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More Unicode-savvy wordDelimiters #4287

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opened 2026-01-30 23:43:02 +00:00 by claunia · 2 comments
claunia commented 2026-01-30 23:43:02 +00:00
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Originally created by @egmontkob on GitHub (Oct 5, 2019).

Description of the new feature/enhancement

"wordDelimiter" lists a couple of stop characters, such as ASCII quotation mark ", apostrophe ', hyphen/minus - and such.

However, special Unicode quotation marks like “, ”, apostrophes like ’ dashes –, —, box drawing characters, non-breaking spaces and so on an so forth remain word characters (selected on a double click) which is most likely not the best behavior, and adding such characters one by one to the set as the user encounters them is cumbersome.

Proposed technical implementation details

I think the default behavior should be based on Unicode character categories. On top of this there could be a way to add/remove certain characters to/from the set as exceptions. (Maybe even a way to add/remove entire character categories at once, although that might be an overkill.)

Originally created by @egmontkob on GitHub (Oct 5, 2019). <!-- 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 I ACKNOWLEDGE THE FOLLOWING BEFORE PROCEEDING: 1. If I delete this entire template and go my own path, the core team may close my issue without further explanation or engagement. 2. If I list multiple bugs/concerns in this one issue, the core team may close my issue without further explanation or engagement. 3. If I write an issue that has many duplicates, the core team may close my issue without further explanation or engagement (and without necessarily spending time to find the exact duplicate ID number). 4. If I leave the title incomplete when filing the issue, the core team may close my issue without further explanation or engagement. 5. If I file something completely blank in the body, the core team may close my issue without further explanation or engagement. All good? Then proceed! --> # Description of the new feature/enhancement "wordDelimiter" lists a couple of stop characters, such as ASCII quotation mark `"`, apostrophe `'`, hyphen/minus `-` and such. However, special Unicode quotation marks like `“`, `”`, apostrophes like `’` dashes `–`, `—`, box drawing characters, non-breaking spaces and so on an so forth remain word characters (selected on a double click) which is most likely not the best behavior, and adding such characters one by one to the set as the user encounters them is cumbersome. # Proposed technical implementation details I think the default behavior should be based on [Unicode character categories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_character_property#General_Category). On top of this there could be a way to add/remove certain characters to/from the set as exceptions. (Maybe even a way to add/remove entire character categories at once, although that might be an overkill.)
claunia added the Help WantedArea-SettingsIssue-TaskPriority-3Product-Terminal labels 2026-01-30 23:43:03 +00:00
claunia commented 2026-01-30 23:43:03 +00:00
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@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Nov 15, 2022):

Notes from #14374 and #14392:

The variety here is staggering! 😄

Yeah, I was just experimenting with a few terminals I have on my test VM. This is what I established after a lot of double-clicking (might be a couple of errors, but you get the idea).

Xterm		"$'()*;<>[\]^`{|}
Gnome Terminal	!"$'()*:;<>[]^`{|}
Konsole		!"$'()*,;<>[\]^`{|}
Rxvt		&();<>|
Alacritty	"'(),:<>[]`{|}
Kitty		!"$'()*,:;<>[\]^`{|}

They do seem fairly consistent about avoiding the *nix path separator though, so that's perhaps something worth noting. Obviously they're less likely to care about the Windows path separator.

For the record, I couldn't care less.

I'm sorry for the entirely unrelated comment, but I think I just now realized how "crazy" those ASCII word delimiters are in an international setting. For instance this:

ねこはかわいい。

It consists of 3 words and a delimiter (ねこ , は , かわいい , 。) and your browser probably handles this correctly, whereas terminals are perpetually stuck in the "What do you mean there are people who don't speak English?". conhost's whitespace-only splitting doesn't feel any better in that regard. I feel like terminals are in a dire need of some UAX #29, Section 4.

[...] I think I just now realized how "crazy" those ASCII word delimiters are in an international setting. For instance this:

ねこはかわいい。

It consists of 3 words and a delimiter (ねこ , は , かわいい , 。) and your browser probably handles this correctly, whereas terminals are perpetually stuck in the "What do you mean there are people who don't speak English?". conhost's whitespace-only splitting doesn't feel any better in that regard. I feel like terminals are in a dire need of some UAX #29, Section 4.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

and your browser probably handles this correctly

For the record, my browser (Firefox) does not.

And while I agree that it's worthwhile considering a more international-friendly approach, we also need to bear in mind that command-line text selection is possibly somewhat different from typical document text selection, so sticking strictly to the UAX#29 spec may not be ideal as a default (assuming we're considering changing the default).

