# foot **foot** is a fast Wayland terminal emulator. ## Index 1. [Features](#features) 1. [Non-features](#non-features) 1. [What does not work?](#what-does-not-work) 1. [Fonts](#fonts) 1. [Shortcuts](#shortcuts) 1. [Keyboard](#keyboard) 1. [Mouse](#mouse) 1. [Server mode](#server-mode) 1. [Requirements](#requirements) 1. [Running](#running) 1. [Building](#building) 1. [Installing](#installing) 1. [Arch Linux](#arch-linux) 1. [Other](#other) ## Features * Fast (**TODO** insert benchmark results here) * Wayland native * DE agnostic * User configurable font fallback * Scrollback search * Color emoji support * "Server" mode (one master process, many windows) ## Non-features This is a non-exhaustive list of things some people might consider being important features (i.e. _"must-haves"_), that are unlikely to ever be supported by foot. * Tabs * Graphical elements (menu, buttons etc) ## What does not work? This is a list of known, but probably not all, issues: * Unicode combining characters Examples: á, 👪🏼 (_may not be displayed correctly in your browser/editor_) * Reflow text on window resize * GNOME; might work, but without window decorations. Strictly speaking, foot is at fault here; all Wayland applications _must_ be able to draw their own window decorations (but foot is not). However, most people want a uniform look and feel on their desktop, including the window decorations. For this reason, a Wayland application can request _Server Side Decorations_ (SSD). GNOME will reply with a "I hear you, but sorry, I wont do that". ## Fonts **foot** supports all fonts that can be loaded by _freetype_, including **bitmap** fonts and **color emoji** fonts. Foot uses _fontconfig_ to locate and configure the font(s) to use. Since fontconfig's fallback mechanism is imperfect, especially for monospace fonts (it doesn't prefer monospace fonts even though the requested font is one), foot allows you, the user, to configure the fallback fonts to use. This also means you can configure _each_ fallback font individually; you want _that_ fallback font to use _this_ size, and you want that _other_ fallback font to be _italic_? No problem! If a glyph cannot be found in _any_ of the user configured fallback fonts, _then_ fontconfig's list is used. ## Shortcuts At the moment, all shortcuts are hard coded and cannot be changed. It is **not** possible to define new key bindings. ### Keyboard * shift+page up/page down Scroll up/down in history * ctrl+shift+c Copy selected text to the _clipboard_ * ctrl+shift+v Paste from _clipboard_ * ctrl+shift+r Start a scrollback search While doing a scrollback search, the following shortcuts are available: * ctrl+r Search _backward_ for next match * ctrl+s Search _forward_ for next match * ctrl+w Extend current selection (and thus the search criteria) to the end of the word, or the next word if currently at a word separating character. * escape, ctrl+g Cancel the search * return Finish the search and copy the current match to the primary selection ### Mouse * left - **single-click** Drag to select; when released, the selected text is copied to the _primary_ selection. Note that this feature is normally **disabled** whenever the client has enabled _mouse tracking_, but can be forced by holding shift. * left - **double-click** Selects the _word_ (separated by spaces, period, comma, parenthesis etc) under the pointer. Hold ctrl to select everything under the pointer up to, and until, the next space characters. * left - **triple-click** Selects the entire row * middle Paste from _primary_ selection * wheel Scroll up/down in history ## Server mode When run normally, **foot** is a single-window application; if you want another window, start another foot process. However, foot can also be run in a _server_ mode. In this mode, one process hosts multiple windows. Note that this is **nothing** like tabs. When first started in server mode, **no** windows are available. You open new windows by running `footclient`. This is a small process that instructs the foot server to open a new terminal window. The client process remains running until the terminal window is closed. The exit value of the client process is that of the shell that was running in the terminal window. The point of this mode is **a)** reduced memory footprint - all terminal windows will share fonts and glyph cache, and **b)** reduced startup time - loading fonts and populating the glyph cache takes time, but in server mode it only happens once. The downside is a performance penalty; all windows' input and output are multiplexed in the same thread (but each window will have its own set of rendering threads). This means that if one window is very busy with, for example, producing output, then other windows will suffer. And of course, should the server process crash, **all** windows will be gone. Typical usage would be to start the server process (`foot --server`) when starting your Wayland compositor (i.e. logging in to your desktop), and then run `footclient` instead of `foot` whenever you want to launch a new terminal. ## Requirements ### Running * fontconfig * freetype * pixman * wayland (_client_ and _cursor_ libraries) * xkbcommon * [tllist](https://codeberg.org/dnkl/tllist), _unless_ built as a subproject * [fcft](https://codeberg.org/dnkl/fcft), _unless_ built as a subproject ### Building In addition to the dev variant of the packages above, you need: * meson * ninja * wayland protocols * ncurses * scdoc ## Installing ### Arch Linux Use [makepkg](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Makepkg) to build the bundled [PKGBUILD](PKGBUILD) (run `makepkg` in the source root directory). Note that it will do a profiling-guided build, and that this requires a running wayland session since it needs to run an intermediate build of foot. ### Other Foot uses _meson_. If you are unfamiliar with it, the official [tutorial](https://mesonbuild.com/Tutorial.html) might be a good starting point. I also recommend taking a look at the bundled Arch [PKGBUILD](PKGBUILD) file, to see how it builds foot.