3 ms·

Chafa: Terminal Graphics for the 21st Century

228 points by birdculture 11mo ago

joouha 11mo ago
I use chafa extensively, and it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion. I use it as a fallback option for terminals without proper terminal graphics support in my TUI Jupyter client, euporie. There are Python bindings available: https://github.com/GuardKenzie/chafa.py https://github.com/GuardKenzie/chafa.py
- wonger_ 11mo ago
  And JS bindings: https://github.com/hectorm/chafa-wasm https://github.com/hectorm/chafa-wasm And I'm half-working on Rust bindings...
  - hectorm 11mo ago
    Author of the JS bindings here. I also have a browser demo: https://ansi-o-matic.molinero.dev https://ansi-o-matic.molinero.dev
- tasuki 11mo ago
  > and it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion Not sixel or kitty graphics?
  - hecanjog 11mo ago
    What interests me about it is the unicode mosaic output format that looks higher quality than the usual upper half block or braille character approaches without needing to support a special protocol.
  - robot-wrangler 11mo ago
    Setting aside the usual compatibility issues with those things.. neither are available from your buildbot. Also while Jupyter does supports images other notebooking ecosystems may not, and anyway you need a file whereas chafa can work with streams.
  - mmulet 11mo ago
    One of the really cool things about chafa is that it has both sixel and kitty graphic renderers! (and iterm2 images as well) So you can output kitty if the terminal supports it, but fall back to ascii if it doesn’t.
    - tasuki 11mo ago
      Ah, very cool!
- lawlessone 11mo ago
  i'm curious do you work entirely with a terminal and no desktop? Chafa looks cool, i'd feel cool using it when i use a terminal but if really wanted to see an image id just open it in a image viewer.
- Abishek_Muthian 11mo ago
  Have you tried Charmbracelet's bubble tea - https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea
  - nairadithya 11mo ago
    BubbleTea is great, but it doesn't have support for Kitty Graphics. https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea/issues/163 https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea/issues/163
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
n0um3n4 11mo ago
qué chafa!! all jokes aside, this provides infinite posibilities for my obsession with text-based apps/CLI.
- anthk 11mo ago
  For HNers, 'chafa' in Argentinian/Chilean Spanish (and a few more) means tacky, crude, ripoff, low quality.
  - hpjansson 11mo ago
    'tis true.
XorNot 11mo ago
Discovered this recently when I wanted to set my perfect retro feeling company logo onto the MOTD of some hardware so we'd have it on the serial port.
atulvi 11mo ago
Why can't we have proper graphics on terminal? years ago I remember being able to use graphics.h to draw on MS-DOS terminal and print letters on it (text mode).
- d-lisp 11mo ago
  Did you try notcurses ? [0] [0] https://notcurses.com/ https://notcurses.com/
  - aragilar 11mo ago
    notcurses is probably the best option for getting the best you can out of a random terminal (see https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/blob/master/TERMINALS.md https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/blob/master/TERMIN... which details the status of most terminals people use), but the main thing is to choose a decent terminal that meets your needs. I personally use xterm (after using various other terminals, both "modern" and VTE-based), as I'm on Linux, and I need to connect to various devices (e.g. networking gear) where I need a reliable terminal that handles whatever those devices throw at it. The graphical mechanisms that work for me therefore are sixel and tektronic.
  - busfahrer 11mo ago
    Running the included notcurses-demo on any half-modern terminal is really impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4lmMADP1lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4lmMADP1lA
- ilaksh 11mo ago
  Most popular terminals now have support for `kitty` graphics protocol which can smoothly and efficiently render raster images. So chafa is a way to get some backwards compatibility for some types of applications that want to show images but may not support that.
- aragilar 11mo ago
  There are multiple graphics mechanisms on terminals (both real, and the virtual ones that have replaced them), the issue is which ones your terminal supports (probably none, given most terminal/libraries are bad at supporting features that have been around since the 80s), and which libraries you are using to draw them.
duffyjp 11mo ago
I threw together a utility for this with just the half character in 2018, I don't even remember why. https://rubygems.org/gems/barf https://rubygems.org/gems/barf The name does imply the image quality, fyi. My solution is also multithreaded, in Ruby. :D
jazzyjackson 11mo ago
I learned about Chafa when I found a video editor that runs in the command line with keyboard control - vic - it just lets you insert split markers and when you exit the video is sliced up into the portions. I really like the low-fi nature of scrobbling through the video, it has low brain overhead. https://github.com/wong-justin/vic https://github.com/wong-justin/vic
- jbaber 11mo ago
  Wow. Thanks for this recommendation! I have multiple times half-baked something like this using ffmpeg to dump out thumbnails and make cuts.
carterschonwald 11mo ago
If you want some hilarious insanity: t try explaining ascii/terminal rendering to a text llm and see how it struggles
gnabgib 11mo ago
Previously in 2022 (97 points, 31 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32797681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32797681
mmulet 11mo ago
I use chafa in term.everything[0], and I have nothing but good things to say about it! hpjansson is a great maintainer too, if anything even seems like it's wrong with chafa he will chime in with a fix or a suggestion[1] (I'm not the only one he does this with too [2][3]). I would definitely recommend this lib for anyone doing terminal graphics. [0]https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything [1]https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything/issues/5 https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything/issues/5 [2]https://lobste.rs/s/qh6lil/chafa_terminal_graphics_for_21st_century#c_ox9a91 https://lobste.rs/s/qh6lil/chafa_terminal_graphics_for_21st_... [3]https://github.com/wong-justin/vic/issues/1#issue-2586904982 https://github.com/wong-justin/vic/issues/1#issue-2586904982
cherrycreek00 11mo ago
I've been trying for like three hours to get this to show in-line images with w3m. Anyone got a config with that working?
- shiomiru 11mo ago
  w3m doesn't support chafa for inline image display. (You can set a custom w3mimgdisplay command, but it has to speak the same protocol as w3mimgdisplay. If you're feeling adventurous, you can try modifying https://github.com/uobikiemukot/sdump/tree/master/yaimg-sixel https://github.com/uobikiemukot/sdump/tree/master/yaimg-sixe....)
nickdothutton 11mo ago
I'm currently using this for a teams/zoom/meet replacement for people who work in the terminal. Might even make it to a Show HN some day.
- hpjansson 11mo ago
  This sounds amazing. I hope it does!

