Tiger Terminal

A modern terminal emulator for PowerPC Macs running Mac OS X Tiger (10.4).

Built with Python 3.13 and Tk, Tiger Terminal brings a usable, feature-rich terminal to vintage Mac hardware that Apple left behind.

Features

• Canvas-based rendering — smooth, flicker-free drawing
• 256-color support — ANSI colors, 256-color palette, and RGB true color
• VT100/xterm emulation — works with vim, tmux, htop, and more
• Tabbed interface — Cmd+T for new tabs, Cmd+1-9 to switch
• Copy/paste — mouse selection, Cmd+C/V
• Scrollback — mouse wheel and Shift+PageUp/PageDown
• Font resizing — Cmd+Plus/Minus
• Mouse tracking — SGR and X10 modes for vim, tmux, etc.
• Catppuccin Mocha color scheme

Requirements

• PowerPC Mac (G4 or G5)
• Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
• No other dependencies — Python is bundled in the .app

Install

1. Download TigerTerminal.dmg from Releases
2. Open the DMG
3. Drag TigerTerminal.app to /Applications
4. Double-click to launch

Screenshots

Building from Source

If you want to build the .app yourself:

1. Install Python 3.13 on your PPC Mac (see tiger-ppc-builds)
2. Clone this repo to your Mac
3. Run the build script:

cd tiger-terminal
chmod +x build_app.sh
./build_app.sh

The built .app bundle will be at /tmp/tigerterminal-build/TigerTerminal.app.

Architecture

TigerTerminal.app/Contents/MacOS/
├── TigerTerm          C launcher (resolves bundle paths, execs Python)
├── python3.13         PPC Python binary (~29MB)
├── terminal/
│   ├── terminal_app.py    Main app — window, tabs, keyboard handling
│   ├── screen.py          Terminal screen buffer + state machine
│   ├── renderer.py        Canvas-based cell renderer
│   ├── vt_parser.py       VT100/xterm escape sequence parser
│   └── pty_shell.py       PTY/fork shell management
└── lib/python3.13/        Pruned stdlib (~55MB)

The C launcher sets PYTHONHOME relative to the bundle, making the app fully self-contained and relocatable.

Source Files

File	Lines	Description
terminal_app.py	~530	Main app, window management, tabs, keyboard
screen.py	~700	Screen buffer, cursor, scrollback, attributes
renderer.py	~520	Canvas drawing, selection, font metrics
vt_parser.py	~200	ANSI/VT escape sequence parser
pty_shell.py	~90	PTY allocation and shell process
launcher.c	~50	Bundle-relative path resolution

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+T	New tab
Cmd+W	Close tab
Cmd+1-9	Switch to tab N
Cmd+C	Copy selection
Cmd+V	Paste
Cmd++	Increase font size
Cmd+-	Decrease font size
Shift+PageUp	Scroll up
Shift+PageDown	Scroll down

License

MIT