mirror of
https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty.git
synced 2024-09-22 12:07:15 +03:00
284 lines
9.7 KiB
ReStructuredText
284 lines
9.7 KiB
ReStructuredText
Overview
|
|
==============
|
|
|
|
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 configuration 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 little effort.
|
|
|
|
.. include:: basic.rst
|
|
|
|
|
|
Configuring kitty
|
|
-------------------
|
|
|
|
|kitty| is highly configurable, everything from keyboard shortcuts to
|
|
painting frames-per-second. Press :sc:`edit_config_file` in kitty
|
|
to open its fully commented sample config file in your text editor.
|
|
For details see the :doc:`configuration docs <conf>`.
|
|
|
|
.. toctree::
|
|
:hidden:
|
|
|
|
conf
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. _layouts:
|
|
|
|
Layouts
|
|
----------
|
|
|
|
A :term:`layout` is an arrangement of multiple :term:`kitty windows <window>`
|
|
inside a top-level :term:`OS window <os_window>`. The layout manages all its
|
|
windows automatically, resizing and moving them as needed. You can create a new
|
|
:term:`window` using the :sc:`new_window` key combination.
|
|
|
|
Currently, there are seven layouts available:
|
|
|
|
* **Fat** -- One (or optionally more) windows are shown full width on the top, the rest of the windows are shown side-by-side on the bottom
|
|
* **Grid** -- All windows are shown in a grid
|
|
* **Horizontal** -- All windows are shown side-by-side
|
|
* **Splits** -- Windows arranged in arbitrary patterns created using horizontal and vertical splits
|
|
* **Stack** -- Only a single maximized window is shown at a time
|
|
* **Tall** -- One (or optionally more) windows are shown full height on the left, the rest of the windows are shown one below the other on the right
|
|
* **Vertical** -- All windows are shown one below the other
|
|
|
|
By default, all layouts are enabled and you can switch between layouts using
|
|
the :sc:`next_layout` key combination. You can also create shortcuts to select
|
|
particular layouts, and choose which layouts you want to enable/disable, see
|
|
:ref:`conf-kitty-shortcuts.layout` for examples. The first layout listed in
|
|
:opt:`enabled_layouts` becomes the default layout.
|
|
|
|
For more details on the layouts and how to use them see :doc:`the documentation
|
|
<layouts>`.
|
|
|
|
.. toctree::
|
|
:hidden:
|
|
|
|
layouts
|
|
|
|
Extending kitty
|
|
------------------
|
|
|
|
kitty has a powerful framework for scripting. You can create small terminal
|
|
programs called :doc:`kittens <kittens_intro>`. These can used to add features
|
|
to kitty, for example, :doc:`editing remote files <kittens/remote_file>` or
|
|
:doc:`inputting unicode characters <kittens/unicode-input>`. They can also be
|
|
used to create programs that leverage kitty's powerful features, for example,
|
|
:doc:`viewing images <kittens/icat>` or :doc:`diffing files with images
|
|
<kittens/diff>`.
|
|
|
|
You can :doc:`create your own kittens to scratch your own itches
|
|
<kittens/custom>`.
|
|
|
|
For a list of all the builtin kittens, :ref:`see here <kittens>`.
|
|
|
|
.. toctree::
|
|
:hidden:
|
|
|
|
kittens_intro
|
|
|
|
|
|
Remote control
|
|
------------------
|
|
|
|
|kitty| has a very powerful system that allows you to control it from the
|
|
:doc:`shell prompt, even over SSH <remote-control>`. You can change colors,
|
|
fonts, open new :term:`windows <window>`, :term:`tabs <tab>`, set their titles,
|
|
change window layout, get text
|
|
from one window and send text to another, etc, etc. The possibilities are
|
|
endless. See the :doc:`tutorial <remote-control>` to get started.
|
|
|
|
.. toctree::
|
|
:hidden:
|
|
|
|
remote-control
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. _sessions:
|
|
|
|
Startup Sessions
|
|
------------------
|
|
|
|
You can control the :term:`tabs <tab>`, :term:`kitty window <window>` layout,
|
|
working directory, startup programs,
|
|
etc. by creating a "session" file and using the :option:`kitty --session`
|
|
command line flag or the :opt:`startup_session` option in :file:`kitty.conf`.
