Category: terminal

How to get Ctrl+Arrow working for programs running in tmux?

The key combination of Ctrl+arrow key is often used for skipping forward or backward whole words. This can be used in the bash command line, Emacs and many other programs. However, when I am using tmux, this will not work. You can fix this, by adding the following to your ~/.tmux.conf:

set-window-option -g xterm-keys on
This was explained in a nice superuser Q&A.
You can interactively try out tmux commands by hitting C-b : — this will enter the command mode. You can use tab to complete commands.

Good console fonts for OS X terminal applications

Today I was looking for a better console font for the Apple terminal application. Up until now I was using a variant of the Terminus font, but it did not have the line drawing characters. So several programs looked quite borked. But there is a nice page with a collection of the X11 terminal fonts in Apple’s dfont format, which you know and like from all kinds of Linux distributions.
You have to tweak the spacings, for example for the 7×14 font you need to pick 0.98 and 0.93 for the horizontal and vertical spacing. Also make sure to use the fonts at their specified size. I.e. the 7×14 font at 14 points only.