sixel-tmux VS FFmpeg-SIXEL

It's not really that strange that tmux doesn't support sixels. It's quite a bit more complicated and resource-intensive than ANSI Escape Codes or ncurses.

It might be fine for local[1] multiplexing but over the network it is not as fast as even something like VNC or RDP.

[1] https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/

After having spent too much time trying to get the simple https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/ features into mainline tmux (last November https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/3753), maybe it'd be easier to jump ship as use zellij?

Could anyone offer recommendations on "riced" zellij configuations, or just a demo where it shows doing with (say charts of disk usage per folder), watching a movie with mpv + keeping a vim to type on?

Your approach looks very sound!

A fork of terminfo may be needed if the description of modern terminal capabilities can't be added -- or if old and deprecated attributes repurposed for that job (like in your padding example): if you're automating the correction/creation of terminfos in ~/, IMHO, it may be better to piggyback on tic as much as possible.

Anyway, to backport modern terminal descriptions to legacy programs, creating correct binary terminfos in ~/.terminfo seems the best practice. You can also invent new TERM. When I wanted to have italics etc about everywhere, personally that's just what I did for sixel-tmux: https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/?tab=readme-ov-file#ste... : just declare a new $TERM you know to be right, and use that in the apps that let you use a little logic in their configuration file

I do that in my .vimrc:

   " If Vim doesn't know the escape codes to switch to italic

You can have that functionality integrated within tmux with https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/ : if you terminal doesn't support sixels, you'll at least see something close to the picture they represent.

Then of course it's not pixel-perfect unless you make your terminal very large (like 800x240 instead of 80x24) but something being better than nothing, I'd argue it's for the better if all you can do is 80x24 with no pictures otherwise.

sixel-tmux can help you have both: https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/

See also rant[1] of sixel-tmux author.

> It's 2021, and we should be able to do litterate programming in the console, with full graphical support.

Yeah. We are stuck cosplaying computers from the sixties.

What's even funnier, even if you find a modern terminal emulator that supports features like ligatures, graphics, emoji etc. you still will be blocked by tmux. Sure - not everyone needs tmux. If you never work on remote machines, you can live without it.

But I work on remote machines all the time. I also use Kakoune text editor that defers window management to external tools (WM or tmux, but to be honest, tmux is much better). Zellij is more of r/unixporn bait than usable tool for now. So I'm stuck with text only interface.

[1]: https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/blob/main/RANTS.md

> Some terminal emulators have support for images, which fit most of the use cases here but not the one I described.

That what sixel-tmux is for, when you're in a hurry and needs images with your current terminal emulator: https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux

Maybe tmux-sixel does that tmux sixel

If you want some crazy shit like sixels or italics and ligatures, try msys2 that's what I've used for the screenshot. The only thing comparable on Linux in term of features is xterm and, that's another story.

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.