Float Pane

[e82eric]

Hi, I wanted to make an attempt at #270

This probably needs quite a bit of iteration (this is my first attempt at rust), but wanted to create the pull request to see if this is something you would be open to adding and to see if I am on the right track.

[derekthecool]

Nice work! Demo video looks good.

[mathjiajia]

it would be nice to have a border for this floating pane

[e82eric]

Updated with border.

Configs:

config.float_pane_padding = {
  left = '10%',
  right = '10%',
  top = '10%',
  bottom = '10%',
}

config.float_pane_border = {
  left_width = '0.5cell',
  right_width = '0.5cell',
  bottom_height = '0.25cell',
  top_height = '0.25cell',
  left_color = '#665c54',
  right_color = '#665c54',
  bottom_color = '#665c54',
  top_color = '#665c54',
}

[e82eric]

I think this is ready to be reviewed now.

[Pajn]

Thanks a lot, this is the one feature I've been missing since transition from tmux to wezterm mux 🙏🏼

Tested this and it works really well, just commenting with some small issues I've seen:

• The float panes all open in my home directory instead of the current directory like split panes and new tabs do
• The pane selection UI is hard to read if having no split panes and one floating since the underlying pane and the float panes letter overlaps
• If moving all non floating panes to a new tab or window the floating pane is shown on an otherwise invisible window, would be nice to either disallow this or de-float the floating pane

A very nice action to have but definitely not required for this to be super useful on its own, is to be able to toggle the floating status of a pane so you can transition a floating pane to a split pane and vice verse.

[e82eric]

@Pajn I think I have the working directory issue fixed now.

For the pane selection my intention was to treat the float like a overlay and turn any selection operations into no-ops and prevent the mouse from selecting a pane (I think there were some scenarios that I missed like the selection UI). I pushed an update that I think turn those into nops now. This may not be the right strategy, is there a scenario where you would want to be able to select/interact with the panes underneath the float?

I think I have it updated so that closing the pane underneath the float is blocked now. Which I think will prevent the scenario where only the float is showing.

I tried out being able to move the float to a split today. It seemed to work, I pushed it to this branch if you want to give it a try. I didn't want to include it in this pull request to keep the scope down.
https://github.com/e82eric/wezterm/tree/move-float-to-split

This is what it looked like.

[Pajn]

Wow! I was just starting to familiarize myself with the code to see if I could help but not at that speed :)
Very quick testing have all the issues I experienced fixed.

This may not be the right strategy, is there a scenario where you would want to be able to select/interact with the panes underneath the float?

I was mostly just trying to break it to see where the limitations where. The one possible usecase I can see is to move one background pane to another tab/window if you need access to it after realizing the float pane was longer lived than you intended. However I think that's better solved by being able to transition the float pane to a split anyway. And disabling those actions when in a float definitely avoids a whole class of potential problems.

I didn't want to include it in this pull request to keep the scope down.

Totes! I was just excited. Thanks a lot for the branch though, will definitely start playing with it.
And if there is anything I can do to help get this merged, let me know.

[Suri312006]

i really like the work man, good stuff been wanting this feature, as im coming from zellij that has a really nice implementation of floating panes

[e82eric]

@wez quick heads up, this is ready to be reviewed again. (No rush)

New stuff.

• Added support for multiple floating panes.
• Added support for hiding/showing the floating panes.
  • Switching between these uses the left and right pane navigation. Up and down are currently no-op
• Added support for moving an existing pane to a floating pane
• Added support for moving a floating pane to a vertical or horizontal split

Items from PR review

• The floating panes now show in the results of wezterm cli list
  • The json output has an additional is_floating property
• cli activate-pane --pane-id now works with floating panes
• cli kill-pane --pane-id now works with floating panes
• Re-attaching multiplexer now retains floating pane visibility and active index.
• When multiple clients are attached to multiplexer, changes now get updated on both screens
• The floating pane does not currently work with the scrollbar
  • This should be possible. (I spent some time trying to get this to work and I think I just need to spend some more time to figure out how to get it to draw in the correct place)
  • Does it work if I add this as a follow-up PR?
• The floating pane now has a scrollbar
• Special Gotchas.
  • If you close the last non floating pane on a tab it also closes the floating panes
  • If the floating panes are hidden it is kind of hard to know that they are there.
  • Pane selection UI is no-op when floating panes are visible
  • If you click outside of the floating pane it will activate the clicked pane and hide the floating pane. It may be hard for the user to know that they need to toggle the floating panes to unhide them.
  • Pane selection by index only applies to non floating panes. if a floating pane is visibile when select by index is called the floating panes will be hidden
• Lua Window/Tab Styling events
  • Need to figure out how to test/validate these. Do you happen to have an example?

