Comment by rollcat

> nitpick: ctrl-c never meant copy until windows started to dominate. it didn't even mean that in DOS.

VT102 wasn't designed with multiplexing in mind. The device was meant as a primary way to interact with a computer, not to perform the tasks of one - your physical keyboard also doesn't understand "copy".

> selecting more than one screens worth of text is possible in gui terminals and also in tmux.

It is but it isn't. You want to copy a multiline snippet of code you just wrote, you will have to manually strip away $PS1 & $PS2. You want to copy from vi into another window, you can't use the mouse - and you have to use a side channel.

I have 20+ unfixable issues outlined, and I'm in the process of writing a blog post... But at my current rate, it could become a book.