, you never know where the news is coming from, and who and/or what is controlling it with IT and AI Operating Systems nowadays, do you. Some would have you believe it is all down to a Perfecting Algorithm rather than any executive human editorial decision, and that creates novel courses for noble causes and temporarily pauses an existential crisis of a problem for the simple human to human communications machine to acknowledge ... for the assured benefit of a great share in easy future engagements with Perfecting Algorithm Drivers ... which be a Core AI Source with Extreme UnStabled Forces.

      Proceed with All Due Care and Full Attention is the Advice to Well Heed.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: ...at the annual Techie Platform party...

        "That's very Prince Andrewish, AC."

        I was thinking Steve Ballmer, actually... in line with his usual antics.

        (But yours is better)

  5. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    As usual

    The completely useless bling is configurable, but the whole thing is prone to crashing and whatever is important cannot be configured.

    In other words, just another day at Redmond HQ.

  6. DrXym

    In the meantime

    Use conemu. It's had the ability to do most of this stuff for years. You can run bash, cmd, powershell all side by side in separate tabs if you like.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Linux

      Re: In the meantime

      I prefer Cygwin

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: In the meantime

        key settings for running cygwin in Terminal

        "icon": "ms-appx:///C:/REPLACE_PATH_TO/cygwin64/Cygwin-Terminal.ico",

        "hidden": false,

        "name": "Cygwin",

        "commandline": "C:\\REPLACE_PATH_TO\\cygwin64\\bin\\bash.exe --login -i",

        "startingDirectory": "C:/REPLACE_PATH_TO/cygwin64/home/REPLACE_USERNAME",

        Honestly, though, as a long time cygwin user, I'm using WSL Ubuntu more and more

  7. HmmmYes

    Why dont MS just say Fuckit and port xfce to the windows kernel.

    And why in fucksake was this stuff not dorted out 20 years ago?

    1. damocles

      Because they're scared that they'll need to include systemd maybe?

      1. Adrian 4

        Because MS love to prove that 'those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly' -Henry Spencer, 1987.

      2. dajames
        Windows

        Because they're scared that they'll need to include systemd maybe?

        Nah, they haven't that much sense!

  8. Mike 16

    Tab Titles

    Did anybody try

    printf "\\033]0;My name is Tab\\a"

    ? (Asking for a friend)

  9. Nathanial Wapcaplet

    wake me up when the rest of the OS is finished

    /me taps his tmux

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