Terminal actions need cleanup

[joaomoreno]

I find it hard to figure out what to do when typing >terminal in the command prompt:

Maybe something more like this?

• Open System Terminal
• Open Integrated Terminal
• Focus Integrated Terminal

Or, with the category sections:

• Terminal: Open System Terminal
• Terminal: Open Integrated Terminal
• Terminal: Focus Integrated Terminal

[Tyriar]

It's standard to have View: prefixed for actions in the view menu.

[Tyriar]

I guess doing something like how Debug does as there are a bunch of commands coming for multi terminal handling in June.

[joaomoreno]

Yeah I see the View: argument... but I'd not be very happy in having:

• Terminal: Open System Terminal
• View: Open Integrated Terminal
• Terminal: Focus Integrated Terminal

[Tyriar]

I see you confused yourself there 😄

Maybe you should pose the question to the rest of the team in slack or something, this is how it's done now and I agree it's a bit ugly.

[weinand]

Shouldn't we not try to address this issue by starting to consolidate the two Terminal types in VS Code first?

I propose to have only one "Terminal" in VS Code. This can be either opened from the Explorer's "Open in Terminal" action (which does a 'cd' to the selected folder) or with a global "Open Terminal" action (which opens the terminal at the project root).

Whether this Terminal is a 'System Terminal' or the 'Integrated Terminal' can be controlled via a setting.

[Tyriar]

@weinand I was initially opposed to that idea, but I think my aversion to it was due to multiple terminals not being supported which should come in June 👍

[waderyan]

As far as commands go I am in favor of @joaomoreno's later suggestion.

Terminal: Open System Terminal
Terminal: Open Integrated Terminal
Terminal: Focus Integrated Terminal

Personal preference based on how I search for commands and what I would expect.

Also 👍 on @weinand's consolidation suggestion.

[Tyriar]

I'm proposing the following, all commands start in workbench.action.terminal. - I haven't checked for conflicts yet.

Command	Description	Keybinding
close	Terminal: Close the current terminal	ctrl+shift+x
closeAll	Terminal: Close all terminals	-
copy	Terminal: Copy text from the terminal	ctrl
focus	Terminal: Focus the terminal panel, toggling it if not visible	-
focusNext	Terminal: Focus the next terminal	ctrl+shift+j
focusPrevious	Terminal: Focus the previous terminal	ctrl+shift+k
new	Terminal: Create a new terminal	ctrl+shift+`
paste	Terminal: Paste into the terminal	ctrl
toggleTerminal	Terminal: Toggle visibility the terminal panel	ctrl+`

Notes:

• ctrl+shift+t seems to be commonly used for new, we use it for reopen closed file. ctrl+shift+</kbd> seems like a good fit, just add <kbd>shift</kbd> on top of toggle` to create a new one.
• Notice that all terminal management commands use ctrl over cmd on Mac.

Also regarding the external terminal, I think it would be better to just hijack the keybinding from it and leave the command there in case people want it. That is more flexible and feels less messy to me than having a toggle switch in settings.

[Tyriar]

Actually the above has some issues:

• ctrl+shift+j, k and x are all taken
• I was looking into chords but it's not possible to use them from within the terminal as it needs to consume the keys.