GNU Screen allows you to open several sub-windows within one terminal window. By default, you switch between them using Ctrl-A followed by n or p. I think this is a bit clumsy, I would like to switch with Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab just like you switch tabs in Firefox and many other applications. The sub-windows in Screen is conceptually just like tabs in Firefox, so it’s logical to use the same keys to switch between them.
Screen can be configured to use any key combination for switching sub-window by using the bindkey command. However, Screen can only recognize the key combinations that your terminal emulator actually intercept and send a unique code for. By default, most terminal emulators do not intercept Ctrl-Tab, they just send the same code as for Tab. And you certainly not want to use that since Tab is used for tab completion in the shell.
So you need to configure your terminal emulator to intercept and send a unique code for Ctrl-Tab. In xterm, you can do that by setting the X resource XTerm.vt100.modifyOtherKeys: 2. Now xterm sends ^[[27;5;9~ for Ctrl-Tab and ^[[27;6;9~ for Ctrl-Shift-Tab (^[ is ESC). However, you don’t want to use this since it mess up other things. You need to configure just Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab without altering any other keys. This can be done using the translation feature. Add this to your ~/.Xresources file (you need to log out for this to take effect):
*vt100.translations: #override \n\
Ctrl ~Shift <Key>Tab: string(0x1b) string("[27;5;9~") \n \
Ctrl Shift <Key>Tab: string(0x1b) string("[27;6;9~") \n
Then add this to your ~/.screenrc file:
# Ctrl-Tab bindkey "^[[27;5;9~" next # Ctrl-Shift-Tab bindkey "^[[27;6;9~" prev
This works in xterm. I’m not sure if it works in other terminal emulators.
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if someone would like to have it for urxvt:
! Switching screen-windows
urxvt*keysym.C-Tab: 33[27;5;9~
urxvt*keysym.C-S-Tab: 33[27;6;9~
but as Control-Shift-Tab collides with other urxvt-defaults (the enter-unicode mode) I rather stick to my version: Shift-Left and Shift-Right
! Switching screen-windows
urxvt*keysym.S-Right: 33[27;5;9~
urxvt*keysym.S-Left: 33[27;6;9~
.screenrc needs also what is above.
I just found this post, while I was looking to do something very similar.
In my browser, mouse buttons 8 and 9 map to back (in page history) and forward, respectively. I thought it might be nice for the same buttons to switch between screens.
So, I tried to combine the information from this post, and your previous post about using the mousewheel in screen, and came up with this:
In .Xresources:
*vt100.translations: #override \n\
: string(0x1b) string(“[27;5;9~”) \n \
: string(0x1b) string(“[27;6;9~”) \n
In .screenrc:
# Button 9
bindkey “^[[27;5;9~” next
# Button 8
bindkey “^[[27;6;9~” prev
Unfortunately, I got nothing. I know the buttons are recognized in X. They work in browser (both Firefox, and Chrome), as I said, and in xev, the buttons produce the following:
ButtonPress event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x2e00001,
root 0xc8, subw 0x0, time 1492063874, (73,131), root:(455,154),
state 0x10, button 8, same_screen YES
ButtonPress event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x2e00001,
root 0xc8, subw 0x0, time 1492065330, (73,131), root:(455,154),
state 0x10, button 9, same_screen YES
So, how might I go about debugging this? Do you have any ideas?
My last comment got mangled, because it thought I was putting in HTML tags.
The .Xresources should have read (without those extra spaces):
*vt100.translations: #override \n\
: string(0x1b) string(“[27;5;9~”) \n \
: string(0x1b) string(“[27;6;9~”) \n
Sorry about that, let’s try again:
*vt100.translations: #override \n\
«Btn9Down»: string(0x1b) string(“[27;5;9~”) \n \
«Btn8Down»: string(0x1b) string(“[27;6;9~”) \n
But with proper angle brackets.
Quoting…
“GNU Screen allows you to open several sub-windows within one terminal window. By default, you switch between them using
Ctrl-Afollowed by n or p”Not here. I MUST use
Ctrl-Afollowed byTAB.Ctrl-A n / Ctrl-A p will do something _completely_ different: it will clone a terminal output. That is (try it out!), if you do that with xterm, your input in bash #0 will be *duplicated* in bash #1 ! You’d hardly ever want this, but rather want to use the split panes independently.
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I got this working under Babun/Cygwin as well. The terminal is mintty, which normally responds to Ctrl+Tab and Shift+Ctrl+Tab by cycling through mintty windows. This can be disabled in the options (under Keys), or through a ~/.minttyrc file with:
SwitchShortcuts=no
Then the .screenrc should contain:
# MinTTY sends “\e[1;5I” for Ctrl+Tab and “\e[1;6I” for Ctrl+Shift+Tab.
bindkey “^[[1;5I” next
bindkey “^[[1;6I” prev