For example, in a terminal, the decision as to whether a punctuation character should be treated as a separator or not is often based on the semantics of that characters in the shell (e.g. slash as a path separator, or colon as a drive letter suffix). I haven't looked at the UAX#29 spec in detail, but I suspect it is unlikely to categorize punctuation symbols in the same way.

And in your example above, if those characters were used in a path, and you were trying to select that path, would you really want the selection to stop at the word boundaries? I don't know. That's really a question for the people that speak the language, and in what situations they're most likely to be double clicking on strings of Japanese characters. But my point is that it's not necessarily obvious that UAX#29 would be best default.

@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Nov 15, 2022): Notes from #14374 and #14392: > > The variety here is staggering! 😄 > > Yeah, I was just experimenting with a few terminals I have on my test VM. This is what I established after a lot of double-clicking (might be a couple of errors, but you get the idea). > > ``` > Xterm "$'()*;<>[\]^`{|} > Gnome Terminal !"$'()*:;<>[]^`{|} > Konsole !"$'()*,;<>[\]^`{|} > Rxvt &();<>| > Alacritty "'(),:<>[]`{|} > Kitty !"$'()*,:;<>[\]^`{|} > ``` > > They do seem fairly consistent about avoiding the *nix path separator though, so that's perhaps something worth noting. Obviously they're less likely to care about the Windows path separator. > > For the record, I couldn't care less. <hr> > I'm sorry for the entirely unrelated comment, but I think I just now realized how "crazy" those ASCII word delimiters are in an international setting. For instance this: > > > ねこはかわいい。 > > It consists of 3 words and a delimiter (ねこ , は , かわいい , 。) and your browser probably handles this correctly, whereas terminals are perpetually stuck in the "What do you mean there are people who don't speak English?". conhost's whitespace-only splitting doesn't feel any better in that regard. I feel like terminals are in a dire need of some [UAX #29, Section 4](https://unicode.org/reports/tr29/#Word_Boundaries). <hr> > > [...] I think I just now realized how "crazy" those ASCII word delimiters are in an international setting. For instance this: > > > ねこはかわいい。 > > > > > > It consists of 3 words and a delimiter (ねこ , は , かわいい , 。) and your browser probably handles this correctly, whereas terminals are perpetually stuck in the "What do you mean there are people who don't speak English?". conhost's whitespace-only splitting doesn't feel any better in that regard. I feel like terminals are in a dire need of some [UAX #29, Section 4](https://unicode.org/reports/tr29/#Word_Boundaries). > > # Proposed technical implementation details (optional) > * Use this by default: [unicode.org/reports/tr29/#Word_Boundaries](https://unicode.org/reports/tr29/#Word_Boundaries) > * Use character-set splitting, if the user has configured `wordDelimiters` <hr> > > and your browser probably handles this correctly > > For the record, my browser (Firefox) does not. > > And while I agree that it's worthwhile considering a more international-friendly approach, we also need to bear in mind that command-line text selection is possibly somewhat different from typical document text selection, so sticking strictly to the UAX#29 spec may not be ideal as a default (assuming we're considering changing the default). > > For example, in a terminal, the decision as to whether a punctuation character should be treated as a separator or not is often based on the semantics of that characters in the shell (e.g. slash as a path separator, or colon as a drive letter suffix). I haven't looked at the UAX#29 spec in detail, but I suspect it is unlikely to categorize punctuation symbols in the same way. > > And in your example above, if those characters were used in a path, and you were trying to select that path, would you really want the selection to stop at the word boundaries? I don't know. That's really a question for the people that speak the language, and in what situations they're most likely to be double clicking on strings of Japanese characters. But my point is that it's not necessarily obvious that UAX#29 would be best default.
claunia commented 2026-01-30 23:43:04 +00:00
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@radekg commented on GitHub (Mar 13, 2023):

For the reference:

"wordDelimiters": " ()\"':,;<>~!@#$%^&*|=[]{}?│",

to mimic the setting from iTerm2. It treats /-+\~_. as part of the word allowing a selection of a full path and a word containing dashes, for example a repository name.

@radekg commented on GitHub (Mar 13, 2023): For the reference: ``` "wordDelimiters": " ()\"':,;<>~!@#$%^&*|=[]{}?│", ``` to mimic the setting from iTerm2. It treats `/-+\~_.` as part of the word allowing a selection of a full path and a word containing dashes, for example a repository name.
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