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<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
type="guide" style="task"
id="overview">
<info>
<revision version="0.1" date="2013-01-10" status="draft"/>
<link type="guide" xref="index"/>
<credit type="author copyright">
<name>Sindhu S</name>
<email>sindhus@live.in</email>
<years>2013</years>
</credit>
<credit type="copyright editor">
<name>Ekaterina Gerasimova</name>
<email>kittykat3756@gmail.com</email>
<years>2013</years>
</credit>
<include href="legal.xml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
<desc>What is a terminal?</desc>
</info>
<title>Overview of a terminal</title>
<p><app>Terminal</app> is a terminal program for <gui>GNOME</gui>. The
following terms and their descriptions will help you to be familiar with
<app>Terminal</app> and its capabilities.</p>
<terms>
<item>
<title>A terminal</title>
<p>A terminal is a text input point in a computer that is also called
the Command Line Interface (CLI).</p>
</item>
<item>
<title>Physical terminals</title>
<p>IBM 3270, VT100 and many others are hardware terminals that are no
longer produced as physical devices. To emulate these terminals, there are
terminal emulators.</p>
</item>
<item>
<title>Terminal emulators</title>
<p>Emulation is the ability of a computer program to imitate another
program or device.</p>
<p>A terminal emulator, also called tty, is a software program that emulates
a video terminal in modern computers that use graphical user interfaces
and provide interactive access to applications that run only in the
command line environments. These applications may be running either on the
same machine or on a different one via <app>telnet</app>, <app>ssh</app>,
or <app>dial-up</app>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<title>VTE</title>
<p>Virtual Terminal Environment (VTE) is a terminal emulator which
emulates a text terminal inside a graphical user interface (GUI)
environment. <app>Terminal</app> is largely based on the <app>VTE</app>.
<app>VTE</app> has widgets that implement a fully functional terminal
emulator.</p>
</item>
<item>
<title>Shell</title>
<p>A <em>shell</em> is a program that provides an interface to invoke or
“launch” commands or another program inside a terminal. It also allows you
to view and browse the contents of directories. Popular shells include
<app>bash</app>, <app>zsh</app>, <app>fish</app>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<title>Escape Sequences</title>
<p>An escape sequence is a series of characters used to change the meaning
of data in a terminal. Escape sequences are used when a computer has only
single channel to send information back and forth. Escape sequences are
used to distinguish if data being sent is a command to be executed or
information to be stored and displayed.</p>
</item>
<item>
<title>Prompt</title>
<p>A prompt is also called a <em>command prompt</em>. It is a sequence of
characters used in the command line environment to indicate the readiness
of the shell to accept commands.</p>
<p>A prompt usually ends with the characters <sys>$</sys>, <sys>%</sys>,
<sys>#</sys> or <sys>></sys> and includes
information about the path of the present working directory. On Unix based
systems, it is common for the prompt to end in a <sys>$</sys> or
<sys>#</sys> character depending on the user role such as <sys>$</sys>
for user and <sys>#</sys> for superuser (also called <sys>root</sys>).
</p>
</item>
<item>
<title>Command</title>
<p>An input entered in the prompt to be executed is called a
<em>command</em>. It is a combination of the program name along with any
other additional parameters passed as flags to alter the execution of the
program.</p>
</item>
</terms>
</page>
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