I feel your pain, the only one’s I know are…

• CTRL+a = cursor to beginning of line
• SHIFT+CTRL+c = Copy
• SHIFT+CTRL+x = Cut
• SHIFT+CTRL+v = Paste

Bash shell uses readline for this, which I would guess is the namesake of PSReadLine:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Readline
https://man.archlinux.org/man/readline.3#DEFAULT_KEY_BINDINGS

I have everything you mentioned (except maybe the selection only stuff, I don’t use it and forget if I set it up at all) set up in my zsh+kitty setup, so it’s definitely possible. If you want I can dig thru my zshrc and kitty config for the relevant parts once I’m at my pc later.

People in here saying it’s a bad idea for things like compatibility with other shells make some good points, but I think they’re missing one important aspect - fuck other shells, what do I care? 95% of my time in the terminal is spent on my own machine and I may as well make it convenient for myself. The odd time I ssh into another box without my keybinds I’ll be a bit less efficient, but that’s a worthwhile trade off imo.

This is one of the reasons I prefer using ctrl-insert/shift-insert when it’s available. Unfortunately the Insert key seems to have disappeared from a lot of keyboards. Scroll lock sometimes works instead of ctrl-s and ctrl-q. I would be ok remapping ctrl-c to ctrl-break, but I still use ctrl-z to background a job. Would be great if terminals had a quick easy way to select your preference of Microsoft, unix, or CUA shortcuts.

I think most of this works for me in zsh. But also tmux can help with selection; I believe by default you use your prefix then open bracket (Ctrl-b + [) to put your self in selection mode. I have some configs to use vim bindings in selection mode.

Tmux selection:

# Yanking
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi v send-keys -X begin-selection
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi C-v send-keys -X rectangle-toggle
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-selection-and-cancel

zsh keybinding:

# Key Bindings
# set vim mode
bindkey -v

# create a zkbd compatible hash;
# to add other keys to this hash, see: man 5 terminfo
typeset -g -A key

key[Home]="${terminfo[khome]}"
key[End]="${terminfo[kend]}"
key[Insert]="${terminfo[kich1]}"
key[Backspace]="${terminfo[kbs]}"
key[Delete]="${terminfo[kdch1]}"
key[Up]="${terminfo[kcuu1]}"
key[Down]="${terminfo[kcud1]}"
key[Left]="${terminfo[kcub1]}"
key[Right]="${terminfo[kcuf1]}"
key[PageUp]="${terminfo[kpp]}"
key[PageDown]="${terminfo[knp]}"
key[Shift-Tab]="${terminfo[kcbt]}"

# setup key accordingly
[[ -n "${key[Home]}"      ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Home]}"       beginning-of-line
[[ -n "${key[End]}"       ]] && bindkey -- "${key[End]}"        end-of-line
[[ -n "${key[Insert]}"    ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Insert]}"     overwrite-mode
[[ -n "${key[Backspace]}" ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Backspace]}"  backward-delete-char
[[ -n "${key[Delete]}"    ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Delete]}"     delete-char
[[ -n "${key[Up]}"        ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Up]}"         up-line-or-history
[[ -n "${key[Down]}"      ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Down]}"       down-line-or-history
[[ -n "${key[Left]}"      ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Left]}"       backward-char
[[ -n "${key[Right]}"     ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Right]}"      forward-char
[[ -n "${key[PageUp]}"    ]] && bindkey -- "${key[PageUp]}"     beginning-of-buffer-or-history
[[ -n "${key[PageDown]}"  ]] && bindkey -- "${key[PageDown]}"   end-of-buffer-or-history
[[ -n "${key[Shift-Tab]}" ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Shift-Tab]}"  reverse-menu-complete

