NAME

       vttest - test VT100-type terminal

SYNOPSIS

       vttest [options] [24x80.132]

DESCRIPTION

       Vttest  is  a  program  designed to test the functionality of a VT100 terminal (or emulator thereof).  It
       tests both display (escape sequence handling) and keyboard.

       The program is menu-driven and contains full on-line operating instructions.

       •   To run a given menu-item, you must enter its number.

       •   Menu items start at zero; this is the “Exit” item in almost all cases.

       •   You can run all menu-items (for a given level) by entering an asterisk, i.e, “*'.

       •   You can force a repaint of the menu items by entering “?”.

       •   A few menus can be more than one page.  Use “n” and “p” to switch to the next or previous page.

OPTIONS

       You can specify the screen geometry in the form [24x80.132], i.e.,

       •   24 lines,

       •   80 minimum columns, and

       •   132 maximum columns.

       If your terminal does not switch between 80 and 132 columns you may specify  24x80.80,  for  example,  to
       avoid a misleading display.

       Other options are:

       -V   print the program version, and exit.

       -c commands
            replay  commands  recorded  by  the  logging  option.   Some  keyboard  and mouse input is required,
            depending on the tests, but otherwise menu selection and next-page responses are automated.

       -f fontfile
            specify a file containing a DRCS (soft character definition) string.

       -l   log test results to vttest.log.

       -p   use padding, e.g., for a VT100 connected to a high-speed line.

       -q   show only the most recent part of a continuous response, e.g., any-event  mouse  tests,  to  improve
            readability of the test.

       -s   add time-delay in selected panning/scrolling options to show details.

       -u   suppress  switch  from  UTF-8 mode on startup, and enable a third setting in the 7-bit/8-bit parsing
            test to allow for C2 controls as an alternate to 8-bit C1.

       -8   use 8-bit controls (this can be changed with a menu option).

ENVIRONMENT

       When vttest starts, it checks the locale (LC_ALL, etc.), to determine if the  terminal  uses  UTF-8,  and
       normally switches the terminal to ISO-8859 1.  Use the “-u” option to disable this switching, and provide
       some special cases where UTF-8 encoding is accepted.

       For  example,  the  Unicode specification does not document its relationship to ECMA-48 (ISO 6429) beyond
       listing C0 and C1 codes which Unicode treats as whitespace.  The latter (i.e., NEL U+0085) is  misleading
       because  Unicode  describes  C1  controls  only  obliquely.   It goes into a little more detail regarding
       ECMA-35 (ISO 2022).  vttest allows for both the standard encoding of C1 (single  byte)  and  the  variant
       implied by Unicode, referred to here as C2 (two bytes) to distinguish the two encodings.

AUTHORS

       Per Lindberg (mcvax,seismo)!enea!suadb!lindberg sometime 1985.

       Modified  by  Thomas  E.  Dickey from June 1996, to support nonstandard screen geometry, VT220-VT525, ISO
       color and xterm-specific tests.

SEE ALSO

       XTerm Control Sequences
       https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html
       DEC VT terminal line-wrapping semantics

                                                   2024-10-10                                          VTTEST(1)