Add support for touchscreen selection

Description of the new feature/enhancement

I'm a Surface pro user and sometimes need to use CLI tools without bothering to pick up the keyboard (although it's a mess to type with on-screen keyboard), but it turns out that Windows Terminal is not optimized for touchscreen at all.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

As far as I can tell, the following need to be implemented:

Automatically popup on-screen keyboard and resize the window to fit it on touch.
Long press to select/copy/paste.
Zoom with finger gestures (Touch Zoom with two fingers don't work on Touch screen (but it works on Touch Pad) #3149)

Leon Liang (@leonMSFT)

@diligamer Ah yes, but some developers do use touchscreens, so we shouldn't discount the opinion of a minority of users based solely on the fact that they're a minority.

Back on topic, I could have sworn that Leon Liang (@leonMSFT) actually already implemented having the on-screen keyboard appear when you tap on the Terminal. dianlujitao what verison of the Terminal are you using?

I'm fine with leaving this open to track "Long press to select/copy/paste.", since

"Automatically popup on-screen keyboard and resize the window to fit it on touch." should already work
"Zoom with finger gestures" is already being tracked by Touch Zoom with two fingers don't work on Touch screen (but it works on Touch Pad) #3149.

The on-screen keyboard still seems to work as of ver. 0.11.842 on my surface book when i detach my screen FYI!

The on-screen keyboard still seems to work as of ver. 0.11.842 on my surface book when i detach my screen FYI!

Yes! That works for me too. I would have thought just turning on tablet mode might be enough, but this is OK.

However, even with the screen detached, I can't get touch to work for mouse click operations. For example, when using the Linux dialog utility, it doesn't seem to register taps on the dialog buttons.

James Holderness (@j4james)

Yes, can confirm that on-screen keyboard works after turning on tablet mode as James Holderness (@j4james) mentioned

touch screen should just act like mouse. Here is, for an example, tmux default mouse actions:

bind-key    -T copy-mode    MouseDown1Pane        select-pane
bind-key    -T copy-mode    MouseDrag1Pane        select-pane \; send-keys -X begin-selection                                               bind-key    -T copy-mode    MouseDragEnd1Pane     send-keys -X copy-selection-and-cancel
bind-key    -T copy-mode    WheelUpPane           select-pane \; send-keys -X -N 5 scroll-up
bind-key    -T copy-mode    WheelDownPane         select-pane \; send-keys -X -N 5 scroll-down
bind-key    -T copy-mode    DoubleClick1Pane      select-pane \; send-keys -X select-word
bind-key    -T copy-mode    TripleClick1Pane      select-pane \; send-keys -X select-line

I suppose all that should by supported from touchscreen

This really kills using Textual or any other touch oriented console application.
Textual looks great in WT and works as expected with a mouse, but since it doesn't support touch I will be switching back to conhost.

I just got bitten by this because my mouse is currently not working. The worst part is not just that touching or tapping does absolutely nothing, but when you use the virtual touchpad which gives an on-screen touchpad that allows for navigating using the mouse cursor and left/right click like a regular mouse... still doesn't respond. In fact it responds even less - you can't even click to open the settings menu! At least I would expect the virtual touchpad to work so that we can do everything a mouse can do.

If anyone else is temporarily stuck without a mouse and can't select any more, the best solution I found is to use a bluetooth mouse app on your phone and use the phone screen as a virtual touchpad.

Edit to add: seems like the virtual touchpad does, in fact, work - just not in Administrator mode. So one solution for touchscreen users is to enable the virtual touchpad for selection.

touch screen should just act like mouse. Here is, for an example, tmux default mouse actions:

bind-key    -T copy-mode    MouseDown1Pane        select-pane
bind-key    -T copy-mode    MouseDrag1Pane        select-pane \; send-keys -X begin-selection                                               bind-key    -T copy-mode    MouseDragEnd1Pane     send-keys -X copy-selection-and-cancel
bind-key    -T copy-mode    WheelUpPane           select-pane \; send-keys -X -N 5 scroll-up
bind-key    -T copy-mode    WheelDownPane         select-pane \; send-keys -X -N 5 scroll-down
bind-key    -T copy-mode    DoubleClick1Pane      select-pane \; send-keys -X select-word
bind-key    -T copy-mode    TripleClick1Pane      select-pane \; send-keys -X select-line

I suppose all that should by supported from touchscreen

No the touch screen is not interacting as a mouse on Tmux/terminal for some reason. It doesn't register any action

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Add support for touchscreen selection #5159

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Add support for touchscreen selection #5159

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Nyameliaaaa commented on Mar 28, 2020

DHowett-MSFT commented on Mar 28, 2020

Nyameliaaaa commented on Mar 29, 2020

zadjii-msft commented on Mar 30, 2020

leonMSFT commented on Mar 30, 2020

j4james commented on Mar 30, 2020

moetayuko commented on Mar 31, 2020

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