Learn/App & Interface/Interface
The Built-In Terminal
Updated v2.5.0At a glance
- A real shell inside JetCad3 — job control, curses apps and your own prompt all work
- Dresses to match your theme — a full color palette designed for each of the 13 themes
- Switch themes with the terminal open and everything on screen retints instantly
- Close the window and your shells keep running; reopen and everything is still there
- Tabs name themselves after the folder you're in or the program that's running
- Cmd/Ctrl+F searches the scrollback; Escape closes the search, not the window
- Split a tab into two shells side by side, starting in the same folder
- URLs printed by a script are clickable and open in JetCad3's own browser
- Its own settings gear: shell, text size, scrollback and cursor
JetCad3 has a real terminal built in — open it from the ▦ Start panel on a JC3 Appliance,
or on your own computer in fullscreen. It is a genuine shell, not a
command box: job control, vim, htop, ssh and your own prompt all work exactly as they do
in any other terminal, and it runs as you, with your permissions.
It dresses to match your theme
The terminal carries a full color palette designed for each of JetCad3's
themes — not just a matching background. Pick a light theme and the shell
renders on white with inks chosen for white: darker directory blues, readable git greens, golds
that hold up without a dark background. Pick a dark theme and you get the deep charcoal look,
tinted toward that theme's accent. Switch themes with the terminal open and everything already
on screen — your prompt, ls colors, build output — retints in place, instantly.
Any program that prints standard terminal colors gets this treatment automatically, including PowerShell on Windows. Output that asks for exact fixed colors renders exactly as its author intended, same as any other terminal.
It keeps your session
Close the terminal window and your shells keep running. Come back later — mid-build,
mid-vim, halfway through an ssh session — and the same tabs are waiting with their
scrollback intact.
Shells end when you close their tab, or when you quit JetCad3. Nothing else disturbs them.
Tabs that name themselves
A tab shows what its shell is actually doing: the folder you have cd'd into, or the program
currently running. Double-click a tab to give it your own name — or right-click it for
rename, split and close. A name you set sticks until you reset it.
Finding, following, splitting
- Find — Cmd/Ctrl+F searches everything in the scrollback, with matches highlighted. Enter walks forward, Shift+Enter back. Escape closes the search bar, not the window.
- Links — a URL printed by a build, a script, or an error message is clickable, and opens in JetCad3's own browser window.
- Split — the split button divides a tab into two shells side by side. The new one starts in the same folder you were already in, so splitting deep in a project keeps you there.
Settings
The gear in the terminal's toolbar — its settings live with the terminal, not buried in JetCad3's app settings:
- Shell — leave blank to use your login shell, or give an absolute path to another one. A path that no longer exists is ignored rather than failing to open.
- Text size — also adjustable live with the A- / A+ buttons, which remember where you left them.
- Scrollback — how much history each shell keeps.
- Cursor — block, underline or bar, blinking or steady.
Text size, scrollback and cursor apply immediately to shells you already have open. The shell setting applies to the next new shell, since it decides what gets started.
The terminal also remembers its size and position between sessions. View → Reset puts it back to the default.
On a touchscreen
Shop panels with no keyboard can type into the terminal with JetCad3's on-screen keyboard, which includes the control keys a shell actually needs — Esc, Tab, and Ctrl chords like Ctrl+C.