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G+: Support for hyperlinks in terminal applications is something …

David Coles
Support for hyperlinks in terminal applications is something I've been wanting for a very long time. While many terminal emulators support auto-detection of URLs, they rely on screen-scraping to look for anything that appears to be like a URL (this can easily break due to line-wrapping or scrolling).

The support just recently added to iTerm 3.1.beta.3 and Gnome Terminal 3.25.1 (VTE 0.49.1) means applications can explicitly mark a URL to be shown.

$ echo -e '\e]8;;http://example.com\aThis is a link\e]8;;\a'

It would be especially useful to be able to make use of file: and data: URLs as alternate output presentation (e.g for `ls`).

Egmont Koblinger (egmontkob on github) has put together a useful summary of his work and where it's supported.

#terminal #url

Hyperlinks_in_Terminal_Emulators.md


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