|
|
For example:
|
|
|
|
.. code-block:: session
|
|
|
|
# Set the layout for the current tab
|
|
layout tall
|
|
# Set the working directory for windows in the current tab
|
|
cd ~
|
|
# Create a window and run the specified command in it
|
|
launch zsh
|
|
# Create a window with some environment variables set and run
|
|
# vim in it
|
|
launch --env FOO=BAR vim
|
|
# Set the title for the next window
|
|
launch --title "Chat with x" 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
|
|
|
|
# Create a new OS window
|
|
new_os_window
|
|
# set new window size to 80x25 cells
|
|
os_window_size 80c 25c
|
|
# set the --class for the new OS window
|
|
os_window_class mywindow
|
|
launch sh
|
|
# Make the current window the active (focused) window
|
|
focus
|
|
launch emacs
|
|
|
|
.. note::
|
|
The :doc:`launch <launch>` command when used in a session file
|
|
cannot create new OS windows, or tabs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Creating tabs/windows
|
|
-------------------------------
|
|
|
|
kitty can be told to run arbitrary programs in new :term:`tabs <tab>`,
|
|
:term:`windows <window>` or :term:`overlays <overlay>` at a keypress.
|
|
To learn how to do this, see :doc:`here <launch>`.
|
|
|
|
.. toctree::
|
|
:hidden:
|
|
|
|
launch
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mouse features
|
|
-------------------
|
|
|
|
* You can click on a URL to open it in a browser.
|
|
* You can double click to select a word and then drag to select more words.
|
|
* You can triple click to select a line and then drag to select more lines.
|
|
* You can triple click while holding :kbd:`ctrl+alt` to select from clicked
|
|
point to end of line.
|
|
* You can right click to extend a previous selection.
|
|
* You can hold down :kbd:`ctrl+alt` and drag with the mouse to select in
|
|
columns.
|
|
* Selecting text automatically copies it to the primary clipboard (on
|
|
platforms with a primary clipboard).
|
|
* You can middle click to paste from the primary clipboard (on platforms
|
|
with a primary clipboard).
|
|
* You can select text with kitty even when a terminal program has grabbed
|
|
the mouse by holding down the :kbd:`shift` key.
|
|
|
|
All these actions can be customized in :file:`kitty.conf` as described
|
|
:ref:`here <conf-kitty-mouse.mousemap>`.
|
|
|
|
You can also customize what happens when clicking on :term:`hyperlinks` in kitty,
|
|
having it open files in your editor, download remote files, open things
|
|
in your browser, etc.
|
|
|
|
For details, see :doc:`here <open_actions>`.
|
|
|
|
.. toctree::
|
|
:hidden:
|
|
|
|
open_actions
|
|
|
|
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
|
|
:ref:`conf-kitty-fonts`.
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. _scrollback:
|
|
|
|
The scrollback buffer
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
|
|
|kitty| supports scrolling back to view history, just like most terminals. You
|
|
can use either 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 your favorite pager program (which is ``less`` by default).
|
|
Colors and text formatting are preserved. You can explore the scrollback buffer
|
|
comfortably within the pager.
|
|
|
|
Additionally, you can pipe the contents of the scrollback buffer to an
|
|
arbitrary, command running in a new :term:`window`, :term:`tab` or :term:`overlay`,
|
|
for example::
|
|
|
|
map f1 launch --stdin-source=@screen_scrollback --stdin-add-formatting less +G -R
|
|
|
|
Would open the scrollback buffer in a new :term:`window` when you press the :kbd:`F1`
|
|
key. See :sc:`show_scrollback` for details.
|
|
|
|
If you want to use it with an editor such as vim to get more powerful features,
|
|
you can see tips for doing so, in
|
|
`this thread <https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/719>`_.
|
|
|
|
If you wish to store very large amounts of scrollback to view using the piping or
|
|
:sc:`show_scrollback` features, you can use the :opt:`scrollback_pager_history_size`
|
|
option.
|
|
|
|
.. _cpbuf:
|
|
|
|
Multiple copy/paste buffers
|
|
-----------------------------
|
|
|
|
In addition to being able to copy/paste from the system clipboard, in |kitty| you
|
|
can also setup an arbitrary number of copy paste buffers. To do so, simply add
|
|
something like the following to your :file:`kitty.conf`::
|
|
|
|
map f1 copy_to_buffer a
|
|
map f2 paste_from_buffer a
|
|
|
|
This will allow you to press :kbd:`F1` to copy the current selection to an
|
|
internal buffer named ``a`` and :kbd:`F2` to paste from that buffer. The buffer
|
|
names are arbitrary strings, so you can define as many such buffers as you
|
|
need.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Marks
|
|
-------------
|
|
|
|
kitty has the ability to mark text on the screen based on regular expressions.
|
|
This can be useful to highlight words or phrases when browsing output from long
|
|
running programs or similar. To learn how this feature works, see :doc:`marks`.
|
|
|
|
.. toctree::
|
|
:hidden:
|
|
|
|
marks
|