3 ms·

Are We Sixel Yet?

• nikemater 5y ago
  yes
• stevenhuang 5y ago
  > SIXEL is one of image formats for printer and terminal imaging introduced by Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). Its data scheme is represented as a terminal-friendly escape sequence. So if you want to view a SIXEL image file, all you have to do is "cat" it to your terminal https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel
  • sph 5y ago
    I wonder if a terminal protocol invented in the mid 80s to send graphics to dot-matrix printers is still a good idea four decades later. How well does it deal with > 8 bit colours and very high resolutions?
    • smasher164 5y ago
      Most terminals don’t support > 8 bit, so this is less about having a cutting-edge graphics protocol in the terminal, but more about having a standardized, backwards-compatible protocol that can feasibly be implemented by most terminal emulators.
• dusted 5y ago
  Why would you look at that! The best terminal emulator (xterm) has this feature :)
• xchaotic 5y ago
  Looks like iTerm2 supports this already. Where can I read more about the format and the use cases? I’m already thinking of terminal based graphical RPG game…
  • smasher164 5y ago
    There are libraries in most languages to output sixel graphics, however libsixel (https://saitoha.github.io/libsixel/ https://saitoha.github.io/libsixel/) is a popular one written in C. There are some interesting use-cases shown on that page. These will abstract away the escape sequences and allow you to pass them a raw bitmap.