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A terminal emulator, '''terminal application''', '''term''', or '''tty''' for short, is a program that emulates a "dumb" video Terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a command line Shell or Text Terminal , the term ''terminal'' covers all remote terminals, including graphical interfaces. A terminal emulator 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 applications such as Command Line Interface s (CLI) and Text User Interface applications. These may be running either on the same machine or on a different one via Telnet , Ssh , or Dial-up . On Unix-like operating systems it is common to have one or more terminal windows connected to the local machine. Terminals usually support a set of Escape Sequences for controlling color, Cursor position, etc. Examples include the family of terminal control sequence standards known as ECMA-48 , ANSI X3.64 or ISO/IEC 6429 . , a popular terminal emulator designed for X11 .]] Early adopters of Computer technology, such as banks, insurance companies, and governments, still make frequent use of terminal emulators. They typically have decades old applications running on Mainframe Computer s. The old “dumb” video terminals used to access the mainframe are long since obsolete; however, applications on the mainframe are still in use. Quite often, terminal emulators are the only way a user can access applications running on these older machines. RAW AND COOKED INPUT/OUTPUT On Unix-like systems, at the level of the terminal or terminal emulator an individual keypress sends an individual code from the character set in use. Also, when it wants a new line. Also, text typed is echoed back to the user. When a program is started, terminal is generally in Cooked Mode which allows easy input and output of text, but applications that want more control will often put the terminal into Raw Mode , or a slightly more processed Rare Mode . The individual characteristics of cooked mode can be turned on and off individually which may be needed for certain applications. SYNCHRONOUS TERMINALS The 3270 -based terminals used with IBM Mainframe Computer s are an example of synchronous terminals. They operate in an essentially "screen-at-a-time" mode. Users can make numerous changes to a page, before submitting the updated screen to the remote machine as a single action. This paradigm can be surprising to those used to the more common asynchronous terminal behaviour, though in fact it is conceptually quite similar to the submission of HTTP Form s on the Web . Terminal emulators that simulate the original 3270 hardware terminal are available for most operating systems, for use both by those administering systems such as the Z9 , as well as those using the corresponding applications such as CICS . EXAMPLES OF TERMINAL EMULATORS
The ubiquitous terminal window is used for both local and remote access; where the connection goes is not the business of the terminal emulator itself, it just communicates through a Pseudo Terminal interface. Apple Computer ships Terminal with Mac OS X as its default terminal emulator. Many different terminal emulators are available for the X Window System , such as Xterm , Dtterm , Eterm , GNOME Terminal , Konsole , Rxvt , Mrxvt , Wterm , SwitchTerm , TeemTalk and Aterm . SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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