Blog History Page 6

Starting Your Terminal with tmux

22nd April 2023 - Saturday

I am getting more comfortable with tmux and I want to make sure I don't forget to use it when I'm at the command prompt. So, I made a simple Bash script to automatically connect to an existing session or start a new session when I start my terminal:

tmux-start.sh:

#!/bin/bash
tmux ls > /dev/null ; [ $? == 0 ] && tmux attach || tmux
  • tmux ls will list existing sessions, but I'm dumping that output and just using its return value which will be 0 if there are any existing sessions.
  • $? is the return value of the previous command
  • && ... || is basically equivalent to a ternary operator in other programming languages

Use Vim as a Pager

22nd April 2023 - Saturday

I wanted to be able to scroll a man page in the terminal with my mouse wheel. While looking for a setting to change I learned that Vim can be used as a pager allowing mouse support and much more. Inspired by this entry at the Vim Tips Wiki, I decided to set it up for myself, but with a few minor changes. I did all this in WSL with Ubuntu 20.04.6 and Zsh on Windows 11, but it should work as well with any Unix or Linux variant:

~/.zshrc:

export PAGER="/bin/sh -c \"unset PAGER;col -b -x | vim -R \
    -c 'set ft=man mouse=a nonumber t_te=' \
    -c 'highlight Normal ctermbg=NONE guibg=NONE' \
    -c 'map q :q<CR>' \
    -c 'map <SPACE> <C-D>' \
    -c 'map b <C-U>' \
    -c 'nmap K :Man <C-R>=expand(\\\"<cword>\\\")<CR><CR>' -\""

This is very similar to what was documented in the Vim Tips Wiki, but I've made a few changes to suit my needs...

  • /bin/sh -c executes a command with the most basic shell on the system (Bash on most modern systems)
  • col -b -x filters out reverse line feeds used by man to show underlined text when outputting directly to the console.
  • vim -R starts Vim in read-only mode
    • I initially replaced this with nvim, but the key mapping for the q key doesn't work with Neovim.
  • -c 'set ft=man mouse=a nonumber t_te='
    • -c: executes a command in Vim. This line sets a few options
    • ft=man (a.k.a. filetype=man) enables proper syntax highlighting for man pages
    • mouse=a: enables mouse support for all editor modes
    • nonumber: turns off the line numbers I usually have enabled for editing code
    • t_te=: disables clearing the screen when Vim exits
  • -c 'highlight Normal ctermbg=NONE guibg=NONE': This disables the background color that I use in the editor when editing code so that my terminal transparency is still in effect.
  • The rest of the lines change some key mappings so that it works in a familiar way if you're used to less (the default pager for man pages)

VSCodeVim Broke Quick Open

21st December 2023 - Thursday
VSCodeVim Cartoon Character Breaking VSCode

VSCodeVim broke VSCode's file Quick Open keybinding. Now, CTRL-P just moves the cursor up a line instead of opening the file finder as expected.

Based on the GitHub issue linked in the commit, it was meant to enable MacOS's default cursor movement keys.

Issue #8574 shows some easy fixes. I chose to disable the plugin's handling of the keybinding:

"vim.handleKeys": {
    "<C-p>": false
}

This is in settings.json and I got there by opening Settings, entering "handlekeys" into the search box, and clicking on the "Edit in settings.json" link.

References