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LCXterm - Linux Console X-like Terminal

WHAT IS LCXTERM?

LCXterm is a ncurses-based terminal emulator that brings additional conveniences to the raw Linux console and other terminal emulators. LCXterm is intended to act like an insertable component between the user's normal terminal and a shell, and generally stay out of the way otherwise until a feature is needed.

LCXterm can add the following features to your terminal:

  • For raw Linux console, LCXterm can enable you to use GPM mouse through a network connection (ssh/telnet/etc), by converting GPM mouse events into X10 mouse protocol. (This feature also works in "passthru" mode, see below.)

  • Significantly faster processing and display. LCXterm detects console floods and limits display refreshes, commonly resulting in 10-20x speedup compared to raw Linux console and some X terminals.

  • Arbitrarily long searchable scrollback, which can also be saved to file. Bytes can be saved as UTF-8 text or HTML with color. For the raw Linux console, this means having a scrollback that is not lost when switching virtual terminals.

  • File transfers via the Xmodem, Ymodem, Zmodem, and Kermit protocols. (In passthru mode, uploads are not available, however Zmodem and Kermit downloads can autostart.)

  • Session capture to file. (This feature also works in passthru.)

  • User-definable keyboard macros for function keys, arrow keys, Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn, etc.

  • vttest-passing terminal emulation for VT100, VT102, VT220, Linux, and Xterm.

  • The ability to spawn a local shell.

Since LCXterm uses ncurses for its display, it may lack features that you need. Passthru mode is a compromise: LCXterm sends data unaltered between the terminal and shell, so you can use all of the features of your terminal, but it still monitors the stream so that it can provide session capture, GPM mouse conversion, and Zmodem and Kermit autostart downloads.

The LCXterm homepage, which includes additional information and binary release downloads, is at: https://lcxterm.sourceforge.io . The LCXterm source code is hosted at: https://codeberg.org/AutumnMeowMeow/lcxterm .

SCREENSHOTS

See here for several images and videos of LCXterm in action.

To the extent possible under law, the author(s) of LCXterm have dedicated all copyright and related and neighboring rights to LCXterm to the public domain worldwide. This software is distributed without any warranty. The COPYING file describes this intent, and provides a public license fallback for those jurisdictions that do not recognize the public domain.

Anyone is free to see and modify the source code and release new versions under whatever license terms they wish.

LCXterm includes a UTF-8 decoding function in codepage.c, which is available under the MIT license. The combined license terms for the complete LCXterm executable is effectively the same as the MIT license: attribution in the source, source is not required to be shared, and there is no warranty.

BUILDING LCXTERM

LCXterm can be built in several ways:

  • An autoconf build is available: use configure ; make .

  • A very simple barebones build is also provided via make -f build/Makefile.generic.

  • A Debian packages for lcxterm is available in the build/deb directory.

  • An RPM spec file for lcxterm is available in the build/rpm directory.

The INSTALL file has some additional details.

HOW TO USE LCXTERM

LCXterm is driven by the keyboard. It will listen for mouse events, but only to send those to remote systems using the XTERM (default) or X_8BIT emulations.

LCXterm normally exits when the shell exits. It can be exited explicitly by the Alt-H kill shell command.

Nearly all of the time pressing the ESCAPE key or the backtick (`) will exit a dialog.

Use 'lcxterm -p' or 'lcxterm --passthru' to use passthru mode.

Press Alt-Z to see the commands menu.

TERMINAL EMULATION LIMITATIONS

This section describes known missing features in a LCXterm emulation.

XTERM (and X_8BIT) recognizes only a few more features than LINUX and VT220. It does not support most of the advanced features unique to XTerm such as Tektronix 4014 mode, alternate screen buffer, and many more. It is intended to support XTerm applications that only use the sequences in the 'xterm' terminfo entry.

24-bit RGB color (sometimes called "direct" or "truecolor") is supported on terminals for which ncurses detects such support. For terminals that do not support it, LCXterm matches to the nearest CGA 16-color palette color.

The following features are not supported in the VT100/VT220 feature set: smooth scrolling, printing, keyboard locking, tests, user-defined keys (DECUDK), downloadable fonts (DECDLD), VT100/ANSI compatibility mode (DECSCL). (Also, because the VT220/XTERM emulation does not support DEC VT100/ANSI mode, it will fail the last part of the vttest "Test of VT52 mode".) The unsupported commands are parsed to keep a clean display, but not used otherwise.