Stuff that works with floating panes

• cli list
• cli spawn --floating
• cli activate-pane --pane-id
• cli move-pane-to-new-tab
• cli kill-pane
• cli zoom-pane
• pane level overlays work (quick select, search, copy, etc)
• tab/window overlays work
  • floating panes will be covered while the overlay is active

Stuff that doesn't work

• split pane when floating pane is active
  • This seems possible but I am not sure if it would be useful
• get-pane-direction
  • This may take some design. (Maybe up or down or a new floating direction etc)
• Adjust pane size
  • Should be possible. Right now my thought is to add this in a follow up PR
• Adjust position.
  • Should be possible. Right now my thought is to add this in a follow up PR
• Scrollbar
  • Should be possible. Right now my thought is to add this in a follow up PR
• Activate-pane-direction
  • This may take some design. (Maybe up or down or a new floating direction etc)
• pane-select
  • This would take some design to figure out how to figure out what parts of the underlying panes are not hidden by the floating pane.

[mikiadev]

Is there something preventing this from being merged? As I really need this feature I'm now using on multiple systems @e82eric 's version and it works perfectly...

[jacobb]

I've been using @e82eric's branch for almost two months now with no issues. Rebased against main a few days ago to get the screen redraw fixes and continues to be rock solid.

[mgpinf]

Hi @e82eric. Encountering issue where the text is rendering beyond the pane when a program like htop is running in a split and moving the pane to floating window.

• For an interactive program running in horizontal split, when it is converted to floating pane, the overflow happens towards the bottom.
• For an interactive program running in vertical split, when it is converted to floating pane, the overflow happens towards the right.

Attaching images for reference

[e82eric]

@mgpinf taking a look, quick question are you running in the multiplexer mode?

[e82eric]

@mgpinf nevermind the question about the multiplexer, I was able to repro it, and I think I found the issue, if you get a chance pull the latest and check if it works now.

[mgpinf]

@e82eric Yes. It is working now :)

[RoloEdits]

Ive noticed that the pane doesn't seem to fill up the border, at least on the left side. Not sure of the right, but top and bottom are fine.

[e82eric]

@RoloEdits trying to repro the issue, any chance you can share your config?

[RoloEdits]

Sure. I am on windows as well, by the way.

config.floating_pane_padding = {
  left = '5%',
  right = '5%',
  top = '10%',
  bottom = '10%',
}

config.floating_pane_border = {
  left_width = '0.2cell',
  right_width = '0.2cell',
  bottom_height = '0.10cell',
  top_height = '0.10cell',
  left_color = '#cdd6f4',
  right_color = '#cdd6f4',
  bottom_color = '#cdd6f4',
  top_color = '#cdd6f4',
}

While I have your time as well, I am trying to bind CTRL+` to open a floating pane with the default shell, and then when pressed again it would toggle visibility (I imagine toggle preserves the scrollback/history). How would I go about doing this, where its created once and then subsequent presses toggle the visibility, and where there might be other floating panes active as well (If the shell pane is toggle invisible then it should be brought to the foreground among floating panes, an when toggled again I should see any other panes behind it)? Thanks!

[e82eric]

@RoloEdits I think I found the issue, if you get a chance can you try the latest commit?

I think this is what you are looking for.

{ key = '`', mods = 'CTRL', action = act.ToggleFloatingPane }

[RoloEdits]

@e82eric Yep, that fixed it!

And that key toggle is exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks for the help and this feature, its working great.

[RoloEdits]

One thing im not sure is functioning correctly or if its a bug is what pane is shown after a floating pane is closed. For example, if I have a "persistent" floating terminal hidden, for example to edit code but want to keep the state around, and then bring up lazygit in a newly spawned floating window, when I quit out of that, the expectation is that I will be back in my text editor, the last pane I was in. But when lazygit closes, the supposed to be hidden floating terminal pane shows up and captures the cursor, needing me to hide it again.

[e82eric]

@RoloEdits I just pushed an update so that when you close a floating pane it will show the regular pane beneath instead of showing the next floating pane.