Editing Computer terminal (section)

==Emulation==
{{main|Terminal emulator}}

A terminal emulator is a piece of software that emulates a text terminal. In the past, before the widespread use of [[local area network]]s and broadband internet access, many computers would use a serial access program to communicate with other computers via [[telephone line]] or serial device.

When the first [[Mac (computer)|Macintosh]] was released, a program called [[MacTerminal]]<ref>{{cite web |title=MacTerminal Definition from PC Magazine Encyclopedia |url=https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/46477/macterminal |quote=as an [[IBM 3270|IBM 3278 Model 2]]}}</ref> was used to communicate with many computers, including the [[IBM Personal Computer|IBM PC]].

The [[Win32 console]] on Windows does not emulate a physical terminal that supports escape sequences<ref>{{Cite web|url = https://stackoverflow.com/a/16799175/495796|title = How to make win32 console recognize ANSI/VT100 escape sequences?|website = [[Stack Overflow]]}}</ref>{{dubious|Windows terminal emulator not provided|date=September 2013}} so SSH and Telnet programs (for logging in textually to remote computers) for Windows, including the Telnet program bundled with some versions of Windows, often incorporate their own code to process escape sequences.

The terminal emulators on most [[Unix-like]] systems—such as, for example, [[GNOME Terminal|gnome-terminal]], [[Konsole]], QTerminal, [[xterm]], and [[Terminal (macOS)|Terminal.app]]—do emulate physical terminals including support for escape sequences; e.g., xterm can emulate the [[VT220]] and [[Tektronix 4010]] hardware terminals.