Making the micro editor behave like a desktop terminal in a Linux TTY

Question

Can I, through a trick or a module, make the Micro editor behave in a separate TTY as if I had started it directly from a console/terminal emulator in my desktop environment?

• micro | a modern and intuitive terminal-based text editor

Setup: Debian 12, Bash, KDE/Gnome

The core feature I'm searching for:

I just want to mark text/ part of a text using the arrow keys + Shift.

Is this possible, or is it fundamentally impossible because the Linux kernel console (e.g., tty1) does not support this?

Results I discovered:

The kernel console (TTY) does not support extended modifier sequences like Shift+arrow keys, which means it is not possible to select text using Shift+arrow keys in the Micro editor when running in the TTY.

According to the official man page console_codes(4), the Linux console implements only a subset of the VT102 and ECMA-48/ISO 6429/ANSI X3.64 terminal controls.

In particular, it lacks support for extended input sequences that are handled by modern terminal emulators like xterm. This means the console does not send escape sequences for combined keys such as Shift+arrow keys.

• linux man page for console_codes

• console_codes - Linux console escape and control sequences

• bash: Shift+arrow keys make A,B,C,D

• console_codes(4) — Linux manual page

The loadkeys keymaps use tricks to assign different sequences to function keys (F1–F12) combined with modifiers like Alt or Ctrl.

But that probably works because the kernel has explicit support for it but it looks like not for Shift+Arrow.

• keymaps (5)

From @Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' answer:

• Detecting shift + keyup/down in the terminal

Terminals don't send key up events. (Your use case doesn't require them, though, according to your description.)

Unless you can afford to require a specific terminal emulator (e.g. recent-ish xterm), don't rely on the user being able to type Shift+Up. Support an alternate method, such as a “start multiple selection” key followed by plain Up/Down

Answer 1

The Linux kernel console does not support this directly. Its arrow key handling in drivers/tty/vt/keyboard.c -> k_cur() -> applkey() does not implement outputting the xterm-style modifier sequences.

You could maybe make a custom keymap using loadkeys, where Shift+arrows were defined to send a custom string, e.g. \e[1;2D for Shift+Left. See /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/.

Answer 2

It seems it's not possible for the Micro editor, so there is no solution, because the Linux kernel console TTY does not support extended key sequences like Shift+Arrow keys.

I have linked to specific posts in the question, with further explanations.

This appears to be a hardware/kernel-level limitation, not a software problem.

It only works in a terminal emulator within a desktop environment.