kitty/README.asciidoc

= kitty - A terminal emulator
:toc:
:toc-placement!:
// START_SHORTCUT_BLOCK
:sc_close_tab: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+q`]
:sc_close_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+w`]
:sc_copy_to_clipboard: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+c`]
:sc_eighth_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+8`]
:sc_fifth_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+5`]
:sc_first_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+1`]
:sc_fourth_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+4`]
:sc_move_tab_backward: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+,`]
:sc_move_tab_forward: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+.`]
:sc_move_window_backward: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+b`]
:sc_move_window_forward: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+f`]
:sc_move_window_to_top: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+``]
:sc_new_tab: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+t`]
:sc_new_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+enter`]
:sc_next_layout: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+l`]
:sc_next_tab: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+right`]
:sc_next_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+]`]
:sc_ninth_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+9`]
:sc_paste_from_clipboard: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+v`]
:sc_paste_from_selection: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+s` or `shift+insert`]
:sc_previous_tab: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+left`]
:sc_previous_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+[`]
:sc_scroll_end: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+end`]
:sc_scroll_home: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+home`]
:sc_scroll_line_down: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+down` or `ctrl+shift+j`]
:sc_scroll_line_up: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+up` or `ctrl+shift+k`]
:sc_scroll_page_down: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+page_down`]
:sc_scroll_page_up: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+page_up`]
:sc_second_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+2`]
:sc_seventh_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+7`]
:sc_show_scrollback: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+h`]
:sc_sixth_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+6`]
:sc_tenth_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+0`]
:sc_third_window: pass:quotes[`ctrl+shift+3`]
// END_SHORTCUT_BLOCK

++++
<img align="left" role="left" src="logo/kitty.png?raw=true"/>
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image::https://travis-ci.org/kovidgoyal/kitty.svg?branch=master[Build status, link=https://travis-ci.org/kovidgoyal/kitty]

== Major Features

* Supports tiling multiple terminal windows side by side in different
layouts without needing to use an extra program like tmux

* Supports all modern terminal features: unicode, true-color, mouse
protocol, focus tracking, bracketed paste and so on.

* Allows you to view the scrollback buffer in a separate window
using your favorite pager program such as less

* Support startup sessions which allow you to specify the window/tab layout,
working directories and programs to run on startup.

* Easily hackable (UI layer written in python, inner loops in C for
speed). Less than fifteen thousand lines of code.

* Uses OpenGL for rendering, offloads rendering work to the GPU for lower system load.

* Cross-platform support: kitty currently works on Linux and macOS, but because it
uses only OpenGL for rendering, it should be trivial to port to
other platforms. 

image::screenshot.png?raw=true[Screenshot, showing three programs in the "Tall" layout]

toc::[]


== Installation

kitty is designed to run from source, for easy hackability. Make sure
the following dependencies are installed first.

=== Dependencies

* python >= 3.5
* glfw   >= 3.2
* libunistring 
* zlib
* libpng
* glew   >= 2.0 (not needed on macOS)
* fontconfig (not needed on macOS)
* xrdb and xsel (only on X11 based systems)
* gcc or clang (required only for building)
* pkg-config (required only for building)

=== Install and run from source

....
git clone https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty && cd kitty
....

Now build the C parts of kitty with the following command:

....
python3 setup.py build
....

You can run kitty, as:

....
python3 /path/to/kitty/folder
....

=== Linux packages

* Arch linux: AUR git package https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/kitty-git/


=== macOS packages

kitty is available as a macOS `dmg` file for easy installation from the
link:../../releases[releases page].  You can also run kitty directly from
source using the above install from source instructions, after installing its
two dependencies (`python >= 3.5` and `glfw >= 3.2` using http://brew.sh/[brew]
or a similar package manager)


== Design philosophy

kitty is designed for power keyboard users. To that end all its controls
work with the keyboard (although it fully supports mouse interactions as
well). Its configuration is a simple, human editable, single file for
easy reproducibility (I like to store config files in source control).

The code in kitty is designed to be simple, modular and hackable. It is
written in a mix of C (for performance sensitive parts) and Python (for
easy hackability of the UI). It does not depend on any large and complex
UI toolkit, using only OpenGL for rendering everything.

Finally, kitty is designed from the ground up to support all modern
terminal features, such as unicode, true color, bold/italic fonts, text
formatting, etc. It even extends existing text formatting escape codes,
to add support for features not available elsewhere, such as colored and
styled (curly) underlines. One of the design goals of kitty is to be
easily extensible so that new features can be added in the future with
relatively less effort.

== Tabs and Windows

kitty is capable of running multiple programs organized into tabs and
windows. The top level of organization is the _Tab_. Each tab consists
of one or more _windows_. The windows can be arranged in multiple
different layouts, like windows are organized in a tiling window
manager. The keyboard controls (which are all customizable) for tabs and
windows are:

[[scrolling-shortcuts]]
[options="header"]

=== Scrolling

|===
|Action |Shortcut

|Scroll line up   | {sc_scroll_line_up}
|Scroll line down | {sc_scroll_line_down}
|Scroll page up   | {sc_scroll_page_up}
|Scroll page down | {sc_scroll_page_down}
|Scroll to top    | {sc_scroll_home}
|Scroll to bottom | {sc_scroll_end}

|===

[options="header"]

=== Tabs

|===
|Action |Shortcut

|New tab   | {sc_new_tab}
|Close tab | {sc_close_tab}
|Next tab  | {sc_next_tab}
|Previous tab | {sc_previous_tab}
|Next layout | {sc_next_layout}
|Move tab forward | {sc_move_tab_forward}
|Move tab backward | {sc_move_tab_backward}

|===


[options="header"]

