Terminal open-split-* command inconsistencies

[Daeraxa]

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What happened?

Next one is a few bits of odd behaviour with the terminal commands regarding opening new ones. Thankfully this is just the commands themselves and the keybindings have nothing to do with it.

terminal:open-split-*

Starting from a normal workspace pane with a text buffer item:

• terminal:open-center - New pane item in active workspace pane ✅
• terminal:open-split-up - New pane item in active workspace (as per open-center) ❌
• terminal:open-split-down - New horizontal split pane with the terminal as an item in the lower half ✅
• terminal:open-split-left - New pane item in active workspace (as per open-center) ❌
• terminal:open-split-right - New vertical split pane with the terminal as an item on the right side ✅
• terminal:open-split-bottom-dock - Bottom dock showing with a new terminal item ✅
• terminal:open-split-left-dock - Left dock showing with a new terminal item ✅
• terminal:open-split-right-dock - Right dock showing with a new terminal item ✅

Same behaviour is seen if running from a full terminal pane item.

Starting from an empty bottom dock:

• terminal:open-center - New item in the active dock pane ✅
• terminal:open-split-up - New item in the active dock pane (as per open-center) ❌
• terminal:open-split-down - New horizontal split pane in the active dock with a terminal item ✅
• terminal:open-split-left - New item in the active dock pane (as per `open-center) ❌
• terminal:open-split-right - New vertical split pane in the active dock with a terminal item ✅
• terminal:open-split-bottom-dock - New item in the active (bottom) dock pane (as per open-center) ✅
• terminal:open-split-left-dock - Left dock showing with a new terminal item ✅
• terminal:open-split-right-dock - Right dock showing with a new terminal item ✅

Same behaviour in the other docks.

So in summary it looks like there might be something not quite right specifically with terminal:open-split-up and terminal:open-split-left.

Pulsar version

1.131.2026042102

Which OS does this happen on?

🐧 Red Hat based (Fedora, Alma, RockyLinux, CentOS Stream, etc.)

OS details

Fedora 43

Which CPU architecture are you running this on?

x86_64/AMD64

What steps are needed to reproduce this?

1. See main description, run listed commands in the indicated situations

Additional Information:

No response

[savetheclocktower]

Thanks! This one seems less fraught than some of the others, so I'll probably be able to figure it out soon. (Tempting the wrath of the gods there, but whatever.)

[savetheclocktower]

It turns out this is… intended behavior?

The direction of the command we pick influences the value of the split option that we pass to atom.workspace.open. That function's documentation describes how split works. But it might be easier to understand what's going on from the raw code comments.

You'll notice that all four possible values for split are described, but only right and down have the accompanying language: “If only one pane exists in the [row/column], a new pane will be created.” So this is purposefully how atom.workspace.open was designed to behave.

You can see this if you (for instance) create a new vertical split via terminal:open-split-down, then run terminal:open-split-up command now that focus is in the lower half of the split. It will create a new terminal in the topmost pane container in the column. It just treats top as meaning “topmost existing container” and left as meaning “leftmost existing container.”

Of course, I have no idea why it behaves this way. Commands like Pane: Split Up don't behave this way, but then they don't use atom.workspace.open; they instead call Pane APIs directly. That's not really an option for us, since we don't have a pane item to give to (e.g.) Pane::splitUp. (The Pane: Split Up command just tells it to duplicate the active item, but we're creating a new pane item, and we won't have it in our possession until we go through atom.workspace.open!)

So that means that, to the extent this behavior is surprising or wrong or disruptive, it's the fault of the main Pulsar codebase. I can't easily make this one use case work the way we want without changing the behavior of all potential usages of Workspace::open. That change still might be worth making, but it needs deliberation first.

[Daeraxa]

Glad you got to the bottom of it, if that is how it works then that is how it works, regardless of how odd that is. I certainly would normally expect that they do the same as right and done but, well, the other way.

I wonder, for the sake of confusion if nothing else (unless you can think of a valid reason to leave it as-is) we just deactivate or hide the open-split-left and open-split-up commands from the user seeing as they (correct me if I've not understood here) are functionally identical to open-center...

[savetheclocktower]

I am inclined to leave them as-is, if only because this would've worked identically in x-terminal-reloaded and users may just be used to it. Let me give it a 1.133.0 milestone (for now) and then revisit it once all the more important issues are sorted.