Terminal: Support keyboard text selection & navigation

[MarkusAmshove]

Hello,

I'm using tmux on Linux machines and ConEmu on Windows machines and I really love that I can do text selection with the keyboard.

In ConEmu, there is a keybinding for "Start text selection (like text editors)", whereas in tmux there is the same thing with <prefix><b> (I think that is default), where I get a cursor that I can move with the arrow keys around the console window.
While doing this, I can select text while holding shift and (in case of ConEmu) press ENTER to copy the text into the clipboard and end the text selection.
It can also be compared with Vim's visual mode.

It would be nice if the new Windows Terminal could support this out of the box, so I can use it in e.g. PowerShell :-)

[zadjii-msft]

@carlos-zamora this may be of interest

[danthe1st]

Also, if the tmux property mouse-mode does not work in the new Terminal.
It works well in conhost.

[kuesa]

One possible implementation would be just to do what cmd does, where if the user has selected text and presses "Enter", it will just copy the selected text to the clipboard.

[danthe1st]

Or maybe it would be possible to let the application running control what's happening when marking...
Or that the user can change between the "cmd mode" and other things

[mdtauk]

If keyboard text selection is added, please don't forget about things like Shift+Home and Shift+End.

You could also have a selection go up and down a line/row with Shift+Up and Shift+Down.

Oh and with all these ligatures, copying and pasting text should probably uncombine those ligature characters - so the font choice does not affect what may get pasted in another place.

[carlos-zamora]

Added the "Help-Wanted" label. Most of this work should be able to go in TermControl (probably KeyDownHandler()). If the selection is active, edit the Terminals _endSelectionPositionAnchor by using _terminal->SetEndSelectionPosition(terminalPosition);

Terminals _ExpandWideGlyphSelectionLeft() and _ExpandWideGlyphSelectionRight() can be used to expand the selection on wide glyphs appropriately. We'd just have to make them public or have something else call them.

[RichardSlater]

Terminal is slowly driving me crazy because unlike ConEmu pressing clears the selection without copying it to the clipboard, having full-on keyboard only text selection would be a massive addition.

[pingzing]

One fun wrinkle--PSReadLine handles buffer selection and navigation for Windows PowerShell and PSCore. So if this does get implemented, there should also be an option to disable it per-profile, so a shell can handle selection itself.

[MarkusAmshove]

@pingzing I'm also using PSReadLine, but I'm unaware of the feature. Can you give me a hint? (can't find any documentation on this).

What I'm talking about in this issue is the following (beware awesome screencapturing):

[pingzing]

I think it only works for the input buffer, and not previously-written text. No idea if it's documented, but it's definitely in the keybindings. For example, invoking Get-PSReadLineKeyHandler yields the following for me:

Selection functions
===================
Key                   Function            Description
---                   --------            -----------
Ctrl+a                SelectAll           Select the entire line. Moves the cursor to the end of the line
Shift+LeftArrow       SelectBackwardChar  Adjust the current selection to include the previous character
Shift+Home            SelectBackwardsLine Adjust the current selection to include from the cursor to the end of the line
Shift+Ctrl+LeftArrow  SelectBackwardWord  Adjust the current selection to include the previous word
Shift+RightArrow      SelectForwardChar   Adjust the current selection to include the next character
Shift+End             SelectLine          Adjust the current selection to include from the cursor to the start of the line
Shift+Ctrl+RightArrow SelectNextWord      Adjust the current selection to include the next word

My fear is that if Terminal implements this, it'll interfere with PSReadLine's own handling. ConEmu has similar behavior, which I have to disable if I want PSReadLine's behavior.

[ofek]

Has this been implemented/released in a preview build?

[ghost]

🎉This issue was addressed in #13053, which has now been successfully released as Windows Terminal Preview v1.15.186.:tada:

Handy links:

• Release Notes
• Store Download

[MrM40]

If/when this is implemented I hope it will be an option! I've build in my own functionality in my application (CTRL+C, CTRL+V, CTRL+X, text-selection with SHIFT+ARROWS, SHIFT+HOME, SHIFT+END etc). I would be unhappy if my hard work gets corrupted by an native implementation....so please make it possible to disable it in settings.

It's a real pain in the Windows legacy console (in advance mode).....the text-selection is forced so pushing e.g. SHIT+HOME is captured by the console and are not parsed on to the application, please don't make same mistake.

[zadjii-msft]

@MrM40 This was implemented like, 4 months ago, and has been shipped in Preview 1.15 for some time now. Feel free to check out that release and file new issues if you find any ☺️

[MrM40]

Ohh....hard to keep up with speedy team :-)

I'm running 1.15.220719002-preview

Don't have any text-selection functionality in the default "Command Prompt" profile, it works in the profile "Windows PowerShell"
They have the same settings:

Should it work in the cmd prompt too?

[zadjii-msft]

it works in the profile "Windows PowerShell"

PowerShell has its own text selection it maintains, as a part of the shell itself. You'll note that PowerShell's text selection works the same in 1.15 as it did in previous versions, even the same as it did in the vintage console.

The text selection added in the Terminal needs to be started first, either with a keyboard selection, or the markMode action (bound to ctrl+shift+m by default).

[MrM40]

OK, I see. Expected it to work the same was as in legacy console in advance mode, where it just work natively (but make it impossible to make you own implementation, as e.g. SHIFT-LEFT never get parsed to your application).
I'm very happy with the way WT implemented this.