Computer Terminal - Text Terminals

Text Terminals

A text terminal, or often just terminal (sometimes text console) is a serial computer interface for text entry and display. Information is presented as an array of pre-selected formed characters. When such devices use a video display such as a cathode-ray tube, they are called a "video display unit" or "visual display unit" (VDU) or "video display terminal" (VDT).

Originally text terminals were electronic computer terminals connected to computers by a serial port, but later computers have built-in system consoles, and terminal emulator programs that work in a graphical desktop environment. Graphical displays have not eradicated the text terminal as the latter is convenient for computer programmers and appropriate for command-line interfaces and text user interfaces. Most programming languages support standard streams for inputting and printing text, and it is simple to connect the streams to a text terminal.