A terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a video terminal within some

other display architecture. Though ty pically synonymous with a command line shell or text terminal, the term terminal covers all remote terminals, including graphical interfaces. A terminal emulato r inside a graphical user interface is often called a terminal window. A terminal window allows the user access to a text terminal and all its applicat ions such as command line interfaces (CLI) and text user interface applications. These may be running either on the same machine or on a different one via telne t, ssh, or dial-up. On Unix-like operating systems it is common to have one or m ore terminal windows connected to the local machine. Terminals usually support a set of escape sequences for controlling color, curso r position, etc. Examples include the family of terminal control sequence standa rds known as ECMA-48, ANSI X3.64 or ISO/IEC 6429. Early adopters of computer technology, such as banks, insurance companies, and g overnments, still make frequent use of terminal emulators. They typically have d ecades-old applications running on mainframe computers. The old "dumb" video ter minals used to access the mainframe are long since obsolete; however, applicatio ns on the mainframe are still in use. Quite often, terminal emulators are the on ly way to access applications running on these older machines. Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Local echo Line-at-a-time mode/Local editing Synchronous terminals Examples of terminals emulated See also Notes References External links

Local echo Main article: echo (computing)#Terminal emulators Terminal emulators may implement a local echo function, which they may erroneous ly name "half-duplex" (Half-duplex is different altogether), or still slightly i ncorrectly "echoplex" (which is formally an error detection mechanism rather tha n an input display option).[1][2][3][4] For details of the local echo control me chanisms of terminal emulators, see the main article. Line-at-a-time mode/Local editing Main article: terminal (telecommunication)#Modes Terminal emulators may implement local editing, also known as "line-at-a-time mo de". This is also mistakenly referred to as "half-duplex". In this mode, the ter minal emulator only sends complete lines of input to the host system. The user e nters and edits a line, but it is held locally within the terminal emulator as i t is being edited and not transmitted until the user signals (usually with the ? Enter key on the keyboard or a "send" button of some sort on the user interface ) the completion of the line. At that point the entire line is transmitted. Of c ourse, line-at-a-time mode implies local echo, since otherwise the user will not be able to see the line as it is being edited and constructed.[1][5] However, l ine-at-a-time mode is independent of echo mode and does not require local echo. When entering a password, for example, line-at-a-time entry with local editing i s possible, but local echo is turned off (otherwise the password would be displa yed).[6] The complexities of line-at-a-time mode are exemplified by the line-at-a-time mo de option in the TELNET protocol. To implement it correctly, the Network Virtual

Terminal implementation provided by the terminal emulator program must be capab le of recognizing and properly dealing with "interrupt" and "abort" events that arrive in the middle of locally editing a line.[7] Synchronous terminals This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifyi ng the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. (January 2011) In asynchronous terminals data can flow in any direction at any time. In synchro nous terminals a protocol controls who may send data when. IBM 3270-based termin als used with IBM mainframe computers are an example of synchronous terminals. T hey operate in an essentially "screen-at-a-time" mode (also known as block mode) . Users can make numerous changes to a page, before submitting the updated scree n to the remote machine as a single action. Terminal emulators that simulate the 3270 protocol are available for most operat ing systems, for use both by those administering systems such as the z9, as well as those using the corresponding applications such as CICS. Other examples of synchronous terminals include the IBM 5250, ICL 7561, Honeywel l Bull VIP7800 and Hewlett-Packard 700/92. Examples of terminals emulated Many terminal emulators have been developed for terminals such as VT100, VT220, VT320, IBM 3270/8/9/E, IBM 5250, IBM 3179G, Data General D211, Hewlett Packard H P700/92, Sperry/Unisys 2000-series UTS60, Burroughs/Unisys A-series T27/TD830/ET 1100, ADDS ViewPoint, Sun console, QNX, AT386, SCO-ANSI, SNI 97801, Televideo, a nd Wyse 50/60. Additionally, programs have been developed to emulate other termi nal emulators such as xterm and assorted console terminals (e.g., for Linux). Fi nally, some emulations simply refer to a standard, such as ANSI. Such programs a re available on many platforms ranging from DOS and Unix to GUI operating system s such as Windows and Macintosh, to embedded operating systems found in cellphon es and industrial hardware. See also Binary Synchronous Communications List of terminal emulators Online service provider Serial interface Notes ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ a b Daintith 2004, p. 171. Weik 2000, "echo" p. 478. Weik 2000, "echoplex" p.479. Weik 2000, "echoplex mode" p. 479. Bangia 2010, p. 324. Stevens & Wright 1994, p. 413. Miller 2009, p. 590, 591.

References Bangia, Ramesh (2010). "line mode terminal". Dictionary of Information Techn ology. Laxmi Publications, Ltd. ISBN 978-93-8029-815-3. Daintith, John (2004). "echo". Oxford dictionary of computing (5th ed.). Oxf ord University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-860877-6. Miller, Philip M. (2009). TCP/IP The Ultimate Protocol Guide. 2 Applications , Access and Data Security. Universal-Publishers. ISBN 978-1-59942-493-4. Stevens, W. Richard; Wright, Gary R. (1994). TCP/IP illustrated. Addison-Wes ley professional computing series. 1: The protocols. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-

201-63346-7. Weik, Martin H. (2000). Computer Science and Communications Dictionary. 1. S pringer. ISBN 978-0-7923-8425-0.