new to the mac - need a terminal emulator

Question

Level 1

8 points

new to the mac - need a terminal emulator

Guys,

I got this new job, boss asked me what I needed for a laptop, I asked for a Mac, he ordered me a 13" macbook pro. So, I'm pretty juiced.

I'm a linux engineer. Perhaps 80% of my time, I'm connecting to servers from my laptop (not using my laptop as a PC itself, more as a terminal to other hosts).

I absolutely love one and only one Windows program: Attachmate's Reflections terminal emulator. It lets me create buttons and menus in the terminal so I can save arcane commands I use, and even create dialogs for more complex operations. It supports SSH and tabs and login scripts and triggers and hundreds of other things I use every day. I'm bummed that Attachmate (formerly WRQ) doesn't have a version of Reflections for the Mac.

Does anyone know of a replacement for the Mac? I notice that some terminals (like iTerm) support AppleScript. Will that let me do the same? Can I create menu's and buttons that trigger commands to be inserted into the terminal (as if I typed them)? I understand I'll need to learn a new language, that's OK.

Thanks in advance for any help,
JLM

iPod Video 60gig, Windows XP Pro, hand built Athlon 64 3500+

Posted on Dec 23, 2009 9:05 AM

Reply

Answer 1

etresoft

Level 9

57,566 points

Dec 23, 2009 9:29 AM in response to chewmanfoo

chewmanfoo wrote:
I notice that some terminals (like iTerm) support AppleScript.

Terminal.app supports AppleScript too. Just enable the Script Menu and add some Terminal scripts

Will that let me do the same? Can I create menu's and buttons that trigger commands to be inserted into the terminal (as if I typed them)?

Kind of. You can create scripts and put them in the Script Menu. You could write an application with buttons that is always running and executes scripts.

I understand I'll need to learn a new language, that's OK.

Have you ever seen AppleScript before? It's not designed for programmers. What you want is the ScriptingBridge. You can get full control of any scriptable application from an Objective-C, Ruby, or Python program. Perl support is a bit iffy right now. Download the source code to my ShellHere program to get started.

Reply

Answer 2

varjak paw

Level 10

182,692 points

Dec 23, 2009 9:43 AM in response to chewmanfoo

If you really like Reflection, you might be able to run it via Crossover, which allows running of a number of Windows applications without needing a copy of Windows. You could, of course, run Reflection in "real" Windows via one of the virtualization solutions such as VMware Fusion, Parallels Workstation (both are commercial applications) or VirtualBox (open source and free).

If you want a Mac-native application, you might take a look at DataComet:

http://www.databeast.com/

I don't know how it compares with Reflection, but it does offer programmable buttons for sending text and executing macros.

Hope this helps.

Reply