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300 lines
10 KiB
ReStructuredText
300 lines
10 KiB
ReStructuredText
Overview
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==============
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Design philosophy
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-------------------
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|kitty| is designed for power keyboard users. To that end all its controls
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work with the keyboard (although it fully supports mouse interactions as
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well). Its configuration is a simple, human editable, single file for
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easy reproducibility (I like to store configuration in source control).
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The code in |kitty| is designed to be simple, modular and hackable. It is
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written in a mix of C (for performance sensitive parts) and Python (for
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easy hackability of the UI). It does not depend on any large and complex
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UI toolkit, using only OpenGL for rendering everything.
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Finally, |kitty| is designed from the ground up to support all modern
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terminal features, such as unicode, true color, bold/italic fonts, text
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formatting, etc. It even extends existing text formatting escape codes,
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to add support for features not available elsewhere, such as colored and
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styled (curly) underlines. One of the design goals of |kitty| is to be
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easily extensible so that new features can be added in the future with
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relatively little effort.
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.. include:: basic.rst
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Configuring kitty
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-------------------
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|kitty| is highly configurable, everything from keyboard shortcuts to
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painting frames-per-second. Press :sc:`edit_config_file` in kitty
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to open its fully commented sample config file in your text editor.
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For details see the :doc:`configuration docs <conf>`.
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.. toctree::
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:hidden:
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conf
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.. _layouts:
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Layouts
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----------
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A :term:`layout` is an arrangement of multiple :term:`kitty windows <window>`
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inside a top-level :term:`OS window <os_window>`. The layout manages all its
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windows automatically, resizing and moving them as needed. You can create a new
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:term:`window` using the :sc:`new_window` key combination.
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Currently, there are seven layouts available:
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* **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
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* **Grid** -- All windows are shown in a grid
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* **Horizontal** -- All windows are shown side-by-side
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* **Splits** -- Windows arranged in arbitrary patterns created using horizontal and vertical splits
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* **Stack** -- Only a single maximized window is shown at a time
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* **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
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* **Vertical** -- All windows are shown one below the other
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By default, all layouts are enabled and you can switch between layouts using
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the :sc:`next_layout` key combination. You can also create shortcuts to select
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particular layouts, and choose which layouts you want to enable/disable, see
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:ref:`conf-kitty-shortcuts.layout` for examples. The first layout listed in
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:opt:`enabled_layouts` becomes the default layout.
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For more details on the layouts and how to use them see :doc:`the documentation
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<layouts>`.
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.. toctree::
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:hidden:
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layouts
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Extending kitty
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------------------
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kitty has a powerful framework for scripting. You can create small terminal
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programs called :doc:`kittens <kittens_intro>`. These can used to add features
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to kitty, for example, :doc:`editing remote files <kittens/remote_file>` or
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:doc:`inputting unicode characters <kittens/unicode-input>`. They can also be
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used to create programs that leverage kitty's powerful features, for example,
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:doc:`viewing images <kittens/icat>` or :doc:`diffing files with images
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<kittens/diff>`.
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You can :doc:`create your own kittens to scratch your own itches
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<kittens/custom>`.
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For a list of all the builtin kittens, :ref:`see here <kittens>`.
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.. toctree::
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:hidden:
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kittens_intro
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Remote control
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------------------
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|kitty| has a very powerful system that allows you to control it from the
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:doc:`shell prompt, even over SSH <remote-control>`. You can change colors,
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fonts, open new :term:`windows <window>`, :term:`tabs <tab>`, set their titles,
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change window layout, get text
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from one window and send text to another, etc, etc. The possibilities are
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endless. See the :doc:`tutorial <remote-control>` to get started.
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.. toctree::
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:hidden:
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remote-control
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.. _sessions:
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Startup Sessions
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------------------
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You can control the :term:`tabs <tab>`, :term:`kitty window <window>` layout,
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working directory, startup programs,
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etc. by creating a "session" file and using the :option:`kitty --session`
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command line flag or the :opt:`startup_session` option in :file:`kitty.conf`.
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For example:
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.. code-block:: session
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# Set the layout for the current tab
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layout tall
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# Set the working directory for windows in the current tab
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cd ~
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# Create a window and run the specified command in it
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launch zsh
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# Create a window with some environment variables set and run
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# vim in it
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launch --env FOO=BAR vim
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# Set the title for the next window
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launch --title "Chat with x" irssi --profile x
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# Create a new tab (the part after new_tab is the optional tab
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# name which will be displayed in the tab bar, if omitted, the
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# title of the active window will be used instead)
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new_tab my tab
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cd ~/somewhere
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# Set the layouts allowed in this tab
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enabled_layouts tall, stack
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# Set the current layout
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layout stack
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launch zsh
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# Create a new OS window
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new_os_window
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# set new window size to 80x25 cells
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os_window_size 80c 25c
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# set the --class for the new OS window
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os_window_class mywindow
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launch sh
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# Make the current window the active (focused) window
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focus
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launch emacs
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.. note::
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The :doc:`launch <launch>` command when used in a session file
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cannot create new OS windows, or tabs.
