Kovid Goyal on Kitty: Drag and Drop, Pixel Scrolling, and What’s Next

Mitchell Hashimoto wasn’t able to join this episode for personal reasons, so we made a small pivot. A lot of people already knew about the original Ghostty vs Kitty livestream, so I wanted to explain that clearly here too. Mitchell couldn’t make it this time, and I completely understand. We’ll see what happens in the future. That said, this still turned into a really fun conversation with Kovid Goyal, creator of kitty and calibre. In this episode, we talk about kitty, recent popular features, terminal UX, design choices, performance, workflows, and some of what may be coming next. Kovid also talks about things like pixel scrolling with momentum, drag and drop for kitty UI elements like windows and tabs, and an early look at a possible future drag and drop protocol for terminal programs, which could make things like transferring files between two different computers much easier. So even though this is no longer a Ghostty vs Kitty conversation, I still think this episode will be really interesting if you care about terminal emulators, keyboard-driven workflows, macOS, Linux, Neovim, native apps, developer tools, and open source software. Half of the Superchats from the original livestream are going to the kitty project. Guest links: Kovid Goyal   / kovidgoyal   Website: https://kovidgoyal.net https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty https://calibre-ebook.com/about My interviews with Kovid Goyal, Justin Keyes, and more    • Linkarzu Podcast | Neovim, macOS, Emacs, L...   What this podcast is and where to find it https://linkarzu.com/about/#im-confus... Support me Join the YouTube Members    / @linkarzu   Get the gear My merch store https://merch.linkarzu.com A massive thank you to CEO YouTube member web2three. Check out his work at web2three.com. Thank you for the support, Rumen. 00:00:00 - Highlights 00:02:10 - Who is Kovid and what protocols he has contributed to the terminal ecosystem 00:11:00 - What's the difference between the kitty graphics protocol and sixel? 00:13:50 - What is Chafa? 00:15:11 - In terms of Neovim, can you explain what the Keyboard Protocol is? 00:18:43 - Undercurl, another protocol provided by Kovid to terminals 00:19:30 - Text sizing protocol, what is it? 00:25:22 - Neovim: What is needed to have variable font size? 00:27:55 - PR for kitty graphics protocol in Neovim terminal? 00:29:58 - choose-files kitten 00:31:51 - Will you add the chenglou pretext thing? 00:34:19 - Kitty Clipboard Protocol 00:35:57 - Kitty keyboard protocol coming to Ghostty? Works on macOS 00:36:56 - Does it replace OSC52? 00:38:33 - So are you trying to make Kitty like emacs? 00:39:57 - Drag and drop requested by developer of Yazi 00:41:11 - Drag and drop Kitty tabs? 00:43:39 - Why so many editors in the AI era, why Neovim like if its the 70s? 00:47:32 - Demos start: Resize kitty windows with mouse 00:48:46 - Drag tabs and windows around, even out to a new window 00:50:48 - Pixel scrolling, partial scrolling 00:52:14 - Momentum scrolling 00:52:48 - Partial scrolling works only with default scrollback, not in neovim 00:53:48 - Drag and drop links current behavior 00:56:12 - Drag and drop protocol 00:56:47 - kitten mouse-demo 00:57:33 - Demo drag and drop over SSH 00:59:48 - How do you feel about new features in kitty, you accept everything? 01:01:28 - What are your top 5 CLI tools? 01:03:43 - Dolev creator of gh-dash asks about browsers 01:05:23 - Demo: Kovid's top 5 neovim plugins? 01:08:38 - Conditional mappings depending on the state of the focused window 01:09:59 - Thoughts on alcohol and drugs? 01:12:40 - Thoughts on religion