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How many terminal emulators can handle sixel? (vt340) Does anyone have a list?

by jopsen 8y ago

amasad 8y ago
As far as I know it's just xterm on desktop. It's fascinating that we have this standard that allows us to build programming environments like notebooks -- without resorting to layering hacks on hacks to make it work on web -- practically crossplatform yet we don't make use of it. At repl.it we've been toying around with adding sixel support for xterm.js and we have a prototype up and people in our community are already building things on it. Here are a few examples: - gnuplot: https://gnuplot.basicer.repl.run/rob https://gnuplot.basicer.repl.run/rob - gif in terminal (python): https://repl.it/talk/share/SPINNING-GLOBE-GIF-WITH-SIXEL-NEW/9139 https://repl.it/talk/share/SPINNING-GLOBE-GIF-WITH-SIXEL-NEW... - connect 4 game (ruby): https://repl.it/talk/share/Connect-4-20-with-better-graphics-and-more-effects/9338 https://repl.it/talk/share/Connect-4-20-with-better-graphics...
- jopsen 8y ago
  It's also facinating that programs that generate text output do so in a format that's well over 40 years old. What if our CLI programs could output HTML or JSON depending on whether they are piped or printed. Both standards are not good for this, but is VT100 really that great?
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    Most terminals use unicode, not ascii, right? Unicode is much younger than 40.
    - nwhm 8y ago
      Unicode isn't an encoding, but most terminals use UTF-8 (check your LANG environment variable), of which ascii is a subset
  - amasad 8y ago
    No it's not. It's stable. It's Lindy. Neomania is bad.
  - lainga 8y ago
    You're describing Powershell's object-passing.
    - jopsen 8y ago
      I know... But didn't want to think about that. I agree shells are great and PowerShell is confusing. It's merely amazing text is still king.
  - boomlinde 8y ago
    > What if our CLI programs could output HTML or JSON depending on whether they are piped or printed. Well, they can, and there are tools that read HTML data from their standard input and render it in a browser. I don't understand the preoccupation with rendering things like this within terminal emulators. We have graphics displays, X11, and can mount anything locally. If I quickly want to view some thumbnails, I'll use feh, or maybe just a graphical file browser. If I want to view an HTML document I'll open that in my web browser. If I want to plot some data I can use gnuplot. None of this is particularly distracting to my workflow. On the contrary, I think there is some value to having command line applications output data that is easy to parse and WYSIWYG, because its strength to me lies in the ease with which you can automate workflows using a shell operating on text data. That's sort of lost when all the data you see is filled with invisible markup. This is already the case to some lesser extent with colors and e.g. ls formatting.
  - aquabeagle 8y ago
    That is how libxo works on FreeBSD: http://juniper.github.io/libxo/libxo-manual.html http://juniper.github.io/libxo/libxo-manual.html
petepete 8y ago
Not an exhaustive list I imagine, but here's the list from pysixel's readme. RLogin (Japanese terminal emulator) http://nanno.dip.jp/softlib/man/rlogin/ http://nanno.dip.jp/softlib/man/rlogin/ tanasinn (Works with firefox) http://github.com/saitoha/tanasinn/ http://github.com/saitoha/tanasinn/ mlterm Works on each of X, win32/cygwin, framebuffer version. http://mlterm.sourceforge.net/ http://mlterm.sourceforge.net/ XTerm (compiled with --enable-sixel option) You should launch xterm with "-ti 340" option. the SIXEL palette is limited to a maximum of 16 colors. http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ DECterm Kermit WRQ Reflection ZSTEM
- leppr 8y ago
  Seems in this list only XTerm and MLTerm[1] are actively maintained. [1]: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mlterm/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/mlterm/

How many terminal emulators can handle sixel? (vt340) Does anyone have a list?

by jopsen 8y ago

How many terminal emulators can handle sixel? (vt340) Does anyone have a list?

As far as I know it's just xterm on desktop. It's fascinating that we have this standard that allows us to build programming environments like notebooks -- without resorting to layering hacks on hacks to make it work on web -- practically crossplatform yet we don't make use of it. At repl.it we've been toying around with adding sixel support for xterm.js and we have a prototype up and people in our community are already building things on it. Here are a few examples: - gnuplot: https://gnuplot.basicer.repl.run/rob https://gnuplot.basicer.repl.run/rob - gif in terminal (python): https://repl.it/talk/share/SPINNING-GLOBE-GIF-WITH-SIXEL-NEW/9139 https://repl.it/talk/share/SPINNING-GLOBE-GIF-WITH-SIXEL-NEW... - connect 4 game (ruby): https://repl.it/talk/share/Connect-4-20-with-better-graphics-and-more-effects/9338 https://repl.it/talk/share/Connect-4-20-with-better-graphics...

jopsen 8y ago
It's also facinating that programs that generate text output do so in a format that's well over 40 years old. What if our CLI programs could output HTML or JSON depending on whether they are piped or printed. Both standards are not good for this, but is VT100 really that great?
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Most terminals use unicode, not ascii, right? Unicode is much younger than 40.
  - nwhm 8y ago
    Unicode isn't an encoding, but most terminals use UTF-8 (check your LANG environment variable), of which ascii is a subset
- amasad 8y ago
  No it's not. It's stable. It's Lindy. Neomania is bad.
- lainga 8y ago
  You're describing Powershell's object-passing.
  - jopsen 8y ago
    I know... But didn't want to think about that. I agree shells are great and PowerShell is confusing. It's merely amazing text is still king.
- boomlinde 8y ago
  > What if our CLI programs could output HTML or JSON depending on whether they are piped or printed. Well, they can, and there are tools that read HTML data from their standard input and render it in a browser. I don't understand the preoccupation with rendering things like this within terminal emulators. We have graphics displays, X11, and can mount anything locally. If I quickly want to view some thumbnails, I'll use feh, or maybe just a graphical file browser. If I want to view an HTML document I'll open that in my web browser. If I want to plot some data I can use gnuplot. None of this is particularly distracting to my workflow. On the contrary, I think there is some value to having command line applications output data that is easy to parse and WYSIWYG, because its strength to me lies in the ease with which you can automate workflows using a shell operating on text data. That's sort of lost when all the data you see is filled with invisible markup. This is already the case to some lesser extent with colors and e.g. ls formatting.
- aquabeagle 8y ago
  That is how libxo works on FreeBSD: http://juniper.github.io/libxo/libxo-manual.html http://juniper.github.io/libxo/libxo-manual.html

petepete 8y ago

Not an exhaustive list I imagine, but here's the list from pysixel's readme. RLogin (Japanese terminal emulator) http://nanno.dip.jp/softlib/man/rlogin/ http://nanno.dip.jp/softlib/man/rlogin/ tanasinn (Works with firefox) http://github.com/saitoha/tanasinn/ http://github.com/saitoha/tanasinn/ mlterm Works on each of X, win32/cygwin, framebuffer version. http://mlterm.sourceforge.net/ http://mlterm.sourceforge.net/ XTerm (compiled with --enable-sixel option) You should launch xterm with "-ti 340" option. the SIXEL palette is limited to a maximum of 16 colors. http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ http://invisible-island.net/xterm/ DECterm Kermit WRQ Reflection ZSTEM

leppr 8y ago
Seems in this list only XTerm and MLTerm[1] are actively maintained. [1]: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mlterm/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/mlterm/