For a long time I have been wondering whether it would be a good idea to
add a terminal emulator inside Vim. It's a dangerous thing, it can
easily grow out of proportions and be a maintenance nightmare. At the
same time, it can be very, very useful.
The reason I've wanted this is to debug Vim over an ssh connection. I
have a nice setup locally, but when I'm not at home I always suffer from
many limitations, which usually means I postpone the debugging until I'm
home again. There are plugins that offer some of this, but debugging
Vim requires running it in a terminal.
Another reason... wait: TWO reasons to want a terminal emulater are:
1. For debugging.
2. Properly be able to run external commands in the GUI. This has been
in the todo list for a long time. Even ":!less file.txt" doesn't
work properly.
Also,... wait, wait, wait; THREE reaons for a terminal emulator are:
1. For debugging.
2. For running external commands in the GUI..
3. For running tests with a remote controlled Vim. The current test
setup allows for a lot, but there are still tests where the test
script and the test itself interfere. With a terminal window the
test is able to run Vim, send it keystrokes and check for the
expected output. This is only possible with a built-in terminal
emulator.
And it fits in with.... WAIT! Among the reasons to add a terminal
emulator window are such reasons as:
1. For debugging.
2. For running external commands in the GUI.
3. For running tests with a remote controlled Vim.
4. Run a job conveniently on all platforms and interact with it. Allows
for jobs that prompt the user, keeping an eye on progress, etc.,
without the need to start another xterm or console window.
Some may say that this invites users to run a shell in a Vim window,
which is not what an editor should be doing. That's true. But one can
actually already do this with a job that is connected to a buffer. I
haven't heard much complaints about that. We do need to set priorities,
supporting the above mentioned reasons is the most important.
I am currently exploring using libvterm for the implementation. It
looks like this will work. Still a lot of stuff to implement, which
might not work that well, we'll have to see. I hope to send out an
initial patch soon, we can discuss more then.
--
"Oh, no! NOT the Spanish Inquisition!"
"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!"
-- Monty Python sketch --
/// Bram Moolenaar -- [email protected] -- http://www.Moolenaar.net \\\
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