Table of Contents
Capabilities — 0.6.0
Included
- C++/Qt desktop application, immediate System/Light/Dark theme selection with readable wizard pages, dockable navigation/command/activity panes, toolbar and button bar.
- Saved session folders, filtering, natural/alphabetical/manual ordering, remembered expanded folders, stable-ID desktop shortcuts, create/edit/rename/cut/copy/paste/delete, bulk edits of changed fields, quick connections and default-session settings.
- Linux PTY and Windows ConPTY process backends; interactive local shells; SSH2 and SFTP through OpenSSH, with a built-in libssh engine as the default for SSH2 sessions (Linux and Windows; on Windows it uses the Windows OpenSSH agent; host keys, agent/key/passphrase, keyboard-interactive and password logins, jump hosts (chains, each hop with its own host-key check and login), X11 and agent forwarding, Kerberos (GSSAPI, Linux), RSA/ECDSA/Ed25519 OpenSSH certificates, about 40 OpenSSH
-ooptions, a FIPS-approved-algorithms mode, local/remote/dynamic SOCKS4/5 forwarding, forwarding-only sessions and negotiated-algorithm display; sessions using other OpenSSH options use OpenSSH automatically); RDP sessions through FreeRDP (NLA, certificate trust, fitted or fixed size, keyboard, mouse, text clipboard, Windows domains); raw TCP; Telnet terminal-type/window-size negotiation; RLogin with credential-backed user names and passwords; serial ports and format/flow/break controls. - Per-profile SSH host trust, key authentication, terminal password/challenge prompts, jump/proxy commands, configurable algorithms, compression, agent/X11 forwarding and local/remote/dynamic forwards. Actual provider/agent/X11 availability depends on the OS and server.
- VT220/Xterm terminal engine (plus Wyse 60 and SCO ANSI translation and keys) with sixel images, 132-column mode, double-width/height lines, left/right margins, selective erase, C1 controls, ANSI/256/true colour, Unicode, alternate screens, cursor/key modes, mouse tracking, scrollback, selection/copy/paste, search, font zoom, input mappings, temporary and configured keyword highlighting.
- Tabs, tear-off tabs in their own windows (drag out, drag onto a tab bar, or menus), horizontal/vertical group splits, tab rename/reset/clone/reorder, move-to-next-group, active-session list and password-protected local session locking.
- Workspace snapshots, scoped command broadcasting, saved commands with script arguments and validated cut/copy/paste, named button bars with ordered buttons, copy/rename/delete, global and per-session selection, text/raw logging, timestamps/templates, pause/resume and rotation; text/binary terminal sends; interactive SFTP transfers; a two-pane SFTP browser (resume, permissions, modification times, jump hosts); built-in Xmodem (checksum/CRC/1K), Ymodem batch and Kermit (long packets, CRC, 8th-bit prefixing, repeat counts, automatic download start).
- Explicit optional TFTP server with roots, client restrictions, overwrite policy, block-size negotiation and octet-mode transfer. It is stopped by default. Privileged UDP ports may require OS permissions; an unprivileged port can be selected.
- SyncTERM-Lua compatible scripting: scripts written for the SyncTERM 1.9 Lua fork run unchanged (send/expect/screen/regex/triggers/bbs), with a CP437 session encoding for BBSes.
- BBS use (spec section 14, all Core items): a BBS session template (Tools → New BBS session…, or applied to existing sessions); ANSI-BBS emulation (DOS ANSI.SYS behaviour: bold = bright, blink or iCE colours by option or
CSI ?33h, last-column wrap,CSI s/u,CSI 6n, clear-screen homes, CP437 symbols for control bytes, ANSI music ignored); a built-in 8×16 VGA bitmap font with seamless blocks and line drawing; terminal typeansi-bbs; RLogin with credential-backed user names and vault-stored passwords; Telnet binary mode both ways; BBS keys; Zmodem auto-start download and upload (CRC-16/32, error recovery, cancel, rename/overwrite/skip, partial-file cleanup); SyncTERM BBS list import with preview; a BBS Directory (0.6.0) with the Synchronet BBS List (Telnet first) and the Telnet BBS Guide downloaded on request, Recent first, your own BBSes, search, Save as session, and list updates that never change BBSes you have used or added. - Python and bundled Lua 5.4.9 automation with a local authenticated application API, prompt waits/capture, tab/configuration/logging access and cancellation; editable Python/Lua send-action recording.
