CuteXterm VS libsixel

> Yeah... xterm with a few tweaks (and some pruning) would still be best for me.

Check https://github.com/csdvrx/CuteXterm for my bag of tricks :)

xterm offers the best emulation, period. The developer is reactive and maintain high quality standards. The only real issues for me are the lack of configurable shortcuts, and ligatures. wezterm is a good option if you need these, and don't depend on xterm perfect emulation.

> Most emulate an xterm, which didn't have support for graphics

Start your xterm with the right flags and it will.

If you want a premade configuration, see https://github.com/csdvrx/CuteXterm

See my rant on https://github.com/csdvrx/cuteXterm

> Surely you need AHK because Windows is less configurable

No, because it lets me do remap like having Caps be both Control and Esc - and I do the same with Enter being both Control when used with another key, and Enter alone. My Alt keys are Alt keys when used with another key, or Home/End when used alone.

> How are you using terminals in Windows? Like you want to SSH from a fresh install, what do I do?

Install openssh from the windows settings (check https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrati...)

I'd recommend the latest Windows terminal from the Microsoft store, or mintty from msys2, but that's just for comfort :)

> I find Linux superior here, but interested to learn why you're the opposite; maybe I'm doing it wrong

I like sixels, so I prefer mintty, but even without sixels, I find the Windows experience better: I want cute fonts with ligatures in my terminal. I want proper support of bold, underline, italic. I want multiple tabs. I want to map key actions to everything - like, I want my terminal to change its color profile and font with just 1 key.

That's very hard on Linux. That's easy on Windows.

https://github.com/csdvrx/cuteXterm#why-did-you-make-cutexte...

If I was feeling playful, I'd point you to https://github.com/csdvrx/cuteXterm and grab some popcorn while you turn red and pretend it doesn't matter and we could have a fun debate.

Apologies for misgendering you. My opinion that you come off like a windows fangirl was mostly due to the other rant you linked in the sixel-tmux rant: https://github.com/csdvrx/cutexterm#wait-i-thought-people-sa...

Here you mention some other things unrelated to terminals, and I was mostly addressing those. It seems to me you want a specific type of experience on Linux, but you can't get that, so therefore dismiss the merits of Linux. I think a lot of your impressions on Linux come from using an X11 based setup instead of Wayland. Completely different beasts, and I think a lot of your grievances would be solved by the latter.

For me, I cannot go back to Windows, ethical reasons aside: Sway on Wayland is perfect for me, and it's what I want out of my computing experience.

I actually agree with a lot that is written in those rants, particularly the VTE and gnome terminal situation. It's just your comments on windows vs linux came across as very personal imo, so I suppose I have retorted here with also a somewhat personal rant.

Also, I don't think either platform has many good terminal choices. Besides mintty, I don't think there are that many good (platform exclusive) terminal emulators on Windows. And on Linux, Foot is one of the few that meets my criteria, including top tier Sixel support (though Wezterm meets my criteria too if it wasn't so slow, hopefully it gets faster). But, for example, I could never really like mintty if I was forced to use Windows, because it lacks features I want.

What I'm trying to say: different needs, different use cases, different tastes. Sorry that my original rant came off so negatively to you and that I wasn't able to convey this point I was trying to make.

Library you can use to generate these images:

https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel

Plenty of links to other projects.

Sixels are pixels and enjoy a wide support due to how old it is.

Kitty protocol is PNG or primitives - which BTW would make it great for a GUI library.

Different tools for different needs, but if you are going for a wide support you want something simple that doesn't have 5 different types you have to separately implement and test:

> d: Direct (the data is transmitted within the escape code itself)

> f: A simple file (regular files only, not named pipes or similar)

> t: A temporary file, the terminal emulator will delete the file after reading the pixel data. For security reasons the terminal emulator should only delete the file if it is in a known temporary directory, such as /tmp, /dev/shm, TMPDIR env var if present and any platform specific temporary directories and the file has the string tty-graphics-protocol in its full file path.

> s: A shared memory object, which on POSIX systems is a POSIX shared memory object and on Windows is a Named shared memory object. The terminal emulator must read the data from the memory object and then unlink and close it on POSIX and just close it on Windows.

> What nonsense, it takes literally 15 lines of code without using anything beyond the standard library to write a client

Conveniently taking a preencoded PNG and assuming away the necessary queries of supported protocol:

> Since a client has no a-priori knowledge of whether it shares a filesystem/shared memory with the terminal emulator, it can send an id with the control data, using the i key (which can be an arbitrary positive integer up to 4294967295, it must not be zero).

> for the kitty graphics protocol. I challenge you to match that for sixel

https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel/tree/master/perl

    use Image::LibSIXEL;

Also:

https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel

contains img2sixel, which lets you dump images to the terminal. It can also do animated GIFs.

Video:

https://github.com/saitoha/FFmpeg-SIXEL

GUI apps:

https://github.com/saitoha/SDL1.2-SIXEL

and more, linked from the libsixel repository.

Not sure of Terminal emulator capabilities on Apple devices, but thanks to https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel , several applications, including emacs very much support image output in terminals.

You don't have multi-colored terminal output? Even legacy systems have long had Sixel support.

> 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