[ale] Rolling your own terminal emulator

[Bob Toxen]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 11:34:13PM -0400, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> RFC's on emulation.
> You'll also need an understanding of the UNIX tty system.
Oh, and if you're emulating more than straight text this will be a lot
of work, days, weeks, or months.

Bob Toxen
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> On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 20:26, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> > On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 15:38:36 -0400 (EDT), John Wells
> > <lists at sourceillustrated.com> wrote:
> > > Guys,
> > > 
> > > We have a need to heavily modify a java terminal emulator.  While I
> > > understand the GUI-specific code itself very well, I need to gain a better
> > > understanding of the terminal code.
> > > 
> > > I'm looking for a tutorial/document/book/site that describes how to write
> > > a simple (or optionally complex) terminal emulator.  I understand it's
> > > really just buffering input, sending across the wire, echoing characters
> > > properly, etc, but there's also control characters to handle, positions to
> > > write on the screen, and other items that are a bit more obscure as far as
> > > I know.
> > > 
> > > If you were to write your own terminal emulator, where would you begin?
> > > What are the steps to terminal enlightenment?
> > > 
> > > Thanks for the help, as always.
> > > 
> > > John
> > > 
> > The biggest issue I have seen is whether you need a page-based
> > terminal function, or normal interactive function.
> > 
> > The page-based (ie. 3270) are pretty poorly done, and very
> > difficult/expensive, from what I have seen.
> > 
> > If you just need VT100 like functionality (without its page mode), you
> > should be able to find multiple to work with.  Is putty too complex? 
> > I think it has a pretty liberal license, but I;ve forgotten what it
> > is.
> > 
> > Greg