228 points by birdculture 11mo ago

joouha 11mo ago

I use chafa extensively, and it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion. I use it as a fallback option for terminals without proper terminal graphics support in my TUI Jupyter client, euporie. There are Python bindings available: https://github.com/GuardKenzie/chafa.py https://github.com/GuardKenzie/chafa.py

wonger_ 11mo ago
And JS bindings: https://github.com/hectorm/chafa-wasm https://github.com/hectorm/chafa-wasm And I'm half-working on Rust bindings...
- hectorm 11mo ago
  Author of the JS bindings here. I also have a browser demo: https://ansi-o-matic.molinero.dev https://ansi-o-matic.molinero.dev
tasuki 11mo ago
> and it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion Not sixel or kitty graphics?
- hecanjog 11mo ago
  What interests me about it is the unicode mosaic output format that looks higher quality than the usual upper half block or braille character approaches without needing to support a special protocol.
- robot-wrangler 11mo ago
  Setting aside the usual compatibility issues with those things.. neither are available from your buildbot. Also while Jupyter does supports images other notebooking ecosystems may not, and anyway you need a file whereas chafa can work with streams.
- mmulet 11mo ago
  One of the really cool things about chafa is that it has both sixel and kitty graphic renderers! (and iterm2 images as well) So you can output kitty if the terminal supports it, but fall back to ascii if it doesn’t.
  - tasuki 11mo ago
    Ah, very cool!
lawlessone 11mo ago
i'm curious do you work entirely with a terminal and no desktop? Chafa looks cool, i'd feel cool using it when i use a terminal but if really wanted to see an image id just open it in a image viewer.
Abishek_Muthian 11mo ago
Have you tried Charmbracelet's bubble tea - https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea
- nairadithya 11mo ago
  BubbleTea is great, but it doesn't have support for Kitty Graphics. https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea/issues/163 https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea/issues/163

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

n0um3n4 11mo ago

qué chafa!! all jokes aside, this provides infinite posibilities for my obsession with text-based apps/CLI.

anthk 11mo ago
For HNers, 'chafa' in Argentinian/Chilean Spanish (and a few more) means tacky, crude, ripoff, low quality.
- hpjansson 11mo ago
  'tis true.

