Programming

I wanna write a terminal emulator program from scratch. I downloaded the sources of xterm but they are too complex...
I did not found any documentation on the Internet, so I asking you where I have to start.

I learnt only C, and I have the basics of GTK library.

Thanks for any reply.

You might want to break that big project into a bunch of smaller parts, or you'll never know where to begin!

Since you'll need to build around virtual terminals in any case that's where I'd start, get virtual terminals working with no GUI element at all then build on it from there.

Have a look at the source code for Kermit 95. It contains a nice terminal emulator which supports over 40 emulations and is fairly easy to understand.

Thanks for the answers.
I wanna write a basic terminal emulator: no color, no bold, no double-width.
I wanna wrote the terminal emulator only for learning propouses!

I'm using KERMIT (the dos version), but I'd prefere to the /dev/pts/x files, just like a basic version of the gnome-terminal.

Thanks for the link, Corona688. The file is really useful! But i have a problem! I compiled with 'gcc -o vterm vterm.c' but there are some errors!

Code:

> gcc -o vtterm vterm.c 
vterm.c: In function ‘system_noshell’:
vterm.c:162: warning: passing argument 2 of ‘execvp’ from incompatible pointer type
/usr/include/unistd.h:545: note: expected ‘char * const*’ but argument is of type ‘const char **’
/tmp/ccMAPeR5.o: In function `main':
vterm.c:(.text+0x257): undefined reference to `login_tty'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
>

Thanks for any help

PS: I started learning the FLTK toolkit! It may be useful!

From man login_tty:

Code:

...
       Link with -lutil.
...

And from the source code, above login_tty:

Code:

                // This function needs compilation with -lutil

Thanks!

This is a very interesting post. I want to do a similar project but have discovered documentation on the subject is either too limited or much too complex for someone not so experienced with c++.

Corona688, your input was especially helpful. I wonder whether you could breakdown the steps you highlighted or give reference documentation (beginner friendly) for the different categories you mentioned. Apparently this is not a going to be a simple undertaking as I had hoped.