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Comment by kingtoolbox | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for your attention, maybe I need clarify more. Is this a Windows-only program? For now it is, but WindTerm is developped by Qt, so MacOs and Linux will be supported in feature. Why is SSH and Telnet listed as “supported”? Won’t any terminal emulator support those protocols via an executable? Of course not, for example Alacritty, which telnet and ssh are depending on system's tools, like openssh and etc. WindTerm implemented the protocols itself, like securecrt. What differentiates this from Alacritty, Kitty, or iTerm2? These “modern terminals” are not included in benchmarks. If you concerned Alacritty, you will see it also compared to rxvt, because rxvt is one of the most fast terminals. What differentiates this from Microsoft’s new terminal? Features are listed, like coloring, folding. I'll also put this on WindTerm's readme.

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> Of course not, for example Alacritty, which telnet and ssh are depending on system's tools, like openssh and etc.

I'm not sure i follow... a terminal emulator is a display. it is basically only there to visualize your shell (i.e. bash, zsh, fish, etc).

From this sentence alone it sounds more like MobaXTerm or RoyalTS than a terminal. Which is fine, but shouldn't be called a terminal emulator, as thats not what it is.

> If you concerned Alacritty, you will see it also compared to rxvt, because rxvt is one of the most fast terminals.

thats a very feeble argument. Alacritty is - to my knowledge - the only terminal emulator with GPU Acceleration. So yeah, if you don't have a good dedicated graphics card, you won't really get any performance improvements over the usual terminal editors which only utilize the CPU... but its just plain wrong to equate their performance.

> What differentiates this from Microsoft’s new terminal? Features are listed, like coloring, folding.

i'm not sure i follow here either... the coloring is set by the shell - the emulator just displays the colors. and windows terminal does support colours

and folding doesnt really look like something i'd ever want to use...

Thank you for your attention again. First I want to let you know that I have just tested iterm2, kitty and Alacritty under MacOS as you wish. If you have interesting, you may have a look at the new test results. One more thing, "emulator" has been removed too, thank you for your point out.

I have been developing windterm for many many years. Based on my data analytics, terminal only spend 2% of the time to show text if you use threads to separate the socket read and text display. So it doesn't matter if you use GPU or not. Of course, use GPU is a very good thing, especially it can display more smoothly and draw emoji characters correctly. But as you can see, windterm still has very high performance without GPU acceleration. GPU also has its disadvantage, most virtual machines on cloud have no GPU emulated, so you can not use Alacritty on them.

The last thing, coloring, This is why I have spent so much time creating windterm in the past many years. The emulator traditionally displays the colors from server, but you know only a few poor text has its color. So for a long time, terminals should depends ZSH or auto-color-ls plugin and etc. to provide additional colors to make text more readable.

But why do we have to endure this? Text editors have already know how to styling a code file or script and done it well for more than 40 years!

So it took me some time to implement a text editor, and then I use its styling engine to coloring the text in terminal. That's why you can see a gorgeous colorful terminal. Prompt, numbers, strings and so on all have its color while maintaining the color from server if they have.

We deserve to have a colorful world, even in terminals, is it not?

> GPU also has its disadvantage, most virtual machines on cloud have no GPU emulated, so you can not use Alacritty on them.

i'm not sure you understand how the ssh protocol actually works...

i wish you luck though. building stuff is its own reward and don't let random strangers on the internet discourage you

Believe me, I understand ssh well:) I known you can ssh virtual machines, but you just can't run alacritty on them, even in windows sandbox.

Everyone has their own selection, I respect and also keep mine. So don't worry, everything is just the beginning, I will try my best to create a good terminal, just like what I did in the past.

I'm curious, why do you think anyone would want to run Alacritty (or any other terminal emulator) on the remote host?

The terminal emulator is something I run on my workstation (where the GPU is located), from which I SSH to the remote, where it makes no difference whether it has a GPU or not.

I mean the local computer for someone who want to run alacritty is also a virtual machine. Many companies have not provided physical machines any more. There are only virtual machines without GPU available for employees to work on the cloud, so the companies can save money and control everything, especially you can not bring anything away.

I believe this is a trend. Maybe one day just like IBM CEO Watson said he thought there was a world market "for maybe five computers".

Folding text sometimes allows you to quickly browse all the commands inputted. But it doesn't matter if you don't want to use, just ignore it or shut it. A tool always used by various people, and everyone has their own unique needs. As a tool maker, every need needs to be carefully met.

> Alacritty is - to my knowledge - the only terminal emulator with GPU Acceleration.

iTerm2 has had GPU acceleration via the Metal framework for quite some time now.

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