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Never played with WP Unix that much, but the notion that their printer driver system could be adapted to terminal output doesn't seem surprising: it could print

Never played with WP Unix that much, but the notion that their printer driver system could be adapted to terminal output doesn't seem surprising: it could print that image on dot matrix printers speaking several different "printer control language" variants, some of which required some ingenious hacks. Terminal graphics fit quite well within that family. WP also had pretty good support for the early laser printers, which had a wide range of ways to tell them to do stuff. Some wanted bitmaps, some built their own and you had to sent them fonts; etc. It was UGLY. IIRC they even had some drivers for optical type setter things, the old stuff that used thermal paper. Not sure of those made it to version 5 era.

taviso 4y ago
It's not surprising that it's possible, sixels are basically just a canvas. It's that they've always been a novelty, very rarely used or supported. Yet somehow they made it into a commercial product in 1992 -- that's surprising! I think sixels are seeing some resurgence today, terminals are fast enough now to use it to render video. I wonder if GNU ls will add ls --thumbnails :)
acomjean 4y ago
Oh yeah, because it was a MSDOS (or unix) program, it had a lot of printer drivers built it, the OS not providing those. I remember working for the Government and having to use carbon paper in the 1990s, which meant using the "daisy wheel" printer[1]. Somehow I selected the wrong printer, and every line printed backwards. Strange times. I don't think this sixel graphics would have printed.. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_wheel_printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_wheel_printing
- anthk 4y ago
  Almost any printer supported PostScript and a parallel port. On Unix you could cat a PS file (supported since groff) to the parallel port at /dev and you were done. Today you can do similar hacks with netcat, the printing port and PDF files.
  - h2odragon 4y ago
    Very few non-Apple printers spoke Postscript, certainly at the beginning of the laser printer era. It was an extra cost option available for some printers, which was only bought by people using Apple or the few Unix freaks. And presumably Don Lancaster.
therealcamino 4y ago
If you read the sixel Wikipedia page, it sounds like sixel actually originated as a format to drive DEC's dot matrix printers. So if WP had an LA210 driver, maybe they were most of the way there already.

taviso 4y ago

It's not surprising that it's possible, sixels are basically just a canvas. It's that they've always been a novelty, very rarely used or supported. Yet somehow they made it into a commercial product in 1992 -- that's surprising! I think sixels are seeing some resurgence today, terminals are fast enough now to use it to render video. I wonder if GNU ls will add ls --thumbnails :)

acomjean 4y ago

Oh yeah, because it was a MSDOS (or unix) program, it had a lot of printer drivers built it, the OS not providing those. I remember working for the Government and having to use carbon paper in the 1990s, which meant using the "daisy wheel" printer[1]. Somehow I selected the wrong printer, and every line printed backwards. Strange times. I don't think this sixel graphics would have printed.. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_wheel_printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_wheel_printing

anthk 4y ago
Almost any printer supported PostScript and a parallel port. On Unix you could cat a PS file (supported since groff) to the parallel port at /dev and you were done. Today you can do similar hacks with netcat, the printing port and PDF files.
- h2odragon 4y ago
  Very few non-Apple printers spoke Postscript, certainly at the beginning of the laser printer era. It was an extra cost option available for some printers, which was only bought by people using Apple or the few Unix freaks. And presumably Don Lancaster.

therealcamino 4y ago

If you read the sixel Wikipedia page, it sounds like sixel actually originated as a format to drive DEC's dot matrix printers. So if WP had an LA210 driver, maybe they were most of the way there already.