Overview
mlterm (Multi Lingual TERminal emulator) is a highly versatile terminal emulator engineered for developers and system administrators who require robust support for international scripts and advanced graphical rendering in a CLI environment. Its technical architecture is built around a pluggable engine system, supporting GUI backends including X11, Wayland, Wayland-lib, and Framebuffer. Unlike many modern GPU-accelerated terminals, mlterm excels at Complex Text Layout (CTL) for languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and various Indic scripts, utilizing Bidirectional (BiDi) algorithms and shaping engines. In 2026, mlterm remains a critical tool for data scientists and researchers due to its superior native Sixel support, allowing for high-resolution image and plot rendering directly within the terminal buffer. It operates on a client-server (daemon) model which significantly optimizes resource consumption when multiple terminal windows are active. Its ability to handle legacy encodings (EUC-JP, Big5, etc.) alongside modern UTF-8 makes it indispensable for maintaining legacy systems while developing modern software. The tool is highly customizable via configuration files, supporting features like background transparency, wallpapering, and multiple font combinations per character set.