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Text-Terminal-HOWTO
v1.43 March 2013
This document was originally written for real text terminals which were
like monitors (with keyboards), but could only display text with a command
line interface (no pictures). They were widely used to access mainframe
computers in the late 1970's and 1980's but use of them declined in the
1990's and they are seldom used anymore. However much of this howto
also applies to command-line interfaces on Linux PC's which are in wide
use today. It's not about the user programs one might run on the
command line, but about setting up, managing, and understanding the
interface itself Such as using a monitor as a virtual (text-only)
console, using a text-window in a GUI such as xterm, connecting to a
remote computer over a network via ssh, telnet, etc., or even using
software on another PC to turn it into a serial-port text-terminal. All
these 4 methods are known as "text-terminal emulation".
But unfortunately, the main emphasis in this howto is real text
terminals and the coverage of emulation is inadequate for the first 3
methods of emulation mentioned above. The Keyboard-and-Console-HOWTO
filled much this gap but it was written for Linux 2.0 and now needs
rewriting (or merging into this Text-Terminal howto). A new author is
needed that has time to do all this.
For the seldom used real text-terminals, it explains how they work, explains how
to install and configure them, and provides some info on how to repair
them. This HOWTO also provides a brief overview of modern GUI
terminals.
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