Editor based terminals

[solomatov]

Context

VS Code users use terminal often. Unfortunately, the terminal area below isn't very good fit for it:

• It doesn't take good use of wide screen monitors
• It can only appear on the bottom of the screen
  Also, there're usability problems with it:
• It's impossible to see all the terminals since the combo box is used for them.

Implementation:

• I used editors and editor input API to create terminals
• In order to create terminal, I created a hidden terminal instance, and attach it to the editor DOM element
• In VS Code we use computeElementStyle API which sometimes returns 'auto' which leads to incorrect layout. I had to create a small hack to work this around.

Would be glad to fix any comments you want me to address.

[Tyriar]

I appreciate the effort but this feature is on our roadmap and needs a bunch of thinking and design before going to the code. Simply adding a new editor type and hooking it to host a terminal instance is insufficient and I'm certain will result in a bunch of bugs as it breaks assumptions made by the terminal component.

[Tyriar]

Related issue you can track: #85164, #10121, #10546

[solomatov]

@Tyriar
I understand that you are already doing some work, and you weren't going to accept it in the current form. I created this PR as an input to the discussion, and UX design.

Concerning the work on universal layout, do you have any branch or any other place where I can take a look at it?

[solomatov]

@Tyriar You also mentioned some broken assumptions? Do you have any broken assumptions from the top of your head?

[Tyriar]

Concerning the work on universal layout, do you have any branch or any other place where I can take a look at it?

Best place to look right now is this issue which involves a lot of refactors to start enabling panels in viewlet #85164, before moving onto the editors (probably the next step).

You also mentioned some broken assumptions? Do you have any broken assumptions from the top of your head?

The terminal component was built under the assumption that all terminals are within the panel, the dropdown is an obvious place that would break as it just iterates over all terminals. When the time comes to tackle this I expect a bunch of refactoring in TerminalService so that it knows that TerminalInstances can be in many places.

[jfdahl]

I for one cannot wait for this feature! This is subjective and opinionated, but I believe having a terminal as an editor tab will make a more consistent user experience when editing scripts. I can switch to the terminal in the same manner and with the same ease that I switch between files.