Select and copy TAB characters without expanding to spaces

[KalleOlaviNiemitalo]

Description of the new feature/enhancement

After outputting a text file to the terminal, I want to copy part of it to the clipboard without expanding TAB characters to spaces. So that I can then paste it to a different file in which TAB characters are required.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

Remember which character cells were output as spaces and which ones were skipped over by TAB characters. When selecting text with the mouse, select entire TAB characters instead of individual character cells. Copy the TAB characters to the clipboard.

The macOS Terminal app has this feature. It does not preserve TAB characters in the following situations:

• If outputting the TAB character moves the cursor over character cells of which at least one contains a different character already.
• If the TAB character has already been output and a different character is then output to any of the character cells spanned by the TAB character.

I did not test whether the macOS Terminal app preserves TAB characters if they are moved using SCROLL LEFT, SCROLL RIGHT, or INSERT CHARACTER control functions, or if tabulation stops are changed. I think it would be OK to expand TAB characters to spaces in those situations.

Related:

• Copy & paste on Windows Terminal output with tab characters result in unexpected behaviour of results in text editors #2656, in which TAB characters were involved, but the problem was loss of newlines.
• Console doesn't handle colored regions when reflowed #32 (comment), keeping track of whether empty character cells were written as spaces.

[DHowett]

Yeah, I think this is totally worthwhile!

It's also going to be hard. Our buffer needs a deep rethink on how it stores a great number of things. 😄

[Diego-TorresDev]

Ah ok

[KalleOlaviNiemitalo]

If the TAB characters are part of a rectangular selection, and whitespace trimming is enabled (#9706), I think they should be trimmed just like space characters.

terminal/src/buffer/out/textBuffer.cpp

Lines 1678 to 1679 in 2219014

	// remove the spaces at the end (aka trim the trailing whitespace)
	while (!selectionText.empty() && selectionText.back() == UNICODE_SPACE)

[Musketeer-D]

As a bioinformatics researcher, can select and copy TAB characters without expanding to spaces is the only reason that keep me using xshell while not win terminal. Please give this feature to your great terminal.
Thank you for your time !
I wish you all the best !

[Suleman-Elahi]

Any update on this?

[zadjii-msft]

Nope. We'll make sure to update this thread when there is. In the meantime, might I recommend the Subscribe button?

That way you'll be notified of any updates to this thread, without needlessly pinging everyone on this thread ☺️

[xdml]

As a workaround I started to use for Ubuntu staff xfce4-terminal. This terminal preserve tab character in both ways.