MacTerm

New Name, New Features

2011-07-03T23:23:00.004-05:00

This project has been renamed "MacTerm". This emphasizes the fact that the program is a full terminal on Mac OS X that is in no way limited to telnet sessions.

In the last few months there have been substantial changes! Major improvements have been made to the XTerm and VT220 emulators. Full Screen mode has been tweaked in several ways. The Local Echo interface has been enhanced, to better indicate "invisible" inputs such as control characters. Notification windows (when not using Growl) have a new appearance and behavior. Macros can now more easily use control characters. And, a number of bugs have been fixed. These changes are available now, in the latest daily build.

But there are even more features in the works...

The most significant feature under development is emulator-level support for UTF-8, instead of the "mostly UTF-8" translation mechanism that is currently used. This will fix a lot of apparent bugs that depend on exactly what text is displayed and how the text was encoded. It will also return to normal some features that were broken by simplistic UTF-8 support, like single-byte replacements for escape sequences.

Another task is to fix a variety of user interface problems that are frankly caused entirely by the simultaneous use of the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks; for example, tabbed windows are susceptible to bugs in sheets that cannot occur in windows where the tabs are turned off. A hybrid approach was absolutely necessary as an interim solution, but there is constant effort to peel away dependencies on older technologies and cure the "warts" in the user interface's behavior.

Still Ticking

2011-02-19T15:43:00.003-06:00

It's been a long year, and even though I've switched jobs I haven't stopped working on this app.

MacTelnet has become very stable. Updates in recent months have included everything from bug fixes to brand new features, and even revised artwork. I have also worked very hard to keep it running all the way back to Mac OS X 10.3.9.

As always, you can look at the change log to read the details and download the very latest build!

I strongly recommend using only very recent updates, and to report any problems you find (or suggest features).

Printing, and Cocoa

2010-01-31T18:49:00.004-06:00

If you haven't downloaded builds in the last few months, you may not realize that there have been major improvements to printing! There has also been a greater migration toward Cocoa.

The "Print Screen" command is now fully functional, and even presents a preview dialog. The preview is automatically black-on-white, it uses the font and size of the terminal screen, and chooses portrait or landscape based on the original screen size. The line wrapping of the preview can be changed, to produce pages that scale optimally.

The most common VT102 terminal sequences for printing are once again implemented, so that terminal programs such as the "pine" E-mail client can do their own printing! (Note, since the default is VT100, terminal programs can only print if you first change your settings to at least VT102.)

A very important prerequisite for implementing high-quality printing has been to move the core of the application to a Cocoa runtime. In programming terms, MacTelnet used to be a Carbon runtime with Cocoa features (such as palettes), but it is now a Cocoa runtime with some Carbon features. This approach is quite simply more compatible with Apple's intentions; features such as printing were difficult to support properly, especially on older Mac OS X versions, without increasing Cocoa support.

The effects of Cocoa on the user interface are subtle (for instance, some menus look different), but very little else is different.

Snow Leopard Support

2009-08-29T12:28:00.001-05:00

In the latest build I have fixed a minor problem that prevented launch on Snow Leopard.

Performance Improvements

2009-07-16T10:58:00.003-05:00

In the latest build I have fixed a number of serious terminal performance problems that slipped into builds for the past few weeks. If you pulled a version from May, June or July and haven't upgraded, please do.

Major Bugs Fixed

2009-06-03T23:19:00.006-05:00

If you've followed the project change log with any frequency, you've noticed that a few very important bug fixes have been made in the last month or so, covering everything from terminal emulation to international text and the Preferences window.

For instance, a major cause of misbehavior in "full screen" applications was improper scrolling of the bottom line, which no longer occurs; so programs such as "emacs", "screen", and "pine" all render properly.

So if you haven't been updating to the latest build in awhile, be sure to do so now.

New Services

2009-04-09T22:32:00.003-05:00

The MacTelnet project page on SourceForge has recently been changed:

The SourceForge Forums were disabled, replaced with a Google group.

The SourceForge Wiki, Bug Tracker and Feature Request Tracker were disabled, replaced with Trac (still hosted by SourceForge).

MacTelnet 4 Development Continues

2009-03-24T21:46:00.008-05:00

For those new to the project, MacTelnet is a complete replacement for Apple's Terminal, capable of running local or remote commands. Its name is from a legacy as a telnet client for Classic Macs; these days, MacTelnet does much, much more than telnet, and I intend to rename it eventually!

Though MacTelnet may not be as well known as other terminals, it has a number of extremely useful features that match and exceed those of its competitors. It also has polish aimed at improving usability, which has been a primary goal of the project.

Download at MacTerm.net.

Most work focuses on the upcoming MacTelnet 4, which is in beta and regularly updated with daily builds. Features are summarized on the preview page, and described in even more detail (for each day's build) in the change log.