When comparing EvilVTE vs Xiki, the Slant community recommends Xiki for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for UNIX-like systems?” Xiki is ranked 23rd while EvilVTE is ranked 32nd. The most important reason people chose Xiki is:
Xiki uses some GUI concepts on top of shell. For example, commands can have nested menus and these menus are just text indented by two spaces. You can also either use the mouse or the keyboard to navigate or issue commands.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Small and lightweight
EvilVTE is a very small and lightweight terminal emulator. It has a pretty small codebase and very few dependencies.
Pro Adds GUI features
Xiki uses some GUI concepts on top of shell. For example, commands can have nested menus and these menus are just text indented by two spaces. You can also either use the mouse or the keyboard to navigate or issue commands.
Cons
Con Customization only through C header files
Con Not very powerful
Even for a terminal that aims to be as lightweight as possible it's still not as powerful as it should be. It doesn't have many features found in other options and it's not very customizable.
Con Requires learning many new concepts and ways of using them
Xiki adds a lot of concepts which are not found on other terminals. You have to learn a lot of new tricks to make it useful which unfortunately you cannot use on other terminal emulators.