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DomTerm ¶

DomTerm is an terminal emulator based on web technologies. Beyond solid xterm compatibility, it supports powerful features for REPL (read-eval-print-loop) consoles: Application output can have images, rich text, and links, with structure-based line-breaking (pretty-printing), and folding. There is also input editing; automatic paging; screen multiplexing (panes and tabs); and session management (like tmux or GNU screen).

This OpenSource.com article provides an overview of the functionality. This old LWN article provides background, motivation, and a summary of the functionality.

The domterm command runs a server that manages sessions (usually shell processes). The user interface and terminal emulation is handled by a JavaScript library that can run in a regular web browser or an embedded browser such as Electron, using Web Sockets to talk to the server.

The name “DomTerm” refers to how it works by manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM) of a browser: the nested structure of elements, text, and attributes.

DomTerm is Free Software (open-source) available at https://github.com/PerBothner/DomTerm.

There is a mailing list at domterm-discuss@domterm.org with an information page and archives.

Highlights and recent changes ¶

• An experimental option to use xterm.js for the JavaScript “guts” of the terminal emulator. This is quite a bit faster than the default implementation, but is missing a number of features. The plan is to add those features, and use xterm.js by default later.
• Sixel graphics is now supported.
• The domterm command takes multiple sub-commands, similar to how tmux or git. The command automatically starts server if not already running.
• Session management, with detachable sessions, as in tmux or GNU screen.
• An experimental package atom-domterm for the Atom editor is available.
• A front-end based on Electron is now the preferred one.
• We now support draggable tabs and panes.
• An experimental pager with optional automatic pause on each page.