FFmpeg-SIXEL VS 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.

> I don’t see why sixels couldn’t work.

Sixels will work: they are fast enough to allow youtube video playback !!!

https://github.com/saitoha/FFmpeg-SIXEL/blob/sixel/README.md

But the problem is NOT THE FORMAT, the problem is the lack of tooling. links and w3m are among the rare text browsers that can display images in the console.

It's just a matter of the browser sending the image to something in some format, but if that hasn't be thought about as a possibility (say, for text reflow issues) it's going to be far more complicated than just adding a new format, as you will have to work both on say the text reflow issues (ex: how do you select the size of the placeholder, when expressed in characters?), and the picture display.

Personally, I do not care much about sixels, kitty or iterm format - all I want is to see some kind of support.

Yes, it would be better if that support was for the option that has the greatest chance of succeeding, but even that is a second concern: in the worst case, we can write transcoders to whatever format people prefer!

But when there is no "input" to transcode, you have a much bigger problem!

> an off the shelf ASCII plotting library probably involves less custom tooling

With a terminal like msys2 or xterm, no custom tooling is required: just use the regular gnuplot after doing the export for the desired resolution, font, and font size.

gnuplot is far more standard than plotting library that often require special Unicode fonts on top of requiring you to use their specific format.

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