<P> The preferences dialog for Terminal. app in OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and later offers choices for values of the TERM environment variable . Available options are ansi, dtterm, nsterm, rxvt, vt52, vt100, vt102, xterm, xterm - 16color and xterm - 256color, which differ from the OS X 10.5 (Leopard) choices by dropping the xterm - color and adding xterm - 16color and xterm - 256color . These settings do not alter the operation of Terminal, and the xterm settings do not match the behavior of xterm . </P> <P> Terminal includes several features that specifically access macOS APIs and features . These include the ability to use the standard macOS Help search function to find manual pages and integration with Spotlight . Terminal was used by Apple as a showcase for macOS graphics APIs in early advertising of Mac OS X, offering a range of custom font and coloring options, including transparent backgrounds . </P>

What is the purpose of terminal on mac