Re: Feature request: ls --hyperlink

[Egmont Koblinger]

Hi,

Now this wouldn't be an issue if the URIs weren't highlighted by default.
> When you have a block of URIs, having them all underlined (albeit dotted)
> is noisy and would at least for me mean I wouldn't enable --hyperlink
> by default for ls. It would be very useful for apps like ls to indicate
> whether they wanted an indicator by default.
> How about we support hl=# parameter, where 1 = hover only, 2 = both ?
>

I also found it dense, or "noisy" as you call it, for a few days. Then I
got totally used to it. The dotted underline is not that heavy or
distracting.

Right now the goal is to spread this feature and make it discoverable for
users. Removing the dotted underline would be a step backwards in this
goal. (I understand it'd still be underlined on hover and the mouse pointer
shape altered too.)

It's not a trivial question who should control the look of URLs: 1: the
terminal emulator (leaving no way for the app to override), 2: the emitting
app (resulting in an inconsistent look across apps), or 3: some combination
of both.

For the first approach, it's possible that we will add a config option to
gnome-terminal not to highlight explicit hyperlinks. For the second
approach, if we were about to go that road then maybe a new ANSI escape
sequence would need to be introduced for dotted underline, and apps like
"ls" would need to explicitly output it if they wanted to dotted underline
their hyperlink (and apps could also use this style for non-hyperlinks).
(And then why not a similar escape sequence for the mouse pointer shape?)

What you suggest goes in the third, hybrid direction: have a default style,
but let apps somewhat override that.

I'm not against your proposal, but I'd like to have it discussed at least
across iTerm2 and gnome-terminal, the two emulators that co-designed this
feature.

Given that vte/gnome-terminal will have its hard code freeze in a week from
now for the 0.50 / 3.26 versions where this feature debuts, and I won't
have much time this week, I don't see a reasonable chance for this to
happen in the initial version.

What I recommend is that the feature goes out as it is now currently, and
we wait for a year or so to gather user feedback (both here and for
gnome-terminal) and see what users wish for. I'm definitely up for
discussing possible improvements. I can promise to loop you in if I find
this topic being brought up somewhere.

Does that sound reasonable for you?

Thanks a lot,
e.