Mike, I've just realized what Total Commander does right about that whole "command line at the bottom" thing. I knew something was feeling a tiny bit off in Files, like it was almost there but a bit more cumbersome than it should
So, in TC you have this routing to terminal enabled as well, but as soon as you type anything, the focus actually switches to the bottom terminal first and your character gets typed in. From now on you're able to use the terminal in all its glory: arrow keys move cursor, shift+arrows select pieces of text, you can copy, paste etc. Awesome.
If you want to move the cursor back to the file panels, you can press either:
* up/down arrow - keeps the content of the terminal
* esc - clears the bottom terminal
Regardless of whether you have focused terminal or the file panel:
* ctrl+enter - inserts the name of the file pointed in currently selected panel at the cursor point at the bottom terminal
* ctrl+shift+enter - inserts the full path to the file
It's all quite clever, because there's no confusion where the input is going. You either have the focus on the panels or on the command line. The trick is that when you press "a" for example, the focus is first quickly shifted to the command line and then "a" gets typed.