Is it possible to open a new Linux terminal with a thread in C?

Question

There seem to be a lot of question on SO that are close, but not quite what I'm looking for. I'm trying to see if there's a way to open a new terminal window (Linux), with a thread/child process from my main program, and have that thread/child process own the new window.

Just an overview of the full objective: I'm going to have a main program that I will launch and will take input via stdin, if I select input to "start a helper" it will spawn a new terminal window which can itself interact with the user (stdin/stdout).

So what I want to do is have the main program call the thread, have the thread use/own the new terminal window, then have that window close when the thread goes away and dies.

I know this code doesn't work right, but conceptually, I'd like something like this:

void * Runit()
{
    system("gnome-terminal"); //Would like to get a handle to this window
    while(1)
      printf("I'm the thread!!!\n"); //Would like to get this printed to the new window
}

int main()
{
    pthread_t child;
    pthread_create(&child, NULL, Runit, NULL);
    sleep(10);
    return 0; //Would like the child & its window to go away now.
}

The requirements on this are loose, it does not have to be portable, this is just a little Linux tool to make my life easier. It does have to be C code, so no shell scripting unless that script can be run from C. Any help or even other ideas is appreciated.

EDIT:

I'm aware that in linux terminals have file handles /dev/pts/x and I have tried code like:

system("gnome-terminal");
sleep(2); //let the file handle show up in /dev/pts
fp = fopen("/dev/pts/<new file handler number>");
fprintf(fp, "echo hi");

The handle opens correctly, but nothing is displayed in the terminal.

Answer 1

Both gnome-terminal and xterm allow you to run an arbitrary command once the terminal opens.

I would recommend, therefore, that you write a helper program that knows how to communicate with your main program (via sockets, named pipes, or some other IPC mechanism). Your thread spawns the terminal program, passing it your helper program, which will run inside the terminal and communicate with the thread via the aforementioned IPC channel.