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tmux/vim thoughts

Here's how I want copy/paste to work when using tmux and vim:

  • Terminal mouse copy/paste must work as usual. I.e. all mouse operations should be sent by default to the terminal, whether this be putty, xterm or cygwin mintty. You would therefore be able to select any text including part of the vim or tmux status lines or tab names.

  • Via a modifier key, use mouse to select/resize tmux/vim vim panes/windows.

Mintty

Mintty has "Application Mouse Mode" option allowing choice of mouse click target (application or window) and an override key. So, with default click target of Window and Ctrl as override key, normal behaviour is resumed for mintty mouse unless Ctrl is also pressed. Job done.

Putty

Putty mouse clicks won't be passed at all to tmux or vim if "Disable xterm-style mouse reporting" is checked (under Terminal -> Features). There's an option under Window -> Selection which says "Shift overrides application's use of mouse". This is the opposite of what I want.

TODO - No idea how to solve this yet, but I don't use tmux with putty (yet). Maybe patch putty ?

xterm

xterm passes all mouse clicks to tmux and vim. I could possibly remap things. There are XTerm*VT100.translations options to override mappings. Examples:

xterm -xrm 'XTerm*VT100.translations: #override <Btn1Up>: select-end(PRIMARY, CLIPBOARD, CUT_BUFFER0)'
xterm -xrm 'XTerm*VT100.translations: #override Ctrl<Btn1Up>: insert()'
xterm -xrm 'XTerm*VT100.translations: #override Ctrl<Btn1Up>: insert()\n\
  Ctrl<Btn1Down>: ignore()'

But it seems the events are being passed through to the application before these mappings are processed. E.g. the following:

  xterm -xrm 'XTerm*VT100.translations: #override <Btn1Up>: ignore()'

breaks default xterm mouse selection, yet tmux mouse still works.

Stepping Back

Stepping back, perhaps it would be better to try to customise this this once and for all terminal emulators via tmux/vim.

But it seems that perhaps even this is not possible. Tmux would need to pass mouse event back to xterm unless modifier key is pressed. Firstly I don't know if it's possible to remap mouse actions in Tmux (looks like it's only possible to turn certain mouse interactions on or off). Secondly I don't see how it's going to be possible to send these events back to xterm (both for Tmux to send and for xterm to receive).

Stepping In again...

How about an alternative to xterm ? rxvt - can't see an option for this mintty for Linux - I think this is Cygwin only terminator - d-bus problems roxterm - d-bus problems

Stepping Back Again

Perhaps I'm being unreasonable and I should learn to use Shift to perform native selections ? The problem is that I need my muscle memory to be portable to places where xterm and putty are the norm - with no tmux. For now I've given up on this. I will try to work with both approaches. I.e.

  1. when tmux is available, single tmux session with minimal mouse usage
  2. when tmux is not available, multiple tty sessions and traditional copy/paste

xterm code investigations

Looked in the xterm code. It looks like the "application" (i.e. the child process running on the pty inside the xterm window) is either listening to mouse events or it's not. I think the application tells xterm this via control char sequences. Anyway, the behaviour looks like it's hard coded. So in HandleInsertSelection if the application wants mouse events and Shift is not pressed, the event is passed through to the application (as control chars). A patch to invert the logic would be fairly straightforward. But: first look at rxvt - it's more recent and lightweight. And this has got me thinking. Perhaps a tmux toggle key would be better - to turn on/off mouse behaviour. The default state would be off.

More xterm notes

button.c

SendMousePosition(): Ctrl-click pays no heed to whether the app wants mouse events.

For each click (shifted or not)...

  • HandleSelectStart()
    • do_select_start()
      • if (SendMousePosition()) return
      • else StartSelect() # normal xterm selection

I've made some patches which seem to work. Just hard-coding the reverse logic for the shift key into button.c. But I can see at least one bug - when I resize the window the contents flicker like crazy.