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
       ⟨https://github.com/mattiase/wraptest/⟩

                                            2024-10-10                                  VTTEST(1)