[ale] Rolling your own terminal emulator

[Greg Freemyer]

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