Vscode-r: Send the code to the terminal without automatic toggling of terminal pane.

[albert-ying]

Hi, this might be a little bit off-topic. So I just found out that I can launch into the same TMUX window from two separate terminals instance. Basically, this makes it possible to send code to the integrated terminal, but read it from iTerm on a different monitor. It kind of a work-around for the long-standing multi-screen support issue of VScode.

So the only problem here is that, when I hit cmd+enter to send code to integrate terminal, the terminal pane will still be automatically toggled even if it is hidden. I'm wondering if there is any modification I can do to make it "silently" send the code to the terminal without actually toggling the terminal window in vscode?

[andycraig]

Hi @albert-ying, that is a neat solution to the multi-screen problem! To clarify: current behaviour is that sending text to the terminal with Ctrl+Enter always makes the terminal appear, but you would like the option to send text without the terminal appearing. Is this correct? This is doable.

I can think of two approaches for implementing this:

1. Add a new setting to control this
2. Add a new command

Option 1 would be 'always on' or 'always off'. We would need to decide whether it affects all commands that send text to the terminal. Option 2 would mean that you could choose whether the terminal is shown or not each time you send text, by using a different keyboard shortcut.

[albert-ying]

Hi @andycraig, I'm glad you replied! Yes, that is exactly what I mean. I think both options are great, the first one seems neater and the second one might offer more flexibility for someone who wants to have both behaviors. Thank you!

[andycraig]

Since there are several commands that send text to the console, and it would probably be desirable to have the same behaviour for all of them, I propose we use a setting.

There's an existing setting r.source.focus. It currently has options 'editor' and 'terminal'. I propose we add a new option ('none' or 'hide' or something like that) which has the requested behaviour.

This should be fairly straightforward to implement. @albert-ying Are you interested in implementing this yourself? The code that would need to be modified is here: https://github.com/Ikuyadeu/vscode-R/blob/16737cb499a6ef91daa247bbd437808099b98a16/src/rTerminal.ts#L267-L270

[albert-ying]

Hi @andycraig. Thank you for figuring it out!

Sorry, I would more than happy to do it if I could. But I only use R and I don't actually know Typescript (I suppose this is the language used here).

[andycraig]

@albert-ying TypeScript is the language used but it's pretty intuitive coming from R. No pressure though :) I can add this feature some time in the next month or so.