ncurses is a programming library providing an application programming interface (API) that allows writing text-based user interfaces (TUI) in a computer terminal-independent manner. It is a toolkit for developing graphical user interface (GUI)-like application software that runs under a terminal emulator. It also optimizes screen changes, to reduce the latency experienced when using remote shells.
A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a command line user interface for Unix-like operating systems. The shell is both an interactive command language and a scripting language, and is used by the operating system to control the execution of the system using shell scripts.
A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a 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 computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. Most early computers only had a front panel to input or display bits and had to be connected to a terminal to print or input text through a keyboard. Teleprinters were used as early-day hard-copy terminals and predated the use of a computer screen by decades. The computer would typically transmit a line of data which would be printed on paper, and accept a line of data from a keyboard over a serial or other interface. Starting in the mid-1970s with microcomputers such as the Sphere 1, Sol-20, and Apple I, display circuitry and keyboards began to be integrated into personal and workstation computer systems, with the computer handling character generation and outputting to a CRT display such as a computer monitor or, sometimes, a consumer TV, but most larger computers continued to require terminals.
curses is a terminal control library for Unix-like systems, enabling the construction of text user interface (TUI) applications.
The archiver, also known simply as ar, is a Unix utility that maintains groups of files as a single archive file. Today, ar is generally used only to create and update static library files that the link editor or linker uses and for generating .deb packages for the Debian family; it can be used to create archives for any purpose, but has been largely replaced by tar for purposes other than static libraries. An implementation of ar is included as one of the GNU Binutils.
In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an early form of human–computer interaction, before the advent of bitmapped displays and modern conventional graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Like modern GUIs, they can use the entire screen area and may accept mouse and other inputs. They may also use color and often structure the display using box-drawing characters such as ┌ and ╣. The modern context of use is usually a terminal emulator.
Capability-based security is a concept in the design of secure computing systems, one of the existing security models. A capability is a communicable, unforgeable token of authority. It refers to a value that references an object along with an associated set of access rights. A user program on a capability-based operating system must use a capability to access an object. Capability-based security refers to the principle of designing user programs such that they directly share capabilities with each other according to the principle of least privilege, and to the operating system infrastructure necessary to make such transactions efficient and secure. Capability-based security is to be contrasted with an approach that uses traditional UNIX permissions and Access Control Lists.
In some operating systems, including Unix-like systems, a pseudoterminal, pseudotty, or PTY is a pair of pseudo-device endpoints (files) which establish asynchronous, bidirectional communication (IPC) channel between two or more processes.
A command shell is a command-line interface to interact with and manipulate a computer's operating system.
In computing, ioctl is a system call for device-specific input/output operations and other operations which cannot be expressed by regular file semantics. It takes a parameter specifying a request code; the effect of a call depends completely on the request code. Request codes are often device-specific. For instance, a CD-ROM device driver which can instruct a physical device to eject a disc would provide an ioctl request code to do so. Device-independent request codes are sometimes used to give userspace access to kernel functions which are only used by core system software or still under development.
ND-NOTIS was a office automation suite by Norsk Data introduced in the early 80s, running on the SINTRAN III platform on both ND-100 and ND-500 architectures. It was also available on Microsoft Windows running in networks of Norsk Data servers.
Kenneth Cutts Richard Cabot Arnold is an American computer programmer well known as one of the developers of the 1980s dungeon-crawling video game Rogue, for his contributions to the original Berkeley (BSD) distribution of Unix, for his books and articles about C and C++, and his high-profile work on the Java platform.
Terminfo is a library and database that enables programs to use display terminals in a device-independent manner. Mary Ann Horton implemented the first terminfo library in 1981–1982 as an improvement over termcap. The improvements include
In computing, tput is a standard Unix operating system command which makes use of terminal capabilities.
In Unix-like operating systems, a device file, device node, or special file is an interface to a device driver that appears in a file system as if it were an ordinary file. There are also special files in DOS, OS/2, and Windows. These special files allow an application program to interact with a device by using its device driver via standard input/output system calls. Using standard system calls simplifies many programming tasks, and leads to consistent user-space I/O mechanisms regardless of device features and functions.
A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with a computer program by inputting lines of text called command-lines. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternative to the non-interactive interface available with punched cards.
The POSIX terminal interface is the generalized abstraction, comprising both an application programming interface for programs, and a set of behavioural expectations for users of a terminal, as defined by the POSIX standard and the Single Unix Specification. It is a historical development from the terminal interfaces of BSD version 4 and Seventh Edition Unix.
In computing and telecommunications, the capabilities of a terminal are various terminal features, above and beyond what is available from a pure teletypewriter, that host systems can make use of. They are (mainly) of control codes and escape codes that can be sent to or received from the terminal. The escape codes sent to the terminal perform various functions that a CRT terminal is capable of, but that a teletypewriter is not; such as moving the terminal's cursor to positions on the screen, clearing and scrolling all or parts of the screen, turning on and off attached printer devices, programming programmable function keys, changing display colours and attributes, and setting display title strings. The escape codes received from the terminal signify things such as function key, arrow key, and other special key keystrokes.
cat is a standard Unix utility that reads files sequentially, writing them to standard output. The name is derived from its function to (con)catenate files . It has been ported to a number of operating systems.
