[Tutor] Looking for some direction

[Cameron Simpson]

On 12May2019 17:19, boB Stepp <robertvstepp at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sun, May 12, 2019 at 1:05 PM David L Neil
><PyTutor at danceswithmice.info> wrote:
>> I'm using Gnome Terminal under Fedora (Linux). This allows multiple
>> terminals in tabs (and thus Ctrl-Tab rapid-switching). However, it
>> irritates me that whilst I can set "profiles" for particular purposes;
>> there does not seem to be a way to save a 'session'. Thus each time
>> Terminal re-starts, I have to re-build each terminal, manually.
>>
>> (suggestions of other similar tools would be most welcome)
>
>I may be mistaken, but I think that a terminal multiplexer like tmux
>(https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki) is capable of session management.
>I have no personal use of tmux, but have been intrigued enough about
>others referring to it that eventually I will get around to seriously
>checking it out.

Tmux is great, but I mostly use it for persistent sessions. It has 
facilities for running multiple panes in one terminal, which could be 
useful for remote sessions; locally I just use multiple panes in my 
terminal emulator, and in fact just multiple local panes connected to 
remote sessions anyway.

I do use tmux panes in email though: I invoke mutt in a tmux session and 
replies start in a subpane, with mutt's index view in the upper 
(smaller) pane. But otherwise it is almost all persistent (and named) 
sessions.

Now, I am spoilt: on a Mac I have access to iTerm3, which does: multiple 
tabs _and multiple panes and subpanes. My usual coding layout is a 
terminal in the left half of the screen running vim (with, usually, two 
_vim_ windows in it, vertically split). Often, that window gets a 
horizontal split, with a short and wide terminal pane below the editors, 
where I have a shell. The right hand half is antoher terminal, usually 
split intovarious panes, often 2 more evenly split. FOr shells and 
Python interpreters.

But a really good terminal emulator is an outstanding tool. And iTerm3 
seems to outshine everything else (Mac only alas - I'd like to find a 
food X11 equivalent - everything I've tried is deficient).  Tabs and 
multiple panes is hugely flexible.  It also has a toggle keystroke to 
expand a particular pane to the full window for when you want lots of 
text (diffs, commiting, etc).

So unlike Alan, since it is all one Mac app (iTerm3), there's no Alt-TAB 
to switch apps, and since it does focus-follows-mouse cut/paste is very 
fast (iTerm3 has a mode like most X11 apps: select implicitly copies, so 
no Cmd-C copy keystroke for me either).

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>