# Finally, make sure the terminal is in application mode, when zle is
# active. Only then are the values from $terminfo valid.
if (( ${+terminfo[smkx]} && ${+terminfo[rmkx]} )); then
	autoload -Uz add-zle-hook-widget
	function zle_application_mode_start { echoti smkx }
	function zle_application_mode_stop { echoti rmkx }
	add-zle-hook-widget -Uz zle-line-init zle_application_mode_start
	add-zle-hook-widget -Uz zle-line-finish zle_application_mode_stop
fi


# History - use current line up to cursor to search through history with arrow keys
autoload -Uz up-line-or-beginning-search down-line-or-beginning-search
zle -N up-line-or-beginning-search
zle -N down-line-or-beginning-search

[[ -n "${key[Up]}"   ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Up]}"   up-line-or-beginning-search
[[ -n "${key[Down]}" ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Down]}" down-line-or-beginning-search

if you want to customise everything you can do that with .inputrc configuration in bash

I think this is one of many un-features in Linux world where

• It would benefit a beginner
• It sounds simple but actually quite complicated to get right (especially if you aim to keep compatibility with things)
• Anyone possessing the skills to implement it neither needs it nor cares about it

As such, for you individually, I suggest just getting more comfortable with tmux (or zellij) and vi-like keybinds for text manipulation. Once you learn those (and set your readline mode to vi), you won’t look back. Oh, also, try Ctrl+x Ctrl+e in bash, it might help.

Or switch to emacs and using it as a terminal emulator. In that case you will have to learn and use emacs keybindings, but the selection semantics in the “terminal” will be the same as in the “editor”.

I think if we want something like that to be consistent everywhere we need to stop using Ctrl so much as a modifier for non-terminal tasks. It doesn’t solve everything, but using Alt or Super for copy and paste like Haiku and MacOS do is a big step in the right direction. It’s just hard to change an established custom without making the whole experience less consistent

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1536757/selecting-text-in-terminal-without-using-the-mouse

deleted by creator

Same, I have most of those, but selection with shift

I would just like my inputs to be separate from the outputs. Anyone write a split pane thing?

I know in zsh, fish, and nushell, you can press a key combo to jump into a text editor of your choice. You write your command there, with all the power and shortcuts in emacs, vim, nano (whatever you like to use). Then you save and exit, and it appears in your command line, ready to execute.

zsh shift select is probably a good start. Zsh can most likely be rebound to do what you want with the possible exception of break.

Don’t do what you want though. It’s stupid, will make you unhappy and cause you problems.

Your terminal isn’t powershell. Your terminal emulator is an emulation of a terminal. There is a shell that it runs, probably bash, but it’s also an emulated terminal.

Powershell (and shells that slough off compatibility for the sake of adapting newer ideas, like zsh) is cool, but its able to be the way that it is because it isn’t a terminal emulator.

If you change a bunch of shit around to make zsh like powershell then you can break your terminal emulation.

Instead, either use tmux or screen bound the way you want, with their defaults or just don’t use the terminal. You don’t need to. If you do need to then you’ll be exposed to funny things like “the terminal isn’t a wysiwyg editor” and “stdio includes function keys” which require a layer of abstraction in between you and the terminal like tmux or screen, which have existed for many years and are the mature, feature rich solution to your problem.

The benefit of not doing what you want by making yet another mutant zsh and instead adopting one of the existing solutions is that your terminal will work like all the others, so when someone asks you to try something in order to troubleshoot a problem you’ll be able to instead of having to troubleshoot how your weird garbage is different from theirs.

Another huge benefit of not creating a special, unique zsh to do what you want is that you will gain competency with every terminal you’ll ever encounter. Which means that instead of being lost when sat down at a terminal other than your own, you’ll be just fine.

If you want to persist in the doomed world you have created, though, oh-my-zsh documentation will probably get you most of the way to the rest of what you want.

• ctrl + left/right move by word

I will forever hate the way vim moves by the start of the word and not the end of the word… The number of times I want to remove the last letter/s of a word at the end of a line and end up on the next line is too damn high.

Also, don’t forget about ctrl + w to delete a full word.