Dear members of the Debian community, I am currently on the lookout for a terminal emulator on Debian that can handle controlled printing from a remote server often referred to as "passthrough" printing. Our specific requirement is the ability to select the printing device using a specific method, either the physical COM port or the virtual COM port (emulated by a USB device).
To be more precise, we want the terminal emulator to transmit data exactly as it is received from a remote server (which is a Linux server) when it attempts to print data through a set of escape sequences to send text in transparent mode. This transmission should be directed to the COM device without any modifications. We have noticed that PuTTY allows "passthrough" printing but unfortunately, it only works unidirectionally and requires the use of a serial software printer which also supports only unidirectional flow. While PuTTY can manage connections to devices via the serial port bidirectionally, it does not provide a solution to manage "passthrough" printing directly to the COM port. This configuration is described in the PuTTY documentation (https://documentation.help/PuTTY/config-printing.html). Our application runs on Linux and needs to communicate with a specialized serial printer by sending data directly to it through a terminal emulator on a client machine (with the printer connected to the client machine's serial port). The purpose of my request is to explore the possibility of moving away from a third-party terminal emulator that runs on Windows and is compatible with somewhat older hardware and operating systems. I have conducted research within the list of available emulators on Debian but have not yet found a solution that meets our requirements. Therefore, I am reaching out to seek your assistance and suggestions. I have tried Tera Term (https://osdn.net/projects/ttssh2/releases/) but it does not offer the desired functionality. If you have any ideas or recommendations for a Debian terminal emulator capable of bidirectional "passthrough" printing, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you. Thank you in advance for your assistance and valuable suggestions. Best regards, Thierry
