text-file-terminal

An experiment at a terminal controlled from a text editor. Kinda like shell mode/eshell from emacs. Because I cannot stand scrolling up/down/selecting text/etc. in a regular terminal.

screen-recording-2024-11-09-20-1731139880.mp4

^No dice on the nmtui, plus the color theme used is bad.

Usage

Load up the rc dir, then require the module. You should install kak-ansi if you want syntax highlighting, otherwise you'll see ANSI escape characters all over.

hook -once global KakBegin .* %{
  require-module text-terminal
  # Regex to match the end of your $PS1, this is the default value.
  set-option global text_terminal_prompt_matcher ' \$ '
}

start-pty

# Hit <s-ret> to send whatever is after the matched prompt.
#   -- or --
# Manually send keys.
send-to-pty 'keys'

Missing features / bugs

• No bash history.
• No LSP in scratch buffers (so no autocomplete from bash-lsp) (restriction on kak-lsp side).
• No bash autocomplete.
• No handling of ctrl-c or similar.
• Would need some way to "inherit"/interact with the terminal so TUIs can be controlled / sudo password input.
  • Can send input, e.g. sudo password, manually via :send-to-pty "<keys>"<ret>. However, inserting raw character seems to not work in the prompt.

Alternative art

• ht
• oil shell headless
• Python's PTY module