Does not work on Windows 7

[sergeevabc]

Helix 23.10, Windows 7 x64

$ hx.exe
Error: Bracketed paste not implemented in the legacy Windows API.

Why?

[TornaxO7]

Any kind of support for windows 7 has been dropped

In my opinion, Helix is not responsible for working on deprecated systems. For example, assuming there's a security issue in Windows 7 which can be exploited due to Helix, how should the Helix-Team fix it, if the actual issue resides in Windows 7 and not Helix itself?

Also as the error says, it looks like that Windows 7 uses a deprecated API in comparison to Windows 10 and Windows 11.

[sergeevabc]

Who cares what Microsoft supports or not? They do this or that for a financial reason: accelerating obsolescence, forcing patch addiction (SaaS), and EOL fear-mongering of shit-scared zoomers. In short, they extort money for zero breakthroughs (e.g. Win 10 offers nothing compared to what NTFS was after FAT32, however is full of a tracking nightmare). I have a hammer made more than 30 years ago by a manufacturer that's long gone, yet it's still good for hammering nails, without any support needed -- some things reach a state where they are developed enough, i.e. when they are complete in a necessary and sufficient way. Look around: even Powershell (7.2.17) is still built for Windows 7, not to mention popular apps such as Autohotkey, Foobar2000, Irfanview, KeePass, LibreOffice, MPC-HC, SublimeText, SumatraPDF, Telegram, etc.

How is it that Helix, out of the blue, needs something missing in Windows 7, although other text editors (including the two mentioned above) have enough?

[pascalkuthe]

Rust will stop support windows 7 soon (2024/02) and there is nothing we can do at that point. We will not backport a compiler/stick to an old compiler version forever because a single person like to use an insecure unspported OS.

Since it will be impossible to support windows 7 in 2 months anyway there is no point in investigating an alternative API now.

The reason we (and similarly the rust projectl care whether an OS is supported is because it takes a lot of work (our free time) and resources (CI) to support an OS. That is simply not worth our time for an ancient EOL OS that only a handful of people still use.

[kirawi]

I don't believe we make any assumptions that Windows supports bracketed paste. So it's probably crashing on Windows's side when we are querying the terminal to see if it supports it.

[gnietto]

Rust will stop support windows 7 soon (2024/02) and there is nothing we can do at that point. We will not backport a compiler/stick to an old compiler version forever because a single person like to use an insecure unspported OS.

Since it will be impossible to support windows 7 in 2 months anyway there is no point in investigating an alternative API now.

The reason we (and similarly the rust projectl care whether an OS is supported is because it takes a lot of work (our free time) and resources (CI) to support an OS. That is simply not worth our time for an ancient EOL OS that only a handful of people still use.

My computer works with Windows 8.1 and running hx also shows "Error: Bracketed paste not implemented in the legacy Windows API." message. It's for the same reason?

[the-mikedavis]

The error comes from here when we setup the terminal:

helix/helix-tui/src/backend/crossterm.rs

Lines 134 to 139 in f27fdb2

	execute!(
	self.buffer,
	terminal::EnterAlternateScreen,
	EnableBracketedPaste,
	EnableFocusChange
	)?;

To prevent the exit on startup we could handle the Unsupported error from crossterm (https://github.com/crossterm-rs/crossterm/blob/08762b3ef4519e7f834453bf91e3fe36f4c63fe7/src/event.rs#L390-L395) instead and log that helix won't be able to use bracketed paste

[archseer]

I think that's a reasonable tradeoff: it won't break the editor altogether and is best effort