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Set-PSReadLineOption BellStyle should have an option for an actual ASCII 7 bell

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#4,766 1 comment 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
csharp, powershell
Domain
cli

Research direction

Start by locating Set-PSReadLineOption BellStyle and the existing Audible, Visual, and None handling. Review the linked Windows Terminal bell-style documentation alongside the current behavior. Done should include a selectable style that emits an ASCII 0x07 bell and a clear decision about the proposed default change.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Issue-Enhancement Needs-Triage :mag:
Prerequisites
  • Write a descriptive title.
Description of the new feature/enhancement

Hello,

I just realized this today but, even in the latest PSReadLine 2.3.6 when I configure the "Bell notification style" in Windows Terminal to, for example, ["window", "taskbar"] (briefly flash the console screen + taskbar icon) instead of audible (make the irritating pcspeaker noise) PSReadLine does not honor this setting - it still makes a sharp blip-like sound. I'm guessing PSReadLine does not emit an actual ASCII 0x7 BELL but rather implements its own sound playback.

This is very bad because:

  1. For the user it is unexpected behavior for a program emitting a BELL to not adhere to the terminals configured treatment of BELL signals
  2. PSReadLines only BELL configuration options are "Audible" (default), "Visual" and "None" but the hosting terminal application can have more abilities to indicate a BELL
  3. PSReadLine in practice really only has "Audible" and "None" as BellStyles because, at least on my machine, "Visual" does absolutely nothing making it equivalent to "None"
  4. Whatever custom BELL implementation PSReadLine has, it's got to be more lines of code than putchar(7); arguably making it a code smell and unnecessary bloat?
Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

I propose to add a BellStyle option that just makes PSReadLine, well, emit an actual 0x07 BELL. Also, I would very much like for this BellStyle (call it -BellStyle ASCIIBell or whatever) to be the new default BellStyle. Users who unironically prefer the eardrum-shattering, high-pitched blip of the current implementation can always change it back to Audible.

EDIT: Link to Windows Terminal BELL style configuration docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-advanced#bell-notification-style

Dominant language
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