Keybinding Modes

[jcdickinson]

This is generally inspired by Zellij and modal text editors in general.

It would be great to have keybinding modes. One thing that I miss from Zellij is being able to enter into "pane mode", where you can use single keys to focus/move/resize panes. It's more keystrokes, but less playing finger twister on the keyboard.

For example, we could have:

alt+r=mode:resize,consume # Consume all keystrokes, don't send any unmatched to the process
resize:h=resize_split:left,25
resize:j=resize+split:down,25
# etc...
resize:alt+h=goto_split:left
# etc...
resize:escape=mode:none # builtin
resize:enter=mode:none

This could also be used to emulate tmux/leader keys - as well as "escape mode" (where you can turn of all keybinds for situations where there are conflicts with some programs):

alt+escape=mode:escape,passthrough # default/optional, pass unmapped keys through to the process
escape:alt+escape=mode:none

Zellij has fallthrough to previous modes and such fanciness, but that can all be emulated with explicit bindings.

[pluiedev]

Need some more concrete feedback on how this is supposed to work (what are the modes and how should they coexist with existing features). I'm generally wary of hyper-complex super-customizable features that are only going to be used by power users and not by ordinary people, although if more people pitch in in favor of the idea then it might be better considered. It's important to remember that Ghostty is a GUI application and should communicate these "modes" on the GUI layer, too.

[rhodes-b]

ghostty now supports this general idea its called key tables
#9963