> xterm was still better than most lightweight libvt-based terminals
Even worse: although many terminal emulators claim to emulate some "ANSI" terminal or be "VT100 compatible" and so on, most of them aren't at all. Simply run vttest in your terminal of choice and be surprised, especially by how many of them fail at very basic cursor movement tests. One of the few terminal emulators which gets most things right is xterm. It's also one of the very few terminal emulators which even supports exotic graphics capabilities like Sixel/ReGIS/Tek4014. Nobody should underestimate xterm …
Even worse: although many terminal emulators claim to emulate some "ANSI" terminal or be "VT100 compatible" and so on, most of them aren't at all. Simply run vttest in your terminal of choice and be surprised, especially by how many of them fail at very basic cursor movement tests. One of the few terminal emulators which gets most things right is xterm. It's also one of the very few terminal emulators which even supports exotic graphics capabilities like Sixel/ReGIS/Tek4014. Nobody should underestimate xterm …