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Creating tabs/windows
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-------------------------------
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kitty can be told to run arbitrary programs in new :term:`tabs <tab>`,
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:term:`windows <window>` or :term:`overlays <overlay>` at a keypress.
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To learn how to do this, see :doc:`here <launch>`.
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.. toctree::
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:hidden:
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launch
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Mouse features
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-------------------
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* You can click on a URL to open it in a browser.
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* You can double click to select a word and then drag to select more words.
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* You can triple click to select a line and then drag to select more lines.
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* You can triple click while holding :kbd:`ctrl+alt` to select from clicked
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point to end of line.
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* You can right click to extend a previous selection.
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* You can hold down :kbd:`ctrl+alt` and drag with the mouse to select in
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columns.
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* Selecting text automatically copies it to the primary clipboard (on
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platforms with a primary clipboard).
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* You can middle click to paste from the primary clipboard (on platforms
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with a primary clipboard).
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* You can select text with kitty even when a terminal program has grabbed
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the mouse by holding down the :kbd:`shift` key.
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All these actions can be customized in :file:`kitty.conf` as described
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:ref:`here <conf-kitty-mouse.mousemap>`.
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You can also customize what happens when clicking on :term:`hyperlinks` in kitty,
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having it open files in your editor, download remote files, open things
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in your browser, etc.
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For details, see :doc:`here <open_actions>`.
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.. toctree::
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:hidden:
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open_actions
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Font control
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-----------------
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|kitty| has extremely flexible and powerful font selection features. You can
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specify individual families for the regular, bold, italic and bold+italic
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fonts. You can even specify specific font families for specific ranges of
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unicode characters. This allows precise control over text rendering. It can
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come in handy for applications like powerline, without the need to use patched
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fonts. See the various font related configuration directives in
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:ref:`conf-kitty-fonts`.
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.. _scrollback:
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The scrollback buffer
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-----------------------
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|kitty| supports scrolling back to view history, just like most terminals. You
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can use either keyboard shortcuts or the mouse scroll wheel to do so. However,
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|kitty| has an extra, neat feature. Sometimes you need to explore the
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scrollback buffer in more detail, maybe search for some text or refer to it
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side-by-side while typing in a follow-up command. |kitty| allows you to do this
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by pressing the :sc:`show_scrollback` key-combination, which will open the
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scrollback buffer in your favorite pager program (which is ``less`` by default).
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Colors and text formatting are preserved. You can explore the scrollback buffer
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comfortably within the pager.
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Additionally, you can pipe the contents of the scrollback buffer to an
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arbitrary, command running in a new :term:`window`, :term:`tab` or :term:`overlay`,
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for example::
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map f1 launch --stdin-source=@screen_scrollback --stdin-add-formatting less +G -R
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Would open the scrollback buffer in a new :term:`window` when you press the :kbd:`F1`
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key. See :sc:`show_scrollback` for details.
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If you want to use it with an editor such as vim to get more powerful features,
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you can see tips for doing so, in
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`this thread <https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/719>`_.
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If you wish to store very large amounts of scrollback to view using the piping or
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:sc:`show_scrollback` features, you can use the :opt:`scrollback_pager_history_size`
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option.
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Integration with shells
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---------------------------------
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kitty has the ability to integrate closely within common shells, such as `zsh
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<https://www.zsh.org/>`_, `fish <https://fishshell.com>`_ and `bash
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<https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/>`_ to enable features such as jumping to
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previous prompts in the scrollback, viewing the output of the last command in
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:program:`less`, using the mouse to move the cursor while editing prompts, etc.
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See :doc:`shell-integration` for details.
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.. toctree::
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:hidden:
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shell-integration
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.. _cpbuf:
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Multiple copy/paste buffers
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-----------------------------
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In addition to being able to copy/paste from the system clipboard, in |kitty| you
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can also setup an arbitrary number of copy paste buffers. To do so, simply add
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something like the following to your :file:`kitty.conf`::
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map f1 copy_to_buffer a
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map f2 paste_from_buffer a
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This will allow you to press :kbd:`F1` to copy the current selection to an
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internal buffer named ``a`` and :kbd:`F2` to paste from that buffer. The buffer
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names are arbitrary strings, so you can define as many such buffers as you
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need.
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Marks
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-------------
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kitty has the ability to mark text on the screen based on regular expressions.
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This can be useful to highlight words or phrases when browsing output from long
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running programs or similar. To learn how this feature works, see :doc:`marks`.
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.. toctree::
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:hidden:
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marks
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