XorNot 11mo ago

Discovered this recently when I wanted to set my perfect retro feeling company logo onto the MOTD of some hardware so we'd have it on the serial port.

atulvi 11mo ago

Why can't we have proper graphics on terminal? years ago I remember being able to use graphics.h to draw on MS-DOS terminal and print letters on it (text mode).

d-lisp 11mo ago
Did you try notcurses ? [0] [0] https://notcurses.com/ https://notcurses.com/
- aragilar 11mo ago
  notcurses is probably the best option for getting the best you can out of a random terminal (see https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/blob/master/TERMINALS.md https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/blob/master/TERMIN... which details the status of most terminals people use), but the main thing is to choose a decent terminal that meets your needs. I personally use xterm (after using various other terminals, both "modern" and VTE-based), as I'm on Linux, and I need to connect to various devices (e.g. networking gear) where I need a reliable terminal that handles whatever those devices throw at it. The graphical mechanisms that work for me therefore are sixel and tektronic.
- busfahrer 11mo ago
  Running the included notcurses-demo on any half-modern terminal is really impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4lmMADP1lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4lmMADP1lA
ilaksh 11mo ago
Most popular terminals now have support for `kitty` graphics protocol which can smoothly and efficiently render raster images. So chafa is a way to get some backwards compatibility for some types of applications that want to show images but may not support that.
aragilar 11mo ago
There are multiple graphics mechanisms on terminals (both real, and the virtual ones that have replaced them), the issue is which ones your terminal supports (probably none, given most terminal/libraries are bad at supporting features that have been around since the 80s), and which libraries you are using to draw them.

duffyjp 11mo ago

I threw together a utility for this with just the half character in 2018, I don't even remember why. https://rubygems.org/gems/barf https://rubygems.org/gems/barf The name does imply the image quality, fyi. My solution is also multithreaded, in Ruby. :D

jazzyjackson 11mo ago

I learned about Chafa when I found a video editor that runs in the command line with keyboard control - vic - it just lets you insert split markers and when you exit the video is sliced up into the portions. I really like the low-fi nature of scrobbling through the video, it has low brain overhead. https://github.com/wong-justin/vic https://github.com/wong-justin/vic

jbaber 11mo ago
Wow. Thanks for this recommendation! I have multiple times half-baked something like this using ffmpeg to dump out thumbnails and make cuts.

carterschonwald 11mo ago

If you want some hilarious insanity: t try explaining ascii/terminal rendering to a text llm and see how it struggles

gnabgib 11mo ago

Previously in 2022 (97 points, 31 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32797681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32797681

mmulet 11mo ago

I use chafa in term.everything[0], and I have nothing but good things to say about it! hpjansson is a great maintainer too, if anything even seems like it's wrong with chafa he will chime in with a fix or a suggestion[1] (I'm not the only one he does this with too [2][3]). I would definitely recommend this lib for anyone doing terminal graphics. [0]https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything [1]https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything/issues/5 https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything/issues/5 [2]https://lobste.rs/s/qh6lil/chafa_terminal_graphics_for_21st_century#c_ox9a91 https://lobste.rs/s/qh6lil/chafa_terminal_graphics_for_21st_... [3]https://github.com/wong-justin/vic/issues/1#issue-2586904982 https://github.com/wong-justin/vic/issues/1#issue-2586904982

cherrycreek00 11mo ago

I've been trying for like three hours to get this to show in-line images with w3m. Anyone got a config with that working?

shiomiru 11mo ago
w3m doesn't support chafa for inline image display. (You can set a custom w3mimgdisplay command, but it has to speak the same protocol as w3mimgdisplay. If you're feeling adventurous, you can try modifying https://github.com/uobikiemukot/sdump/tree/master/yaimg-sixel https://github.com/uobikiemukot/sdump/tree/master/yaimg-sixe....)

nickdothutton 11mo ago

I'm currently using this for a teams/zoom/meet replacement for people who work in the terminal. Might even make it to a Show HN some day.

hpjansson 11mo ago
This sounds amazing. I hope it does!