[puls]

Why do people keep suggesting iTerm2? The built-in terminal app on the Mac does Unicode and 256 colors just fine.

[niggler]

Historical. Terminal has improved greatly since Leopard/SL

[kreeger]

Split panes is pretty much the main reason I need iTerm2. That, combined with system-wide hotkey toggling (which I used to get on Terminal with Visor), and Send Commands to All Sessions mode (cmd-ctrl-i, I think) makes me a happy command liner.

[glenjamin]

It's the little things which makes me use iTerm2

- easier to change the default darkblue to be readable on black - can configure double-click on filename behaviour (cmd+alt click in Terminal) - can have auto-copy-to-clipboard on selection

In short, it's more like terminal applications on other OSes I'm familiar with.

[Xion]

iTerm2 has few other fancy features, like horizontal and vertical splitting or Guake-like top-down terminal [0].

[0] http://ivanvillareal.com/osx/setup-iterm2-to-behave-like-gua...

[niggler]

I've used visor/simbl in leopard and snow leopard for years to get the top-down effect in terminal: http://visor.binaryage.com/

[haar]

Multi-pane input via cmd-shift-i, and saved pane/window configurations through cmd-shift-s and cmd-shift-r also come in handy.

[baghali]

I personally enjoy being able to split panes vertically with iTerm2

[statico]

Indeed. iTerm2 has replaced tmux for me for local development.

[daxelrod]

Why not both? http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration

iTerm2 can intelligently communicate with tmux in order to present splits and windows are handled by iTerm2, rather than within the single terminal window.

[callahad]

iTerm2 has an absolutely amazing history playback, amongst other nice features.

[yankcrime]

Am I the only one who doesn't like iTerm 2 because it feels slow to use? Example: Open up a file in vim, then scroll up and down quickly. The refresh on iTerm 2 is noticeably sluggish compared to Terminal.app.

[Groxx]

The "step back in time" feature is sort of gimmicky, but does mean you can rewind even Curses terminal applications. Rarely actually useful, but it has saved me a huge amount of hassle a few times.

[mmahemoff]

Vim also has history via the undo-branches feature. e.g. ":earlier 15m" to go back 15 minutes.

[Nick_C]

And the Gundo plugin extends that even more with a history graph and preview pane that shows diffs. A must-have plugin for me.

[mitchty]

iterm2 supports mouse input, terminal.app does not.

[johncoltrane]

Using a mouse? In Vim?

[jlgreco]

Absolutely. I use a mouse in vim to resize windows. Much less tedious than doing that with a keyboard.

Good mouse support in a terminal is also nice for elinks, which several of my vim shortcuts trigger (company wide code/wiki searches, or similar).

[mitchty]

Vim sure, more for tmux for me to be honest. Its quicker to resize panes/select things with the mouse at times.

People that take keyboard only to the extreme strike me as adhering to the letter of the law rather than the intent. Whichever works faster for a person is better.

[ddon]

Yes, vim in terminal works really good with a mouse!

[rplnt]

In terminal.

[johncoltrane]

Why for?

[ddon]

Here are few things how I use it:

- scrolling with a mouse wheel

- selecting/resizing a split window

- jumping to a specific place in the code

- making a selection

[illamint]

I think the key is having the option to use the mouse, in addition to normal Vim keyboard shortcuts. If I'm switching back and forth between Vim and a browser, for instance, I have my right hand on the mouse already, and I can scroll with the wheel, select a tmux pane, copy and paste things, etc. very easily. If I didn't have that option, I'd have to switch back to the keyboard. If I have both hands on the keyboard already, I'm probably not going to use the mouse.

[johncoltrane]

All of that can be done much more efficiently without the mouse:

- scrolling with a mouse wheel

    :h scroll.txt

- selecting/resizing a split window

    :h window-resize
    :h window-move-cursor

- jumping to a specific place in the code

    /foo<CR> 

or the myriad of cool things in

    :h motion.txt

- making a selection

    v{motion}

[danneu]

You seem to be conflating Vim and Terminal.

Vim is just one of the many things you can run in a terminal, and just one of the many things you can do with a terminal.

[johncoltrane]

No. I know what the difference is between the two.

And I know that I never use mouse in one or the other. I don't use it for scrolling, I don't use it for pointing and clicking, I don't use for selecting stuff…

REPL? no use for the mouse. htop? no use for the mouse. git/svn/hg? no use for the mouse.

[aerolite]

iterm2 does not let me go forward/backward by word (with the option key). anyone know how to fix this?

[aerique]

This can be fixed by editing the keybindings for your shell. Bash by default on OS X? If so Google for ".inputrc", mine looks like this:

  # See http://www.reddit.com/r/commandline/comments/kbeoe/you_can_make_readline_and_bash_much_more_user/
  "\eOd": backward-word
  "\e[5D": backward-word  # for OS X
  "\eOc": forward-word
  "\e[5C": forward-word   # for OS X
  "\C-f": reverse-search-history
  "\C-F": reverse-search-history  # for OS X
  #Control-F: reverse-search-history
  #Control-j: menu-complete
  #Control-k: menu-complete-backward
  set bell-style none
  set completion-ignore-case on
  set completion-prefix-display-length 2
  set show-all-if-ambiguous on
  set show-all-if-unmodified on

[s00pcan]

I might as well answer seeing as I found this out yesterday. Go to the profile options then the keys tab. Then there is an option for left/right option key acting as normal meta or +esc. While meta sounds correct for this, esc+ was recommended and works.

[mpu]

Yep, and xterm is also aware of them...