On Mon, 2014-08-18 at 12:58 +0200, Claudio wrote: > AFAIK a terminal is an hardware device. Since st is only a software > implementation it's ok to call it a virtual terminal emulator, isn't? >
A virtual terminal presents the kernel the capabilities of a physical terminal (eg, /dev/tty3 or /dev/pts/1). A terminal emulator attaches input and output to a virtual terminal (though these programs are often called "virtual terminals" as well). A "virtual terminal emulator" would either be a virtual (terminal emulator) or a (virtual terminal) emulator. In the first case, it would be something like an expect script that makes a guest program think it is running in a terminal emulator. In the second case, it would be some sort of environment that, for instance, intercepted i/o to /dev/pts/* and mangled it somehow. The point is, st could be called a terminal emulator, or (somewhat more loosely) a virtual terminal, but it's not a virtual terminal emulator outside of the Department of Redundancy Department. WG
