Re: [screen-devel] new ideas for screen

[Micah Cowan]

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Edward Peschko wrote:
> hey all,
> 
> I'm *very* glad that screen seems to have risen from the dead; it's
> one of my favorite tools by far and has saved me tons of time over the
> years.
> 
> However, there are a couple of features that I think would make it a
> lot more useful, and I was wondering how feasible it would be to
> implement them:
> 
> 1. Named buffers. right now, there is only one buffer in vim. I'd like
> to have 26 - one per letter.  As for key binding, perhaps C-a <esc>
> <return> to get into copy mode (as usual), and when done, press
> <C-a>;;<letter>  (ie: <C-a>;;a to get into buffer a, <C-a>;;b in
> buffer b, etc). As for pasting, use semicolon to access the correct
> buffer, and paste it, ie: <C-a>;<letter> to paste.

There is only one normal buffer per window in screen. Of course, you can
have many windows/screens, so why not take advantage of that? If you
have "altscreen" on, there is also an additional alternate screen buffer
(with no history, and which exists only while the terminal is in
"application" mode).

In addition to these, there are a large number of "registers", quite a
few more than 26. Please read the manual's section on "Copy and Paste"
for information about registers and pasting.

I'm not sure what use you could put additional buffers to, given the
existence of registers and windows. You could always open a new window
and edit things in vim when it's more convenient to edit things visually
(that's what I do).

(A future version of screen will also allow persistent alternate
buffers, and will allow you to edit that in copy-mode even if it's not
the currently active buffer for the window.)

> 3. redefinable 'master' control character (<C-a>).

Yeah. Read the manual? :)

- --
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer.
GNU Maintainer: wget, screen, teseq
http://micah.cowan.name/
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