4 ms·

Shouldn't you just use a web browser or a GUI at some point, if you're trying to do graphics? Adding bitmaps seems like feature creep, muddying the whole purpos

Shouldn't you just use a web browser or a GUI at some point, if you're trying to do graphics? Adding bitmaps seems like feature creep, muddying the whole purpose and appeal of the terminal. Next you'll want accessibility, alt text for blind readers, DPI awareness, responsive scaling on different screens, etc.

IshKebab 3y ago
I don't think so. There are plenty of terminal based programs that would clearly benefit from proper graphics. And doing it in the terminal means you don't have to set up a second connection, e.g. when you're using SSH. That said it's disappointing that the best we can do is Sixel, a hilariously inefficient and ancient format.
JdeBP 3y ago
If this is feature creep at all, this is very old feature creep. It happened in 1981, when the ability to do graphics, actually available on some specialized terminals from the decade before, became mainstream in the world of character mode terminals, when DEC put Sixel and ReGIS into its VT range. It has been in XTerm since the 20th century, and terminal emulators for MS/PC/DR-DOS like Reflection gained Sixel support somewhere around 1989. Don't be fooled into thinking that "the terminal" is what one can do on the kernel virtual terminals of Linux, FreeBSD, or SCO Xenix. The reality is that the massive reinvention wave of the 1990s and 2000s has actually lost you functionality that was in real, hardware, terminals and contemporary terminal emulation programs of the 1980s, and given those who never lived it a very blinkered idea of terminal functionality based upon 1960s TeleType terminals that was a little outdated even when Unix itself was invented.
gary_0 3y ago
I agree we should tread carefully regarding feature creep, but it's already very common to display graphical data in the terminal with ASCII art or Unicode. Adding basic bitmaps would remove the need for those hacks. Convenient terminal tools already exist for viewing formatted text like Markdown or HTML, or viewing binary data like ELF files, or showing live dashboards like htop... but images still require launching a separate application. And this is all data that you might produce while working solely within the terminal--only to have to visit GUI land to see what's in a PNG file. It's a pretty obvious gap.

IshKebab 3y ago

I don't think so. There are plenty of terminal based programs that would clearly benefit from proper graphics. And doing it in the terminal means you don't have to set up a second connection, e.g. when you're using SSH. That said it's disappointing that the best we can do is Sixel, a hilariously inefficient and ancient format.

JdeBP 3y ago

If this is feature creep at all, this is very old feature creep. It happened in 1981, when the ability to do graphics, actually available on some specialized terminals from the decade before, became mainstream in the world of character mode terminals, when DEC put Sixel and ReGIS into its VT range. It has been in XTerm since the 20th century, and terminal emulators for MS/PC/DR-DOS like Reflection gained Sixel support somewhere around 1989. Don't be fooled into thinking that "the terminal" is what one can do on the kernel virtual terminals of Linux, FreeBSD, or SCO Xenix. The reality is that the massive reinvention wave of the 1990s and 2000s has actually lost you functionality that was in real, hardware, terminals and contemporary terminal emulation programs of the 1980s, and given those who never lived it a very blinkered idea of terminal functionality based upon 1960s TeleType terminals that was a little outdated even when Unix itself was invented.

gary_0 3y ago

I agree we should tread carefully regarding feature creep, but it's already very common to display graphical data in the terminal with ASCII art or Unicode. Adding basic bitmaps would remove the need for those hacks. Convenient terminal tools already exist for viewing formatted text like Markdown or HTML, or viewing binary data like ELF files, or showing live dashboards like htop... but images still require launching a separate application. And this is all data that you might produce while working solely within the terminal--only to have to visit GUI land to see what's in a PNG file. It's a pretty obvious gap.