Non-canvas based terminal for jor1k

[neelabhg]

Currently the jor1k GUI uses the canvas element to display the terminal. View jor1k's terminal.js to see how characters are being drawn.

The current terminal makes it impossible to resize properly, copy terminal output and paste into the terminal. The canvas is also only supported in modern browsers, increasing dependency of the UI on modern browsers.

I do not see a reason why a canvas would be required. How about having a text view? A text-view-based terminal is easy to resize, users can copy-paste from/into it, among other things. The task is to rewrite the terminal "driver" to use a different "display device" - instead of a canvas, use a text box or something else.

There are also existing projects for creating a terminal in the browser and maybe worthwhile to investigate. Some examples are jQuery terminal emulator plugin and term.js. showterm is also interesting to look at for an implementation. Most of them support sending commands to a backend server, but our backend is the jor1k system.

If you think this new driver belongs in jor1k, make a contribution there and reference this issue.

[scowalt]

There has been some progress and discussion on this issue here. However, I'm not sure we'll be able to complete this issue fully as a part of the Fall 2014 milestone. There are some subtle things about this problem that I don't think we considered.

When we meet we should discuss how/if we should re-prioritize this issue for the coming semester.

@jdtran23 can comment on whether or not he agrees with my analysis of the issue.

[ysangkok]

See https://github.com/s-macke/jor1k/wiki/Changing-terminal-emulator

[neelabhg]

@ysangkok This is great! Thank you very much. We will incorporate this as soon as we update our fork of jor1k (issue #51).

[neelabhg]

@ysangkok I opened the issue s-macke/jor1k#58, which is preventing us from incorporating your changes into our project.

FYI, Two terminals were implemented by @wchill in this project, and he might be able to comment further on this.

[wchill]

I don't know what else I can really comment on, but in any case most of the changes made were (if I recall correctly) simply ensuring that all tty0 references were replaced with variables to enable selection of which terminal device to use, as well as updating the terminal interface to enable switching between the two terminals. I believe the current upstream version of jor1k simply leaves tty1 unconnected, and actually using it is a simple matter of changing the Linux disk image so that it will listen on that terminal device.

[ysangkok]

login is started on ttyS1, see https://github.com/s-macke/jor1k/blob/master/bin/sysroot/etc/inittab#L3