Software terminal emulation under the X Window System
The graphical user interfaces of most
Linux and
Unix operating environments are built on the
foundation of the X Window System, an open technology developed by a
consortium of vendors and educational institutions and now administered by
the X.Org section of the X/Open Group.
The basic xterm application of the
X Window System does a decent emulation of a
DEC VT102, and most variants can also emulate the
Tektronix 4014 for vector-graphics display.
As with most
Unix things, basic documentation on xterm may be
viewed by typing "man xterm" at the shell prompt
(or look
here).
Thomas Dickey
has enhanced the original concept with
an xterm version
that supports ANSI/ISO color (including background-color erase)
and most functions of the DEC VT220 terminal except for a handful
(DECSTR, the KAM and SRM modes, the ones pertaining the doublesize
and soft characters, and, of course, blink).
With the usual distributed xterm code, if you want
such amenities as
scrollbars for the window, you'll have to add
some options
into your ~/.Xdefaults file. Also, I've found that some
users are unaware of the menu for selecting the screen font, which
you can invoke by holding down the Control key and depressing the
right mouse button (with the mouse cursor in the xterm window).
Even if you using some other X-Windows-based terminal emulator, such as
rxvt or Eterm, to enjoy the fullest set of features
(such as color text), you may need to get and install Eric Raymond's
global master terminfo database.
Instructions for using the DEC VXT 2000 windowing terminal may be found
in the "system management" section of the on-line documentation (VAX
CD-ROM 1 of 3) available at
Acorn Software's site.
Alas, in 2005 Network Computing Devices (NCD, the well known Xterminal vendor)
went out of business.
Some former employees set up a new company,
Thin Path Systems, to carry on.
Axel, Inc. introduced during 2003 the
AX3000/75E terminal,
which supports the multiplatform
VNC X11-based remote graphics protocol, in addition to
MS-RDP and IBM 5250/3270.
Beam Ltd. (XVIL X server software for visually impaired, etc.)
Powerlan-USA,
selling the eXodus X server with
Tektronix and ReGIS graphics.
(This vendor, formerly the Connectivity division of
White Pine, also sells
WebTerm-X: a product for using X applications from a
Web Browser, and
Tunnel-Mate, for secure X sessions across the Internet.)
Pexus Systems (X-Deep/32 for Windows 95/98 and NT/2000, under $60)
StarNet Communications Corp. (Micro-X: DOS, Win32)
Starnet offers
X-Win32 LX (which lets you run X applications locally on
your Windows machine) for free.
The miscellaneous information page covers many issues somehow related
to information display, including character sets, fonts, codes, HTML,
XML, Postscript, printing, data representation, and image conversion.