=== Windows

|===
|Action |Shortcut

|New window   | {sc_new_window}
|Close window | {sc_close_window}
|Next window  | {sc_next_window}
|Previous window | {sc_previous_window}
|Move window forward | {sc_move_window_forward}
|Move window backward | {sc_move_window_backward}
|Move window to top | {sc_move_window_to_top}
|Focus specific window (windows are counted clockwise from the top left corner) | {sc_first_window}, {sc_second_window} ... {sc_tenth_window}

|===


== The scrollback buffer

kitty supports scrolling back to view history, just like most terminals. You
can use either the <<scrolling-shortcuts,keyboard shortcuts>> or the mouse
scroll wheel to do so.  However, kitty has an extra, neat feature. Sometimes you
need to explore the scrollback buffer in more detail, maybe search for some
text or refer to it side-by-side while typing in a follow-up command. kitty
allows you to do this by pressing the {sc_show_scrollback} key-combination,
which will open the scrollback buffer in a new window, using your favorite
pager program (which is `less` by default). You can then explore the scrollback
buffer using whatever program you normally use. Colors and text formatting are
preserved.


== Miscellaneous features

You can double click to select a word and triple click to select a line. You can also
hold down `ctrl+shift` and click on a URL to open it in a browser.


== Layouts

Currently, there are two layouts available,

* Stack -- Only a single maximized window is shown at a time
* Tall -- One window is shown full height on the left, the rest of the windows are shown one below the other on the right.

You can switch between layouts using the {sc_next_layout} key combination.

Writing a new layout only requires about thirty lines of code, so if there is
some layout you want, take a look at link:kitty/layout.py[layout.py] and submit
a pull request!


== Configuration

kitty is highly customizable, everything from keyboard shortcuts, to
painting frames-per-second. See the heavily commented
link:kitty/kitty.conf[default config file]. By default kitty looks for a
config file in the OS config directory (usually
`~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf` on Linux and
`~/Library/Preferences/kitty/kitty.conf` on macOS) but you can pass a specific
path via the `--config` option.

== Startup Sessions

You can control the tabs, window layout, working directory, startup
programs, etc. by creating a "session" file and using the `--session`
command line flag. For example:

....
# Set the window layout for the current tab
layout tall
# Set the working directory for the current tab
cd ~
# Create a window and run the specified command in it
launch zsh
launch vim
launch irssi --profile x

# Create a new tab (the part after new_tab is the optional tab name which will
# be displayed in the tab bar, if omitted, the title of the active window will
# be used instead)
new_tab my tab
cd ~/somewhere
# Set the layouts allowed in this tab
enabled_layouts tall, stack
# Set the current layout
layout stack
launch zsh
# Make the current window the active (focused) window
focus
launch emacs
....

== Protocol Extensions

kitty has a few extensions to the xterm protocol, to enable advanced features,
see link:protocol-extensions.asciidoc[Protocol Extensions].


== Font control

kitty has extremely flexible and powerful font selection features. You can
specify individual families for the regular, bold, italic and bold+italic
fonts. You can even specify specific font families for specific ranges of
unicode characters. This allows precise control over text rendering. It can
come in handy for applications like powerline, without the need to use patched
fonts. See the various font related configuration directives in the
link:kitty/kitty.conf[config file].

== Performance

The main goals for kitty performance are user perceived latency while typing
and "smoothness" while scrolling as well as CPU usage. kitty tries hard to find
an optimum balance for these. To that end it keeps a cache of each rendered
glyph in video RAM so that font rendering is not a bottleneck.  Interaction
with child programs takes place in a separate thread from rendering, to improve
smoothness.

There are two parameters you can tune to adjust the performance. ``repaint_delay``
and ``input_delay``. These control the artificial delays introduced into the
render loop to reduce CPU usage. See the link:kitty/kitty.conf[config file] for details.

You can generate detailed per-function performance data using
link:https://github.com/gperftools/gperftools[gperftools]. Build kitty with the
`--profile` flag which will create an executable called `kitty-profile`.  Run
that and perform the task you want to analyse, for example, scrolling a large 
file with `less`. After you quit, function call statistics will be printed to
`stdout` and you can use tools like *kcachegrind* for more detailed analysis.

== Note for Linux/macOS packagers

While kitty does use python, it is not a traditional python package, so please do not install it in site-packages.
Instead run,

```
python3 setup.py linux-package
```

This will install kitty into the directory `linux-package`. You can run kitty
with `linux-package/bin/kitty`.  All the files needed to run kitty will be in
`linux-package/lib/kitty`. The terminfo file will be installed into
`linux-package/share/terminfo`. Simply copy these files into `/usr` to install
kitty. In other words, `linux-package` is the staging area into which kitty is
installed. You can choose a different staging area, by passing the `--prefix`
argument to `setup.py`.

You should probably split kitty into two packages, `kitty-terminfo` that
installs the terminfo file and `kitty` that installs the main program.
This allows users to install the terminfo file on servers into which they ssh,
without needing to install all of kitty.

This applies to creating packages for kitty for macOS package managers such as
brew or MacPorts as well.

== A tribute

While over the decades I am sure many people have contributed to the
development of the terminal emulator space, there is one individual in
particular I would like to thank. link:http://invisible-island.net[Thomas E.
Dickey], the creator of xterm.  xterm is the most comprehensive and
feature-rich terminal emulator I have had the pleasure of using. As I worked on
kitty, I ran headlong into more and more gnarly corners of terminal behavior.
On all those occasions, either the excellent documentation at
link:http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html[xterm-ctlseqs] or
investigating the behavior and code of xterm or vttest were invaluable tools to
aid my understanding. 

My achievements, if any, in developing kitty would not have been possible without
his prior work and the generous sharing of knowledge accumulated over decades.

Thank you.


== Resources on terminal behavior

http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C0_and_C1_control_codes

http://vt100.net/