sixel-tmux VS iterm2

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.

What terminal emulator are you using? I have noticed that the latest release of iterm2 has problems rendering glyphs (see this discussion and links therein). I too am having problems displaying any nerd font icon due to the aforementioned.

Found the bug report related: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/9372

2 things to note:

- This bug has 12 +1s, which suggests it was never very widespread (I could be wrong); and

- Big Sur was 2 major releases ago.

Like I mentioned, I never saw this issue, and had never heard of it despite the fact that probably about half the people I work with use Macs, and I believe nearly all of them use iTerm2.

I had trouble getting the tmux setup working in iterm.

The main page suggests -CC, but the best practices wiki[0] says to use `-CC new -A -s main`, but this causes iterm to warn that a session is already started and doesn't actually create or reattach like I expected. I also had trouble getting the tmux select-layout to work: when I tried it all my panes just exited with an error. I would like to have iterm behave similarly to Kitty's tall layout[1] which I think is the same thing as tmux's main layout, but haven't figured out how to make it work. Anybody have tips on making these wek?

[0]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/wikis/tmux-Integration-...

The latest version (v3.4.16) was released 3 months ago.

https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/tags/v3.4.16

See https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/6167

I just found this, the synchronized updates spec from iTerm2: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/wikis/synchronized-upda...

Googling for it, it seems some other terminals implement this as well.

According to https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/8827, this occurs when "reporting is enabled". This means that mouse clicks are reported as special events to the application running in the terminal rather than being handled by the terminal emulator itself. According to https://iterm2.com/documentation-preferences-profiles-terminal.html, you can temporarily disable it by holding down Option.

I take it that the main at the end of the command in this screenshot is the name of the session?