- Copy Public Key to Server (ssh-copy-id style, with a key-only test login), an SSH Agent window (keys, lifetimes, confirm-on-use, PKCS#11 tokens, lock/unlock, agent started for Lantern), sync of sessions/folders/credential names/commands/bars through a shared folder, daily update notifications with Update Now, function-key shortcuts.
- Key-generation launcher, host-trust editor, named credential metadata, native JSON/XML export/import and simple text session import; printing through the OS.
- Linux Debian installer, Windows user installer/portable ZIP, complete source package and build scripts.
Limits and compatibility work
This release does not implement every item in the comprehensive specification. The following are explicit limits:
- Legacy SSH1, TN3270, TVI and VShell emulation, TAPI, Telnet/TLS and FTP/S3 browsers are not included. Wyse 60 and SCO ANSI are translations of their common sequences onto the VT engine, not complete emulators. RDP clipboard and follow-the-tab resizing have not yet been tried against a real Windows server (the automated test server supports neither). The core terminal engine is VT220/Xterm-compatible; changing its advertised terminal type is not a promise of every legacy emulator's behaviour.
- Terminal pass-through/raw printer emulation is not included. Zmodem, Xmodem, Ymodem and Kermit are (tested over Telnet binary mode and raw TCP against lrzsz and G-Kermit; RLogin and SSH use the same path but are untested). ANSI music is ignored, not played. The optional BBS extras (BBS-07: simulated line speed, saving to
.answith SAUCE, ANSI-art viewer) are not included. TFTP supports octet mode, not netascii. - Session cloning uses independent connections; SSH transport multiplexing, arbitrary nested split trees and some tab-indicator customisation remain to be implemented.
- Command/bar clipboard interchange is included. Live-character broadcast mode and full per-button appearance customisation remain to be implemented. Named bars reference shared command definitions; copying commands creates independent definitions.
- Saved credentials store username/key-file metadata. A credential can hold a password in the system vault (Windows Credential Manager or the Linux Secret Service); RLogin and RDP sessions use it. SSH and Telnet passwords remain terminal prompts. Optional certificate/provider/GSSAPI support is supplied by the installed OpenSSH client and must be tested with that provider; the built-in engine supports OpenSSH certificates and (Linux) GSSAPI, and PKCS#11 keys through the SSH agent.
- Recording creates send-action Python or Lua skeletons. It does not infer reliable expected prompts or automatically redact every arbitrary secret typed as ordinary terminal data. Edit recordings before retaining/sharing them.
- The implemented interfaces are listed in SCRIPTING-GUIDE.md and LUA-SCRIPTING.md. The larger SCRIPTING-API.md contract contains additional members for future implementation. Lua prompt capture is synchronous; setting Synchronous=false is rejected. Third-party Lua binary modules are not bundled. Scripts run with the current user’s privileges and must be trusted.
- Not all advanced global/session controls from OPTIONS-CATALOGUE.md are surfaced. The application presents the controls its current implementation handles; the catalogue and SPECIFICATION.md retain the fuller product contract.
- Physical serial flow-control lines, X11/provider/certificate/GSSAPI integrations, physical printers and physical Windows hardware require dedicated target testing. A Wine launch is a Windows binary/packaging smoke test, not validation of all those integrations.
Runtime packaging
Both platforms include the statically linked Lua worker; a separate Lua installation, LuaSocket or Python is not required for Lua scripts.
Linux uses distribution OpenSSH/Python/libssh and dynamically linked Qt libraries. The supplied .deb declares its actual dependencies and targets the build distribution.
The Linux build uses the distribution's FreeRDP 3 libraries for RDP.
Windows packages include Qt plugins/compiler runtimes, Python 3.14.10, libssh 0.11.3 with OpenSSL 3.5.9 and zlib 1.3.1 for the built-in SSH engine, FreeRDP 3.32.2 for RDP sessions, and portable OpenSSH tools. When Windows already supplies OpenSSH, the application prefers that system client. The bundled fallback is Microsoft's 10.4.0.0p1 Preview build; its preview status is retained here rather than described as a stable OS component. No SSH server service is installed. Users can replace the tools through an updated compatible distribution.
The Windows SSH diagnostic trace uses a private temporary directory and a regular file whose creation handle is released before OpenSSH starts. Failed trace creation reports an error before connection startup.
See TEST-RESULTS.md for the checks actually performed on this release.
