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index.md (2210B)
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1 
2
3 st is a simple terminal implementation for X.
4
5 [](screenshots/frign-2016.png)
6
7 Motivation
8 ----------
9 Here's an excerpt from the xterm(1) README:
10
11 > Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
12 >
13 > This is undoubtedly the most ugly program in the distribution. It was one of
14 > the first "serious" programs ported, and still has a lot of historical baggage.
15 > Ideally, there would be a general tty widget and then vt102 and tek4014
16 > subwidgets so that they could be used in other programs. We are trying to
17 > clean things up as we go, but there is still a lot of work to do.
18
19 It has over 65K lines of code and emulates obscure and obsolete terminals you
20 will [never need](https://ub.fnwi.uva.nl/computermuseum//tek4014.html).
21
22 The popular alternative, rxvt has *only* 32K lines of code. This is just too
23 much for something as simple as a terminal emulator; it's yet another example
24 of code complexity.
25
26 Terminal emulation doesn't need to be so complex.
27
28 Status
29 ------
30 Things that have already been implemented are:
31
32 * most VT10X escape sequences
33 * serial line support
34 * XIM support
35 * utmp via utmp(1)
36 * clipboard handling
37 * mouse and keyboard shortcuts (via config.h)
38 * UTF-8
39 * wide-character support
40 * resize
41 * 256 colors and [true colors](https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728)
42 * antialiased fonts (using fontconfig)
43 * fallback fonts
44 * line drawing
45
46 See the [goals](//st.suckless.org/goals) for more details and the
47 [TODO](//git.suckless.org/st/plain/TODO) for what still needs to be
48 implemented or fixed.
49
50 Configuration
51 -------------
52 Configuration is done with `config.h`. Read the comments in the generated
53 `config.h` to edit it according to your needs. Defaults are stored in
54 `config.def.h`.
55
56 FAQ
57 ---
58 The [FAQ](//git.suckless.org/st/plain/FAQ) is maintained in the st source code
59 repository.
60
61 Development
62 -----------
63 st is actively developed. You can [browse](//git.suckless.org/st) its source
64 code repository or get a copy using git with the following command:
65
66 git clone https://git.suckless.org/st
67
68 Download
69 --------
70 * [st 0.9.3](//dl.suckless.org/st/st-0.9.3.tar.gz) (48kb) (2025-08-09)
71 * [LICENSE](//git.suckless.org/st/plain/LICENSE)
72