Mouse support on readline

The following code enables clicks to move cursor in bash/readline on terminal emulators.

1. Enable xterm mouse tracking reporting
2. Set readline bindings to consume the escape sequence generated by clicks

Tested on xterm and: alacritty, kitty, gnome-terminal

Quickstart

In a bash shell, source mouse.sh.

eval "$(curl -X GET https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tinmarino/mouse_xterm/master/mouse.sh)" && mouse_track_start

Or permanently

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/tinmarino/mouse_xterm Mouse && cd Mouse
source mouse.sh && mouse_track_start  # This can be in your bashrc

TODO

• Create a tmux bind-key to MouseDown1Pane (currently it is select-pane)
• Take care of other buttons: 2 and 3 that are entering escpe sequeence in terminal
• Pressing Escape and mouse is escaping the mouse and then do not get the readline binding

Xterm

Xterm have a mouse tracking feature

printf '\e[?1000;1006;1015h' # Enable tracking
printf '\e[?1000;1006;1015l' # Disable tracking
read  # Read and prrint stdin full escape sequences, escape look like ^[, click like ^[[<0;36;26M
man console_codes  # Some of them

• Mouse click looks like \e[<0;3;21M and a release \e[<0;3;21. Where 2 is x (from left) and 22 is y (from top)
• Mouse whell up : \e[<64;3;21M
• Mouse whell down : \e[<65;3;21M
• Press C-v after enabling the mouse tracking to see that

Bash, Readline

Multiple lines: press <C-v><C-j> for line continuation (or just <C-J>, if bind '"\n": self-insert')

Readline can trigger a bash callback

bind -x '"\e[<64;": mouse_void_cb' # Cannot be put in .inputrc
bind    '"\C-h"   : "$(date) \e\C-e\ef\ef\ef\ef\ef"' #Can be put in .inputrc

Readline can call multiple functions

# Mouse cursor to begining-of-line before calling click callback
bind    '"\C-98" : beginning-of-line'
bind -x '"\C-99" : mouse_0_cb'
bind    '"\e[<0;": "\C-98\C-99"'

Readline callback can change cursor (point) position with READLINE_POINT environment variable

bind -x '"\C-h"  : xterm_test'
function xterm_test {
  printf "%s" "line is $READLINE_LINE and point $READLINE_POINT and mark $READLINE_LINE"
  READLINE_POINT=24    # The cursor position (0 for begining of command)
  READLINE_LINE='coco' # The command line current content
}

Perl (reply)

TODO no comment yet, I could not invoke a readline command or I would have lost $term->{point}

Python (ipython)

Ipython supports mouse. See Ipython/terminal/shortcuts -> Prompt-toolkit/bingin.mouse

ipython --TerminalInteractiveShell.mouse_support=True

Or to enable at startup write in .ipython/profile_default/ipython_config.py

c = get_config()
c.TerminalInteractiveShell.mouse_support

Limitations

• OK : bash, ipython3, tmux
• NO : python, reply
• DISABLED : vim

Links

• Xterm control sequences
• Ctrl keys as used in vim source
• zsh script for mouse tracking : the same but in zsh (not bash)