Screen and Tmux

Posted Aug 30, 2024 12:34 UTC (Fri) by marduk (subscriber, #3831)
In reply to: Screen and Tmux by bluss
Parent article: GNU Screen v.5.0.0 is released

The Ctrl-B/Ctrl-A thing I've done. Other things are not so 1:1. There are just some things that are done differently. Those things are probably take the most to "get used to", more so than keybindings. If the "pattern" is different then you have to get used to the new pattern. Either that or you spend a lot of time trying to make it look/feel like the former pattern. I've spent a long long time getting screen to work "exactly the way I want it" so losing all that and starting over is just a lot of mental investment at a time when usually I'm just trying to "get work done".

Screen and Tmux

Posted Sep 12, 2024 3:50 UTC (Thu) by gutschke (subscriber, #27910) [Link] (4 responses)

Ctrl-A or Ctrl-B are way too overloaded in other contexts. I never thought they were a good choice for a screen multiplexer. I have long since gotten into the habit of redefining the escape key. I usually make it ^]

That admittedly interferes with "telent", and at least a few times a month I get caught by surprise when that happens. But its sufficiently rare, that it really doesn't matter much. It certainly is an improvement over the default settings.

Screen and Tmux

Posted Sep 12, 2024 18:06 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (3 responses)

What typically uses `^A`? I've not found much that it masks for me. `^B` however is "page-scroll" in Vim which is far more common than "increment word" for me.

Screen and Tmux

Posted Sep 12, 2024 18:08 UTC (Thu) by gutschke (subscriber, #27910) [Link] (2 responses)

Both Emacs and readline (e.g. bash) use ^A to jump the cursor to the beginning of the line. I press is many times a day -- in fact, I press it a lot more frequently than interacting with "screen"

Screen and Tmux

Posted Sep 12, 2024 20:40 UTC (Thu) by mbunkus (subscriber, #87248) [Link]

Nitpick & further info: in Emacs itself, readline's Emacs mode & similar tools[1] Ctrl+A is "move to beginning of line", Ctrl+B is "move one char backwards". readline can be switched to a vi mode, though.

[1] zsh has its own line editor implementation that while similar to readline is not actually readline. It does have both Emacs & vi modes, too, though.

Screen and Tmux

Posted Sep 13, 2024 12:15 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Ah, right emacs :) . I put everything I can into vi-alike mode, so such bindings are relegated to remoting into machines with broken terminfo databases where home/end or arrows don't work (I commonly on a laptop, so they're not too inaccessible). Luckily the latest macOS 14 now ships with a useful tmux entry in its terminfo database, so that is slowly disappearing as well ;) .