blink VS xserver-SIXEL

> Consider offering APE for x64 but then still producing ARM binaries the old fashioned way.

The recent version of cosmopolitan generates ARM binaries for Linux and MacOS (https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan#arm; mode aarch64). There is also blink that provides the x86-64 emulation layer for (APE and other) binaries on a variety of platforms (https://github.com/jart/blink).

Would love a second pair of eyes on the powerpc64le JIT, since it partially works but hangs on some tests. https://github.com/jart/blink/issues/17

I've never used it, but https://github.com/jart/blink is pretty much that. It's tiny and:

> We regularly test that Blink is able run x86-64-linux binaries on the following platforms:

> Linux (x86, ARM, RISC-V, MIPS, PowerPC, s390x)

> macOS (x86, ARM)

> FreeBSD

> OpenBSD

> Cygwin

I wonder if blink could be used as a lightweight sandbox. Looking at PR46[0], it seems sandboxing is not one of the current features, but it would be cool to have a way to run arbitrary code (e.g: Python) in a sandboxed environment. Even cooler if you could limit the amount of memory/CPU used.

[0]: https://github.com/jart/blink/pull/46#pullrequestreview-1264...

https://github.com/jart/blink/issues/8 Porting to webassembly

If you really want crazy, run `xterm -ti 340`, then run run an X server from the xserver-sixel repository <https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-SIXEL> in it. Now y ou can run as many terminal emulators, complete with real truetype fonts and all the colors you could want, inside the one terminal. Use a tiling window manager and you’ll be able to avoid using tmux entirely.

There's a X with sixel support: https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-sixel

I played with this before, and I could use X11 within a mlterm terminal.

I should try to recompile it with cosmopolitan to have a single X server binary both for Windows and Linux

What you do is run `xterm -ti vt340`. If your xterm was compiled with SIXEL support, this will enable it. (You can test it by running something simple like `gnuplot -e "set terminal sixelgd; set key bmargin center horizontal; plot [-5pi:5pi] [-5:5] real(tan(x)/atan(x)), 1/x"`.)

Now run Xsixel (from <https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-sixel>) to run an X server that outputs to sixel graphics. In that X server you can run any program you would like, and its graphical output will be converted to sixels, printed to stdout, given to xterm, and then xterm will draw them.

Job done!

See <https://saitoha.github.io/libsixel/> for more information and tools, along with lots of screenshots.

There's a version of X for these terminals: https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-sixel

You could probably do something like run X on Sixel for terminals that support Sixel.

> unfortunately it's way too slow to get anywhere near 'realtime' output (30fps or better).

That's not due to sixels. Check out the sixel nyan cat: https://github.com/hackerb9/sixvid

Look at the FPS indicator in the bottom. It was pointed to me in https://github.com/microsoft/Terminal/issues/448#issuecommen...

The issue may be in your code.

I think I have similar performance issues, as the glyph selection process could be more optimized.

Derasterized is mostly Jart work (who is best known here for her work on Cosmopolitan), we were mostly interested in quality.

Reducing the set of glyph to something that could benefit from optimizations could help.

> I really wish there was a decent pixel-framebuffer standard for terminals (with at least the same performance as ncurses)

Sixel performance is quite decent: personally, I can play videos in my terminal.

Try MPV on mintty: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2183

I have also played with a X server rendering over sixel, no performance issue: https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-SIXEL

When sixel support is added to Windows Terminal, I may update it, because it would be fun to have one tab to run stuff!