== Preamble == So, you're stuck on Windows for some reason while using a terminal. I feel for you! I'm sometimes there myself, when I'm over in game-playing mode for some tricky DRM'd nonsense and want to pop open a terminal for some reason or another. In those cases, it's nice to have a good environment. That used to be basically impossible on Windows. It still is of course, but markedly less so! == Windows Terminal app == === Get it! === First thing you'll want to do is grab [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/ | the Windows Terminal app ]], probably by going to https://aka.ms/terminal to get it from the Windows Store. === Set it up! === You'll also want to install a good text editor like [[ https://kate-editor.org/get-it/ | Kate ]], or just get [[ documentation/windows/wsl/ ]] installed quickly so you can use Vim or Nano or such. You'll be ending up editing `%LOCALAPPDATA%/Packages/Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe/LocalState/settings.json` a lot and it's nice to have syntax highlighting when fiddling with JSON (although it also highlights how Microsoft is mis-using JSON by including comments; not gonna lie, I'm kindof on Microsoft's side on this one). Big gotchas if you're not familiar with JSON include, but are not limited to: * //Hugely// picky about commas (which is particularly surprising seeing as JSON spawned from JavaScript). Lists cannot end with commas, so if you're adding a new item to the end of a list, you'll need to remember to add a comma to the previously-last item in the list otherwise everything will fail. Oh yeah and essentially everything is a list. Have fun! Also, all these settings can be [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/custom-terminal-gallery/custom-schemes | schemes ]]. Perhaps more fun, and quicker, just to edit the existing profiles though. And each default profile is automatically re-inserted if removed, so they're gonna be there anyways (no matter how useless the damn Azure Cloud Shell is), although you can of course flip them to `"hidden": true`. ==== Transparency ==== There are two ways to set up transparency. First, you can [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-settings#acrylic-settings | use "Acrylic" ]]. which looks kinda nice but thanks to baffling design decisions elsewhere in Microsoft that the developers of the Terminal app seem to be dissing in the official docs, it doesn't work when the window isn't in focus. But maybe you want this because it looks so nice and layers of transparent windows atop eachother can be visually chaotic! ``` lang=json "useAcrylic": true, "acrylicOpacity": 0.4 ``` Better, though, to just [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-settings#background-image-settings | use a background image and set the opacity that way ]], since it avoids this "platform-level limitation". ``` lang=json // Using forward slashes because otherwise we get "Bad escape sequence in string", Microsoft again at war with themselves, I kindof love it "backgroundImage": "C:/Users/philu/OneDrive/Pictures/Wallpapers/FS-7811_24.jpg", "backgroundImageAlignment": "bottomRight", "backgroundImageStretchMode": "none", "backgroundImageOpacity": 0.4 ``` Except that doesn't work, for some reason :(

== Preamble == So, you're stuck on Windows for some reason while using a terminal. I feel for you! I'm sometimes there myself, when I'm over in game-playing mode for some tricky DRM'd nonsense and want to pop open a terminal for some reason or another. In those cases, it's nice to have a good environment. That used to be basically impossible on Windows. It still is of course, but markedly less so! == Windows Terminal app == === Get it! === First thing you'll want to do is grab [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/ | the Windows Terminal app ]], probably by going to https://aka.ms/terminal to get it from the Windows Store. === Set it up! === You'll also want to install a good text editor like [[ https://kate-editor.org/get-it/ | Kate ]], or just get [[ documentation/windows/wsl/ ]] installed quickly so you can use Vim or Nano or such. You'll be ending up editing `%LOCALAPPDATA%/Packages/Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe/LocalState/settings.json` a lot and it's nice to have syntax highlighting when fiddling with JSON (although it also highlights how Microsoft is mis-using JSON by including comments; not gonna lie, I'm kindof on Microsoft's side on this one). Big gotchas if you're not familiar with JSON include, but are not limited to: * //Hugely// picky about commas (which is particularly surprising seeing as JSON spawned from JavaScript). Lists cannot end with commas, so if you're adding a new item to the end of a list, you'll need to remember to add a comma to the previously-last item in the list otherwise everything will fail. Oh yeah and essentially everything is a list. Have fun! Also, all these settings can be [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/custom-terminal-gallery/custom-schemes | schemes ]], and that's what the official documentation really wants you to do, but: * It's perhaps more fun, and quicker, just to edit the existing profiles though. ** And each default profile is automatically re-inserted if removed, so they're gonna be there anyways (no matter how useless the damn Azure Cloud Shell is), although you can of course flip them to `"hidden": true`. * It seems many options don't work if part of color schemes, but all options work as part of the profile. ==== Transparency ==== There is currently only one way to set transparency, and