terminology - Why are things like Gnome Terminal called "Terminal Emulators" instead of just "Terminals"?
What are they emulating that keeps them from just being terminals? What does a plain-old "terminal" look like, if they are just emulators?
Answer
A terminal is the end of a line. So, back in the day when the computer was a mainframe serving many user accounts, what you'd be sitting at with your keyboard and display would be a terminal.
A terminal emulator is when you're using a computer (a Turing machine) to provide the function of a terminal in software. This usage would typically come up because the computer would be 'imitating' a particular type of terminal in order to communicate with the mainframe.
A very popular terminal is/was the VT100. So if I telnet right now to the server of the local Freenet (if they still exist) I'd be using VT100 emulation.
Source and more explanations are in Terminal or terminal emulator?.
Comments
Post a Comment