What is the problem this feature will solve?
Prevent extremely jarring terminal menu behaviour in contexts where "esc" is expected to immediately trigger exit behaviour, whether that's popping up a prompt or invoking process.exit (i.e. almost every terminal menu presented to users).
Especially in combination with input overloading so that "esc", "q", and "ctrl-x" all do the same thing, the fact that everything except escape is instant leads to an incredibly bad user experience.
What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?
Add a function to stdin that lets users explicitly set the escape timeout for that input. E.g. stdin.setEscapeTimeout(0)
What alternatives have you considered?
Two alternatives, neither good:
- use a custom ReadLine interface with the
escapeCodeTimeout value set to zero. This is a hack for any code where "lines" don't mean anything, e.g. terminal menu navigation that relies on direct keyboard input rather than "text input where the user sees what they're typing and signals they are finished via newline".
- use a separate
stdin.on(`data`, (d) => d.length === 1 && d[0] === 0x1b && process.exit()) event handler on top of keypress monitoring, just so we don't get stuck in whatever code path enforces the 500ms delay before sending "esc" on as keypress event. This works "great", but is obviously also a hack: one should not need "not a keypress listener" just to smooth over a problem with "keypress" =)
What is the problem this feature will solve?
Prevent extremely jarring terminal menu behaviour in contexts where "esc" is expected to immediately trigger exit behaviour, whether that's popping up a prompt or invoking process.exit (i.e. almost every terminal menu presented to users).
Especially in combination with input overloading so that "esc", "q", and "ctrl-x" all do the same thing, the fact that everything except escape is instant leads to an incredibly bad user experience.
What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?
Add a function to
stdinthat lets users explicitly set the escape timeout for that input. E.g.stdin.setEscapeTimeout(0)What alternatives have you considered?
Two alternatives, neither good:
escapeCodeTimeoutvalue set to zero. This is a hack for any code where "lines" don't mean anything, e.g. terminal menu navigation that relies on direct keyboard input rather than "text input where the user sees what they're typing and signals they are finished via newline".stdin.on(`data`, (d) => d.length === 1 && d[0] === 0x1b && process.exit())event handler on top of keypress monitoring, just so we don't get stuck in whatever code path enforces the 500ms delay before sending "esc" on as keypress event. This works "great", but is obviously also a hack: one should not need "not a keypress listener" just to smooth over a problem with "keypress" =)