Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Terminology vs GrafX2, the Slant community recommends GrafX2 for most people. In the question“What are the best applications to use on a X11 window manager?” GrafX2 is ranked 2nd while Terminology is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose GrafX2 is:
GrafX2 is scriptable using the Lua language, which can be used to automate tasks and add new functionality to it. The script library features advanced color reduction and enhancement tools, [palette analysis](http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=76519), and much more.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Scalable fonts
Font size in Terminology automatically scales according to window size. When you resize the window, so does the text.
Pro Looks smashing
Terminals are often very dull looks wise, not so with terminology.
Pro In-terminal video, picture and thumbnail support
Thumbnails, pictures, and videos can all be rendered in-terminal, based on the directory listing or mouse interactions. For instance, using "ls" on a picture folder will produce a list of thumbnails instead of only the filenames.
Pro Splitable
You can split windows, like in terminator.
Pro Visually customizable
It is very customizable in every aspect of the visual options.
Pro Integrates well with Enlightenment WM
Terminology is part of the Enlightenment WM packages. As such, it integrates really well with Enlightenment and other tools in the package.
Pro Block copy
You can copy text in blocks.
Pro Copyfree licensing
Terminology uses the Simplified BSD License. As it is a copyfree license, it tends to minimize license incompatibilities, legal compliance requirements, and various other complexities that may make it difficult to understand certain licenses.
Pro Scriptable using Lua
GrafX2 is scriptable using the Lua language, which can be used to automate tasks and add new functionality to it. The script library features advanced color reduction and enhancement tools, palette analysis, and much more.
Pro Supports many file formats
GrafX2 supports many file formats, including the popular gif and png, but also importing and exporting from deluxe paint, degas elite, and various other editors using custom formats.
Pro Very large number of tools and effects
Pro Free, open source, and cross-platform
GrafX2 is totally free to use, copy, and modify. It's available on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Haiku, AROS, MorphOS, SkyOS, Syllable, Mint, and a few more systems. Basically anything is supported by the SDL library.
Pro Palette color cycling
GraphX2 being based on older 256 bitmap software has inherited some tricks that modern pixel editors do not have . One of them being the ability to cycle color palette and produce animations and effects with it.
Pro Has a great palette tool
You can create gradients from one color to another, work in either RGB or HSL color space, save and load palettes, sort and organize palettes, and even work on "color cycling" images.
Pro Supports tileset addition and extraction
Pro Supports animations
The program has a basic support for animation using frames in newer versions. Graphics can be cloned and copied between frames and changed slightly.
See here how to animate with GrapfX2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnq6zBZOqoM
Pro Has a customizable UI with themes support
Theme UI style can easily be changed from settings including buttons and colors.
Pro Drawing constraint mode for vintage 8bits machine
The program is able to enforce the pixel constraints of old machines (C64, ZX Spectrum, Apple II, Game Boy Color, etc.)
For example, in ZX Spectrum mode, only 2 different colors can be used in a 8x8 pixel block.
Cons
Con Configuration is sometimes complicated and non-obvious
There's a "Settings" menu for configuration, but more options there would make it easier. Downloading themes and extensions from the official repo would be a big plus.
Con No True-Color support
Not able to display a modern full range of colors, yet.
Con Scrollback is completely nroken
Scrolling back the emulator inserts random lines from other places in the scrollback buffer in between the actuall output lines. Thus it is impossible to see a correct copy of the previous output.
Con No scrollbar
The lack of scrollbar in Terminology makes navigation difficult. But you can use keys for it.
Con Too many bells and whistles
Some people feel that Terminology has too many features that are not suited for a terminal, but for a window manager instead. For instance, viewing thumbnails, watching videos and gifs, and other similarly flashy things just feel like eye candy and should not be part of a terminal emulator.
Con Dated look and feel
It looks like it was never supposed to be used in the modern world.
Con Lack of modern features
Some modern features that are necessary to do pixel art creation for game dev work are lacking.
