mt - Modern, minimalist, minty-fresh terminal.

This is intended to be a modern, minimalist terminal emulator for X with the following design priorities:

• Work well with other platform’s modern terminal emulators (iTerm2, hterm). This means largely being xterm-compatible rather than using a custom terminfo database entry.
• Zero non-terminal UI components (no menus, no scroll bars, etc.) and leverage in-terminal tools like tmux for these kinds of features.
• High quality font rendering and color support. The terminal itself should look as good as it is possible to look in X.

While satisfying these criteria, the terminal should be as small and low-overhead as possible. Also, it should use any modern software development tools that make it easier to work with.

Requirements to build

You will need the Xlib header files, CMake, and a modern C++ toolchain. Using the Ninja generator of CMake is encouraged.

TODO list

Cleanup

• Use C++ to simplify any constructs from the old C code.
• Identify any existing libraries that can be used effectively.
• Factor code into libraries and write unittests.

Terminal emulation

• Compare all terminal codes with xterm, iTerm2, and hterm; harmonize where possible.
• From the original st documentation
  • double-height support

Display and rendering

• From the original st documentation
  • add diacritics support to xdraws()
  • make the font cache simpler
  • add better support for brightening of the upper colors

Application

• Add configuration file reading rather than compiling all settings into the binary.

Bugs and/or known isuses

• From the original st documentation
  • fix shift up/down (shift selection in emacs)
  • remove DEC test sequence when appropriate

FAQ

How do I get scrolling functionality?

Using a terminal multiplexer like tmux or screen.

Disclaimer

This is not an official Google product.

Credits

This is based on the st terminal, but doesn’t share the same goals or development philosophy and so is very likely to diverge. From that project’s documentation:

Based on Aurélien APTEL bt source code.