xterm

Not to be confused with X terminal display hardware.

xterm

A sample xterm, running the Bash shell, showing a listing of /etc.
Original author(s)	Mark Vandevoorde
Developer(s)	Thomas Dickey
Initial release	1984 (1984)
Stable release	Patch #322 / January 2, 2016 (2016-01-02)
Operating system	X Window System
Type	Terminal emulator
License	MIT/X Consortium License
Website	invisible-island.net/xterm/

In computing, xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System. A user can have many different invocations of xterm running at once on the same display, each of which provides independent input/output for the process running in it (normally the process is a Unix shell).

xterm originated prior to the X Window System. It was originally written as a stand-alone terminal emulator for the VAXStation 100 (VS100) by Mark Vandevoorde, a student of Jim Gettys, in the summer of 1984, when work on X started. It rapidly became clear that it would be more useful as part of X than as a standalone program, so it was retargeted to X. As Gettys tells the story, "part of why xterm's internals are so horrifying is that it was originally intended that a single process be able to drive multiple VS100 displays."

After many years as part of the X reference implementation, around 1996 the main line of development then shifted to XFree86 (which itself forked from X11R6.3), and it is now actively maintained by Thomas Dickey.

Many xterm variants are also available. Most terminal emulators for X started as variations on xterm.

It emulates the VT220 and Tektronix 4010, and has experimental support for ReGIS.

Customization

As with most X applications, xterm can be customized via global X resources file (e.g. /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm), per-user resource files (e.g. ~/XTerm; ~/.Xresources) or command-line arguments. Most of the command-line options correspond to resource settings, as noted in the manual page.

While the name of the program is xterm, the X resource class is XTerm. The uxterm script overrides this, using the UXTerm resource class.

File:XtermMenus.png

Example showing xterm's toolbar.

xterm normally does not have a menu bar. To access xterm's three menus, users hold the control key and press the left, middle, or right mouse button. Support for a "toolbar" can be compiled-in, which invokes the same menus.

Protocols

xterm added a few protocols that have been adapted by other terminal emulators, such as xterm mouse tracking and the xterm 256 colors protocol.

Chart of the 256 colors available in an xterm with color support. Xterm color numbers and RGB values are shown for each.

See also

• Comparison of terminal emulators
• Vttest, vt100/vt220/xterm test utility
• luit, a character set converter invoked automatically by xterm when necessary

External links

• Project home page
• Xterm manual
• Xterm Control Sequences

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.