3 ms·

Showing graphics using Sixel is an improvement, but is just a hack to get images to show in a text-only interface. You really do want a native image, so why no

by sawka 3y ago

Showing graphics using Sixel is an improvement, but is just a hack to get images to show in a text-only interface. You really do want a native image, so why not get one that you can also right-click and "save as...". The terminal's text interface is amazing, no one wants to mess with that. But when you look at TUI frameworks, they are using text as UI which is not great. Instead of showing a table with dashes and pipes, why not show an HTML table that you can interact with and can copy/paste directly into excel or google sheets?

enriquto 3y ago
> You really do want a native image, so why not get one that you can also right-click and "save as...". This sounds great! At least, nowadays you can take a screenshot of the terminal and crop it as you want. Not sure what would you want the "right-click" to do in a terminal... terminal graphics can be overlaid with text and with other images; where does your image actually begin? Screenshoting and cropping is exactly what you need. The only evident case for right-click+save is when the image comes from a png file. But in that case, why do you want to save it again? You already have the file. > Instead of showing a table with dashes and pipes, why not show an HTML table that you can interact with and can copy/paste directly into excel or google sheets? That would be an amazing feature! Selecting rectangular regions of text in your terminal, instead of whole lines. On the other hand, I feel that excel and google sheets could easily understand a simple table written with dashes and pipes and paste it the right way. There is a huge room for improvement in terminals. However, it is mostly boring compatibility stuff, to implement protocols in other terminals that they were developed in. There are many existing protocols for nice things, like sub-character mouse interaction and image/video support. Sadly, they are not universally implemented along the terminal space.

by sawka 3y ago

enriquto 3y ago

> You really do want a native image, so why not get one that you can also right-click and "save as...". This sounds great! At least, nowadays you can take a screenshot of the terminal and crop it as you want. Not sure what would you want the "right-click" to do in a terminal... terminal graphics can be overlaid with text and with other images; where does your image actually begin? Screenshoting and cropping is exactly what you need. The only evident case for right-click+save is when the image comes from a png file. But in that case, why do you want to save it again? You already have the file. > Instead of showing a table with dashes and pipes, why not show an HTML table that you can interact with and can copy/paste directly into excel or google sheets? That would be an amazing feature! Selecting rectangular regions of text in your terminal, instead of whole lines. On the other hand, I feel that excel and google sheets could easily understand a simple table written with dashes and pipes and paste it the right way. There is a huge room for improvement in terminals. However, it is mostly boring compatibility stuff, to implement protocols in other terminals that they were developed in. There are many existing protocols for nice things, like sub-character mouse interaction and image/video support. Sadly, they are not universally implemented along the terminal space.