Windows Terminal Preview v1.14.143

[DHowett]

Welcome to the terminaldome! Today this release page is graced by the works of pinch hitter (and pinch release notes writer) @carlos-zamora.

Features

• Windows Terminal now has better support for the xterm "Alternate Screen Buffer", and can now handle alternate scroll mode and resize/reflow better (Enable using the alt buffer in the Terminal #12561) (Add support for alternate scroll mode in Terminal #12569) (Don't reflow the alt buffer on resize #12719)
• Using windowed applications from the terminal should work much better now
  • ConPTY can now handle show/hide window calls and even knows who the window owner is (Propagate show/hide window calls against the ConPTY pseudo window to the Terminal #12515) (Enable the Terminal to tell ConPTY who the owner is #12526)
  • Windows created by console apps now appear above the terminal (Allow windows created by console apps to appear above the Terminal #12799) (Ensure a terminal requesting FG rights actually has them #12899)
  • Focus events are now sent through VT input (Plumb Focus events through VT Input #12900)
• You can now use the experimental.useBackgroundImageForWindow (bool, default false) global setting to apply one background image for your entire window! (Add experimental setting to make bg images fit the whole tab #12893) (Add experimental.useBackgroundImageForWindow to schema #13114) (thanks @nico-abram!)
• You are now able to select all the text in the buffer using the selectAll action. This is bound by default to ctrl+shift+a (Add ability to select all text in the buffer #13045) (Add 'selectAll' to schema #13084)

Changes

UI

• @dansmor7 contributed some visual changes to the tabs, scrollbar, new tab button, caption buttons, color picker, settings UI, command palette, and search box to move us closer to the Windows 11 design language. Really just about any WinUI surface we have, it's been polished up! (thanks @dansmor7!) (Command palette and search box visual tweaks #12913) (Misc visual fixes #12916) (Settings UI tweaks #12973) ([High Contrast] Fix red SUI background #13083)
• RadioButtons in the settings UI have been replaced with ComboBoxes. This gives an added bonus to keyboard and screen reader users, and makes it easier to navigate through and change these settings. (Replace RadioButton expanders with ComboBoxes #12833)

Interactivity

• The IME input mode now defaults to English when interacting with Windows Terminal (Change TSFInputControl inputScope to AlphanumericHalfWidth #13028) (thanks @YanceyChiew!)
• Terminal is now aware of toggled state for Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, and Num Lock (Include keyboard modalities when processing key events #12823) (thanks @matkaas!)

Settings

• There's now a VERY EXPERIMENTAL new VT passthrough mode setting that makes ConPTY do minimal translations and may make your terminal a little faster 🏃💨 and a lot more broken! ([FHL] Make VTApiRoutines, which does VT translation for output #11264) (Hide the VT Passthrough Mode switch from the Settings UI in Preview #13051) (Fix handling of cursor position reports in passthrough mode #13109)
  • Use the experimental.connection.passthroughMode (bool, default true) profile setting and it should be set on the profile's next launch
  • ⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ This seems to mostly work with CMD and WSL. PowerShell is mostly sad 😭.
• The trimBlockSelection global setting now defaults to true (Change trimBlockSelection default to true #12737)
• Terminal now ignores newTab actions with a profile index greater than the number of profiles (Ignore newTab actions with a profile index greater than the number of profiles #11621)

Atlas Renderer Improvements

• ClearType is no longer always enabled (AtlasEngine: Fix ClearType being always enabled #12705)
• The grayscale blending shader should now be working properly (AtlasEngine: Fix grayscale blending shader #12734)
• OpenConsole's leak check report should be fixed now (AtlasEngine: Fix leak check report for OpenConsole #12415)
• The shader power draw was reduced using explicit branching (AtlasEngine: Reduce shader power draw with explicit branching #12552)
• The renderer is now smarter about when to resize the buffer when scrolling (AtlasEngine: Stop resizing buffers on scroll #13100)

Documentation

• Our GitHub repo now supports rich code navigation (Add support for rich code navigation in GitHub #12855) (Add support for rich code navigation in GitHub, redux #12910) (Add support for rich code navigation in GitHub, redux #12910). Bug reports are also automatically tagged as bugs (Update Bug_Report.yml #12404) (thanks @snxx-lppxx!)
• We've uploaded specs for Theme-controlled color scheme switching (Create #4066 - Theme-controlled color scheme switch.md #12613) (thanks @arkthur!) and Default Terminal (Default Terminal Spec #7414)
• The README has been updated to mention the required .NET Targeting Pack (Update README.md with prerequisite of Targeting Pack #12896) (thanks @pizzaz93!)
• Words are hard! Thanks to @sebastiansterk, @DimitriPapadopoulos, and @jsoref for making sure we use the right words and grammar across our repo. (Fix the grammar in a comment #12386) (Fix typos found by codespell #12475) (Spelling / Grammar #12835)
• bellSound is now in the schema (WIP for adding BellSound to schema #13035) (thanks @pizzaz93!)