132-column mode is supported only within consoles/emulators that have 132 (or more) columns available. For instance, 132-column output on a 128-column Linux console screen will result in incorrect behavior.

Numeric/application keypad modes do not work well. This is due to the host console translating the numeric keypad keys on its own before sending the keystroke to the (n)curses library. For example, the Linux console will transmit the code corresponding to KEY_END when the number pad "1 key" is pressed if NUMLOCK is off; if NUMLOCK is on the console will transmit a "1" when the "1 key" is pressed. LCXterm thus never actually sees the curses KEY_C1 code that would instruct LCXterm to transmit the appropriate string to the host system. The only key that appears to work right on most consoles is the number pad "5 key" (KEY_B2).

VT52 HOLD SCREEN mode is not supported.

In VT52 graphics mode, the 3/, 5/, and 7/ characters (fraction numerators) are not rendered correctly.

All data meant for the 'printer' (CSI Pc ? i) is quietly discarded.

FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL LIMITATIONS

This section describes known issues in the LCXterm serial file transfer protocols.

ASCII uploads may hang if the remote end can't keep up. For instance, using 'vi' to create a large file and ASCII uploading the contents may hang after a few kilobytes. 'cat > filename' usually works fine.

ASCII downloads will process the TAB character (0x09) as a control character, causing it to expand to the appropriate number of spaces.

On Ymodem downloads, if the file exists it will be appended to.

Xmodem and Ymodem downloads from hosts that use the rzsz package might need to have stderr redirected to work correctly, for example 'sb filename 2>/dev/null' .

Kermit receive mode by default handles file collisions by saving to a new file (SET FILE COLLISION RENAME / WARN file access Attribute). It supports the APPEND file access Attribute but disregards the SUPERSEDE file access Attribute.

When sending files via Zmodem to HyperTerminal, if the HyperTerminal user clicks "Skip file" then the transfer will stall. This appears to be due to two separate bugs in HyperTerminal: 1) When the user clicks "Skip File", HyperTerminal sends a ZRPOS with position==file size, LCXterm responds by terminating the data subpacket with ZCRCW, which HyperTerminal responds to with ZACK, however the ZACK contains an invalid file position. 2) LCXterm ignores bug #1 and sends ZEOF, to which HyperTerminal is supposed to respond with ZRINIT, however HyperTerminal hangs presumably because it is expecting the ZEOF to contain a particular file position, however the position it desires is neither the true file size nor the value it returned in the ZACK.

TROUBLESHOOTING / WORKAROUNDS

Sometimes LCXterm can't behave like a real hardware or X11-based terminal. This section describes those things, and some of the workarounds that might help.

LCXterm requires a Unicode-capable Linux console or X emulator to look right. For the Linux console, the default settings for most Linux distributions should work well. Under X11, xterm, rxvt-unicode, and Konsole work well.

The backspace key is always mapped to DEL (0x7F) in VT220 emulation to match the keyboard of a real VT220. You can send a true backspace (0x08, ^H) by pressing Alt-\ 0 0 8 to use the Alt Code Key feature to send backspace.

Function keys beyond F4 in VT100/VT102 emulation may not work as expected. LCXterm uses a common convention that F5 is "{ESC} O t", F6 is "{ESC} O u", etc. Some programs understand this convention. Those that don't will usually understand "{ESC} {number}", where {number} is a number from 5 to 0, to mean F5 through F10. You can get this effect in LCXterm by typing ESC {number}, or by switching to Doorway Mode and typing Alt-{number} (or Meta-{number}).

In VT100, VT102, and LINUX emulations, some programs (like minicom and Midnight Commander) send the DECCOLM sequence ({ESC} [ ? 3 l ) when exiting, putting the emulation into 80-column mode. Resetting the emulation via Alt-G {pick emulation} {enter 'y'} will restore the default right margin.

Malformed escape sequences might "freeze" the emulation. (For example, receiving a 0x90 character causes VT102 to look for a DCS sequence. If the DCS sequence is not properly terminated the emulation won't recover.) Resetting the current emulation will restore the console function.

KEY_SUSPEND is usually mapped to Ctrl-Z and used to suspend the local program ('lcxterm'). If LCXterm sees KEY_SUSPEND it will assume the user typed Ctrl-Z and meant to pass that to the remote side.

DOCUMENTATION

LCXterm has two sources of documentation:

  • This README.

  • The lcxterm man page.

OTHER PROJECTS

Users of LCXterm might be interested in these other projects:

Source: README.md, updated 2025-04-05