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> - Install iterm2. <snip> The main reason to use it >instead of the default Terminal application is that It just works©.

What's wrong with the default Terminal application? I use it daily and have been for close to a decade. I never found myself wishing it did anything than what it already does.

> -Use tmux.

Meh. For most people screen works just as well. Perhaps more importantly, you can rely on screen being available pretty much anywhere. Just like vim. Speaking of which: vim is great. Use vim. The world needs more vim.



Been loving vim for several years. Finally decided to learn emacs, partially spurred by interest in clojure.

It seems that as more languages are created that include native repl experiences, emacs becomes more appealing to me because it fits nicely with editor+repl, where in other editors a repl seems more of an afterthought or nice-to-have.

I would say definitely learn vim first, but it's great to know both vim and emacs. It just opens up more doors.


iTerm2 does vertical and horizontal splitting better than Terminal.app.

tmux does vertical and horizontal splitting better than screen.

That's my rationale for using iTerm2 and tmux instead of Terminal.app and screen.

(yes, I'm aware that screen has improved its splitting recently, but I switched to tmux in 2011, after seeing a presentation about it by Nicholas Marriott)


Why split your terminal if you have screen / tmux?


iterm has special integration with tmux. The big advantage is that you can quickly scroll the history with the mouse which is way faster and more convenient that going back up screen by screen with a shortcut.

Also with some work you can synchronize the OSX clipboard with tmux's one.


I scroll using the mouse in tmux all the time in any mouse capable terminal (aka not Terminal.app, also regular linux terms).

I have a toggle to turn it on off in my tmux.conf, have a looky: https://github.com/mitchty/src/blob/master/dotfiles/tmux.con...


You can scroll in Terminal.app too, use the MouseTerm SIMBL plugin


Well, once you're bolting on plugins for features that come with iTerm2, why not use iTerm2?


Because I find iTerm to be a pile of crap on most of my systems


Out of curiosity iTerm or iTerm2? If the latter what is crap about it?

I have one huge gripe that I haven't been able to fix but its not that huge a deal. Every so often the terminal will lose its mind and start displaying mouse escape sequences. Nothing resets it out of this state, have to close whatever window I have open and start anew. Not a huge deal due to tmux but annoying enough to frustrate.


> The big advantage is that you can quickly scroll the history with the mouse...

I've not found that to be faster than <CTRL+F> or <CTRL+B>. Same keys as in vim. I haven't found the value in using iTerm over terminal + tmux (same could be said for those that are more comfortable in screen).


Copy and paste support mostly.


TMUX provides this.


How do you get it working? I've never been successful


I encountered some problems with command-line emacs control sequences not being captured correctly, though the last time I tried was a while ago.


iirc Terminal has some preferences for properly handling special keys like Ctrl and meta. Does that help our was your problem something different?


Actually, those two points are related: I started using iterm2 precisely because I also started using tmux, and tmux integration is much better with iterm2 than with the native terminal (and for me at least I find tmux much simpler than using screen). So there are advantages.

> Speaking of which: vim is great. Use vim. The world needs more vim.

Agreed :)


tmux seems to choke on tons of console output far earlier than screen.




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