Bug Fixes

• Terminal should be able to find Cascadia Mono... Third time's the charm? 🍀 (Another attempt at fixing nearby font loading #12904)
• commandline in profile.defaults should no longer override the commandlines of profiles that specify cmd.exe or powershell.exe. (Fix profile commandlines being overwritten by profile.defaults #12906)
• Get rid of a memory leak in onecore interactivity (Fix a memory leak in onecore interactivity #12340)
• We should be maintaining the virtual viewport bottom properly now (Prevent the virtual viewport bottom being updated incorrectly #12972) (Make sure the virtual viewport doesn't go negative #13052) (Restore virtual viewport position after resize with reflow #13087) (thanks @j4james!)
• Screen readers can now read some settings in the UI better (Add automation properties to expander-style settings #13032)
• Replace "acrylic" with "acrylic material" for localization purposes (Replace "acrylic" with "acrylic material" in i18n strings #12505)
• The "close tab" button color now matches the tab text color (Ensure tab close button color matches the text color #13018) (thanks @ianjoneill!)

Reliability

• Fix a crash when deleting the last profile in the settings UI (Only add the ProfileVM.DeleteProfile handler once #13044)
• Fix resize crash in OpenConsole when using the Atlas Renderer (Fix resize crash in OpenConsole with AtlasEngine #13015)

Code health and Maintainability

• @j4james unified the terminal and console's VT handlers, deleting thousands of lines of redundant code in the process! (Introduce VTInt to represent VT parameters #12207) (Refactor and simplify the ConGetSet API #12247) (Eliminate the DispatchCommon class #12389) (Eliminate the AdaptDefaults class #12390) (Eliminate the IRenderTarget interface #12568) (Further refactor and simplify the ConGetSet API #12703) (Merge the TerminalDispatch and AdaptDispatch classes #13024) (Stop the viewport being moved when in the alt buffer #13039) (thanks @j4james!)
• Added some missing breaks to cases in IslandWindow (add missing breaks #12926) (thanks @jmelas!)
• Added the MIT license for a few files that were missing it (Adding missed MIT license in a few files #12368) (thanks @jerry-shao!)
• Replaced sizeof with ARRAYSIZE in SystemConfigurationProvider (Replaced the sizeof parameter of the if statement with ARRAYSIZE #12273) (thanks @abdoulkkonate!)
• Use type inference throughout the project (Use type inference throughout the project #12975)
• Use memcmp for TextAttribute & TextColor comparison (Use memcmp for TextAttribute & TextColor comparison #10566) (thanks @skyline75489!)
• Thanks to @ianjoneill, @achermack, @YanceyChiew, @EmJayGee, @dmachaj, and @j4james for performing a ton of build system, code health and maintainability improvements!

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This discussion was created from the release Windows Terminal Preview v1.14.143.

[etoyz]

LOVE IT😍

[sonvoba]

Add-AppxPackage : Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80073CF3

[DHowett]

You are missing a package dependency which is documented in the release notes. :)

[sonvoba]

URL/Link to the "release notes" please (is there such a thing?)

[DHowett]

o_O This discussion is and also contains another link to the release notes..?

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/releases/tag/v1.14.1432.0

Check out the "Why are there so many packages?" detail disclosure.

[DHowett]

Honestly, your best bet given that the VC++ team will not update that redistributable is to download the "Preinstallation Kit" from here and install the vclibs package inside it that matches your architecture. Sorry that this isn't more clear.

[abdallahmansour6]

Thank you

[trueuto]

Approx three days after that release I get my app updated via Microsoft Store but its version is reported as 1.14.1451.0. It is not the first time that the app after the update has different (higher) number than release notes mention. Do you have notes for this version too? Is it now a standard process that the version available via Store is different than released here?

[zadjii-msft]

Sorry, we've been a little distracted and haven't had the chance to write the release notes for 1.14.145. 1.14.145 is different than 1.14.143, it includes a couple hotfixes to 143. Namely #13164, but there was something else IIRC.

[trueuto]

Thanks for your reply! I tried to get some info about that from commits/tags here in GitHub, but it seems that releases are in fact being prepared outside of GitHub as latest tag is 1.14.143. I have found that some information is visible under the "release-1.14" branch in the commit log (by dates), though.

[DHowett]

Ugh, I'm sorry I never uploaded 1.14.145 to the GitHub releases page. It's built off commit 997b4ac.

Releases aren't exactly prepared inside or outside GitHub in our case; the pipeline that we use to stamp out production builds runs in Azure DevOps, pulls directly from GitHub, and communicates build state back to GitHub... but tagging has historically been entirely manual, because we produce a whole bunch of intermediate builds that we don't want to clutter up the tag history with.

It's been almost entirely on me to (1) do the release engineering and (2) document the release engineering so that it is not almost entirely on me to (1) do the release engineering. 😄

[DHowett]

Boom! https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/releases/tag/v1.14.1451.0

[trueuto]

Thanks!