- Multimedia Terminal Emulator
- How It Works
- Whats Left To Do
- Supported Platforms
- Install Guide
- How To Support
The aim of this project is to provide an easy to use terminal emulator that supports inlining multimedia widgets using native code as opposed to web technologies like Electron.
Currently the project is very alpha.
The idea behind this terminal emulator is that is can be used by any $SHELL, however hooks will be built into Murex so the terminal will be instantly usable even before wider support across other shells and command line applications is adopted.
At its heart, mxtty is a regular terminal emulator. Like Kitty, iTerm2, and
PuTTY (to name a few). But where mxtty differs is that it also supports
inlining rich content. Some terminal emulators support inlining images. Others
might also allow videos. But none bar some edge case Electron terminals offer
collapsible trees for JSON printouts. Easy to navigate directory views. Nor any
other interactive elements that we have come to expect on modern user
interfaces.
The few terminal emulators that do attempt to offer this usually fail to be good, or even just compatible, with all the CLI tools that we've come to depend on.
mxtty aims to do both well. Even if you never want for any interactive
widgets, mxtty will be a good terminal emulator. And for those who want a
little more GUI in their CLI, mxtty will be a great modern user interface.
mxtty uses SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer)
which is a simple hardware-assisted multimedia library. This enables the
terminal emulator to be both performant and also cross-platform. Essentially
providing some of the conveniences that people have come to love from tools
like Electron while still offering the benefits of native code.
The multimedia and interactive components will be passed from the controlling
terminal applications via ANSI escape sequences. Before groan, yes I agree that
in-band escape sequences are a lousy way of encoding meta-information. However
to succeed at being a good terminal emulator, it needs to support some historic
design decisions no matter how archaic they might seem today. This allows
mxtty to work with existing terminal applications and for third parties to
easily add support for their applications to render rich content in mxtty
without breaking compatibility for legacy terminal emulators.
In short, a lot!! Some of what has been detailed above is still aspirational. Some of it has already been delivered but in a very alpha state. And while there is lots of error handling and unit tests, test coverage is still pretty low and exceptions will crash the terminal (quite deliberately, because I want to see where the application fails).
Below is a high level TODO list of features and compatibility. If an item is ticked but not working as expected, then please raise an issue in Github.
- C1 codes
- common: can run most CLI applications
- broad: can run older or more CLI applications
- complete: xterm compatible
- CSI codes
- common: can run most CLI applications
- broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
- complete: xterm compatible
- SGR codes
- common: can run most CLI applications
- broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
- complete: xterm compatible
- OSC codes
- common: can run most CLI applications
- broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
- complete: xterm compatible
- DCS codes
- common: can run most CLI applications
- broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
- complete: xterm compatible
- PM codes (out of scope)
- common: can run most CLI applications
- broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
- xterm compatible
- Alt character sets
- Wide characters
- vt100 (ASCII characters)
- Unicode (eg logograph-centric languages)
- Keyboard
- Ctrl modifiers
- Alt modifiers
- Shift modifiers
- special keys (eg function keys, number pad, etc)
- Mouse tracking
- common: can run most CLI applications
- broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
- complete: xterm compatible
- cursor movements
- special modes
- graphics plotting
- text rendering
eg xterm and similar terminal emulators
- titlebar can be changed
-
window can be moved and resized (WILL NOT IMPLEMENT) - window can be minimized and restored
- Hyperlink support
- Bracketed paste mode
- Inlining images
- mxtty codes
- iterm2 compatible
- sixel graphics
- ReGIS graphics
- Code folding
- alpha: available but expect changes to the API
- stable: available to use in Murex
- Table sorting
- alpha: available but expect changes to the API
- stable: available to use in Murex
- Supports
tmux- usable
- glitch-free
- Supports
vim- usable
- glitch-free
- Supports
murex- usable
- glitch-free
- Terminal can be resized
- Scrollback history
- usability hints added
- discoverability hints added
- Typeface can be changed
- Colour scheme can be changed
- Bell can be changed
- Default term size can be changed
- Default command / shell can be changed
- Supports single pane
- Supports multiple panes
- Supports multiple windows
- Hotkey passthrough
Support for the following platforms is planned:
- Linux
- tested on Arch
- tested on Ubuntu
- tested on Rocky
- BSD
- tested on FreeBSD
- tested on NetBSD
- tested on OpenBSD
- tested on DragonflyBSD
- macOS
- tested on 12.x, Monterey
- tested on 13.x, Ventura
- tested on 14.x, Sonoma
- tested on 15.x, Sequoia
- Windows
- PTY support implemented
- tested on Windows 10
- tested on Windows 11
Currently mxtty can only be compiled from source.
To do so you will need the following installed:
- C compiler (eg GNU C)
- Go compiler
- SDL libraries
- sdl2
- sdl2_ttf
- sdl2_mixer
pkg-config
Aside from that, it's as easy as running go build . from the git repository
root directory.
Regardless of your time and skill set, there are multiple ways you can support this project:
-
Contributing code: This could be bug fixes, new features, or even just correcting any typos.
-
Testing: There is a plethora of different software that needs to run inside a terminal emulator and a multitude of distinct platforms that this could run on. Any support testing
mxttywould be greatly appreciated. -
Documentation: This is possibly the hardest part of any project to get right. Eventually documentation for this will follow the same structure as Murex Rocks (albeit its own website) however, for now, any documentation written in markdown is better than none.
-
Architecture discussions: I'm always open to discussing code theory. And if it results in building a better terminal emulator, then that is a worthwhile discussion to have.
-
Porting escape codes to other applications: Currently Murex is the pioneer for supporting
mxtty-specific ANSI escape codes. However it would be good to see some of these extensions expanded out further. Maybe even to a point where this terminal emulator isn't required any more than a place to beta test future proposed escape sequences.
