Virtual Terminals

[Joseph S. D. Yao]

>                                       ... What are Virtual Terminals?

Generally, the concept of "virtual terminals" is that you have some
things somewhere that aren't terminals, but you can pretend that they
are by logging in on them and using them as your process controlling
terminals.  Real terminals are, e.g., VT100's hooked up to a DHDM
line hooked up to a UNIBUS.  A virtual terminal might lead through a
VT driver into a single network port shared with dozens of other VT's;
or into a socket that is talking to a process that wants to look like
a user logging in (and that process could be on the same machine or
on another); or into a window on a TTY 6520 DMD (rev 1.1!) (blit, jerq,
whatever); or into virtually anything that wants to pretend it is a
real, live, ASCII(or whatever)-spitting terminal device on a terminal
line ... but isn't.

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy at seismo.{ARPA,UUCP}