it's entirely broken if you're used to any real Terminal app elsewhere. First, you can [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-settings#acrylic-settings | use "Acrylic" ]]. which looks kinda nice but thanks to baffling design decisions elsewhere in Microsoft that the developers of the Terminal app seem to be dissing in the official docs, it doesn't work when the window isn't in focus. But maybe you want this because it looks so nice and layers of transparent windows atop eachother can be visually chaotic! ``` lang=json "useAcrylic": true, "acrylicOpacity": 0.4 ``` Better, though, to just [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-settings#background-image-settings | use a background image and set the opacity that way ]], since it avoids this "platform-level limitation". ``` lang=json // Using forward slashes because otherwise we get "Bad escape sequence in string", Microsoft again at war with themselves, I kindof love it "backgroundImage": "C:/Users/philu/OneDrive/Pictures/Wallpapers/FS-7811_24.jpg", "backgroundImageAlignment": "bottomRight", "backgroundImageStretchMode": "none", "backgroundImageOpacity": 0.4 ``` Except that doesn't work, for some reason :( Is there no way to fix this [[ https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/2326#issuecomment-529135239 | obviously broken behaviour ]]? Doesn't look like it; [[ https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/5145 | maybe one day ]]. ==== Keybindings ==== Here are some sane, common keybindings

== Preamble == So, you're stuck on Windows for some reason while using a terminal. I feel for you! I'm sometimes there myself, when I'm over in game-playing mode for some tricky DRM'd nonsense and want to pop open a terminal for some reason or another. In those cases, it's nice to have a good environment. That used to be basically impossible on Windows. It still is of course, but markedly less so! == Windows Terminal app == === Get it! === First thing you'll want to do is grab [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/ | the Windows Terminal app ]], probably by going to https://aka.ms/terminal to get it from the Windows Store. === Set it up! === You'll also want to install a good text editor like [[ https://kate-editor.org/get-it/ | Kate ]], or just get [[ documentation/windows/wsl/ ]] installed quickly so you can use Vim or Nano or such. You'll be ending up editing `%LOCALAPPDATA%/Packages/Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe/LocalState/settings.json` a lot and it's nice to have syntax highlighting when fiddling with JSON (although it also highlights how Microsoft is mis-using JSON by including comments; not gonna lie, I'm kindof on Microsoft's side on this one). Big gotchas if you're not familiar with JSON include, but are not limited to: * //Hugely// picky about commas (which is particularly surprising seeing as JSON spawned from JavaScript). Lists cannot end with commas, so if you're adding a new item to the end of a list, you'll need to remember to add a comma to the previously-last item in the list otherwise everything will fail. Oh yeah and essentially everything is a list. Have fun! Also, all these settings can be [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/custom-terminal-gallery/custom-schemes | schemes ]]., and that's what the official documentation really wants you to do, Pbut: * It's perhaps more fun, and quicker, just to edit the existing profiles though. ** And each default profile is automatically re-inserted if removed, And each default profile is automatically re-inserted if removedso they're gonna be there anyways (no matter how useless the damn Azure Cloud Shell is), so they're gonna bealthough you can of course flip there anyways (no matter how useless the damn Azure Cloud Shell is)m to `"hidden": true`. * It seems many options don't work if part of color schemes, although you can of course flip them to `"hidden": true`but all options work as part of the profile. ==== Transparency ==== There are twois currently only one ways to set up transparency., and it's entirely broken if you're used to any real Terminal app elsewhere. First, you can [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-settings#acrylic-settings | use "Acrylic" ]]. which looks kinda nice but thanks to baffling design decisions elsewhere in Microsoft that the developers of the Terminal app seem to be dissing in the official docs, it doesn't work when the window isn't in focus. But maybe you want this because it looks so nice and layers of transparent windows atop eachother can be visually chaotic! ``` lang=json "useAcrylic": true, "acrylicOpacity": 0.4 ``` Better, though, to just [[ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-settings#background-image-settings | use a background image and set the opacity that way ]], since it avoids this "platform-level limitation". ``` lang=json // Using forward slashes because otherwise we get "Bad escape sequence in string", Microsoft again at war with themselves, I kindof love it "backgroundImage": "C:/Users/philu/OneDrive/Pictures/Wallpapers/FS-7811_24.jpg", "backgroundImageAlignment": "bottomRight", "backgroundImageStretchMode": "none", "backgroundImageOpacity": 0.4 ``` Except that doesn't work, for some reason :( Is there no way to fix this [[ https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/2326#issuecomment-529135239 | obviously broken behaviour ]]? Doesn't look like it; [[ https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/5145 | maybe one day ]]. ==== Keybindings ==== Here are some sane, common keybindings