Show HN: Sixel-tmux displays graphics even if your terminal has no Sixel support

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  • sixel-tmux

    sixel-tmux is a fork of tmux, with just one goal: having the most reliable support of graphics

    > Thanks for being understanding.

    No problem. I know maintaining forks isn't an ideal thing to do and support should ideally land upstream.

    > I believe it's unfair that Linux users have fewer options than us Windows users, due to some people thinking sixel is "uncool".

    I think the README page of termite pretty much sums up why getting involved in VTE, or any GNOME project for that matter, is a bad decision.

    https://github.com/thestinger/termite/blob/master/README.rst...

    I'm just a random spectator but perhaps your efforts might've been better spent on an independent terminal project (like Alacritty, for example) rather than trying to get features merged upstream in a GNOME project.

    > However, the situation seems to be changing: check the discussion in: https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/pull/1 and you'll see there may be some light at the end of the tunnel!

    Yeah, I read the entire conversation and if sixel support lands in tmux upstream, it would indeed be good news.

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  • termite

    Discontinued Termite is obsoleted by Alacritty. Termite was a keyboard-centric VTE-based terminal, aimed at use within a window manager with tiling and/or tabbing support.

    > Thanks for being understanding.

    No problem. I know maintaining forks isn't an ideal thing to do and support should ideally land upstream.

    > I believe it's unfair that Linux users have fewer options than us Windows users, due to some people thinking sixel is "uncool".

    I think the README page of termite pretty much sums up why getting involved in VTE, or any GNOME project for that matter, is a bad decision.

    https://github.com/thestinger/termite/blob/master/README.rst...

    I'm just a random spectator but perhaps your efforts might've been better spent on an independent terminal project (like Alacritty, for example) rather than trying to get features merged upstream in a GNOME project.

    > However, the situation seems to be changing: check the discussion in: https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/pull/1 and you'll see there may be some light at the end of the tunnel!

    Yeah, I read the entire conversation and if sixel support lands in tmux upstream, it would indeed be good news.

  • CuteXterm

    Sensible defaults for xterm in the 21st century

    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.

  • sixvid

    Simple script for animated GIF viewing using sixels

    > 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!

  • iterm2

  • docker-c64

    C64 emulator running in docker

    I tinkered a bit with sixel support for my "C64 emulator in the terminal" (https://github.com/floooh/docker-c64), but unfortunately it's way too slow to get anywhere near 'realtime' output (30fps or better).

    Here's the (abandondend) sixel-version source code, only with two colors, more color planes would drastically reduce the performance.

    https://github.com/floooh/chips-test/blob/master/examples/as...

    I really wish there was a decent pixel-framebuffer standard for terminals (with at least the same performance as curses). This would allow a lot of fun "terminal applications" (e.g. everything that used to run in VGA Mode 13h).

  • chips-test

    Tests and sample code for https://github.com/floooh/chips

    I tinkered a bit with sixel support for my "C64 emulator in the terminal" (https://github.com/floooh/docker-c64), but unfortunately it's way too slow to get anywhere near 'realtime' output (30fps or better).

    Here's the (abandondend) sixel-version source code, only with two colors, more color planes would drastically reduce the performance.

    https://github.com/floooh/chips-test/blob/master/examples/as...

    I really wish there was a decent pixel-framebuffer standard for terminals (with at least the same performance as curses). This would allow a lot of fun "terminal applications" (e.g. everything that used to run in VGA Mode 13h).

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  • notcurses

    blingful character graphics/TUI library. definitely not curses.

    The issue with Kitty is that its graphics protocol is not widespread yet, so some of the CLI/terminal programs OP uses that can do graphics output may only support sixel. But yea, personally looking forward to Foot terminal implementing one of the fancier graphics protocols, even if it feels more like a toy at the moment (until they are used more). But seriously running the notcurses[0] graphics test with a terminal supporting the kitty graphics protocol is sex, just like the program itself says.

    [0] https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses

  • Windows Terminal

    The new Windows Terminal and the original Windows console host, all in the same place!

    > 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!

  • mpv

    🎥 Command line video player

    > 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!

  • xserver-SIXEL

    A X server implementation for SIXEL-featured terminals, based on @pelya's Xsdl kdrive server(https://github.com/pelya/xserver-xsdl)

    > 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!

  • matplotlib-sixel

    A sixel graphics backend for matplotlib

    > it feels more like a toy at the moment

    It's not! Gnuplot in the terminal open many new use cases, such as examining data on remote hosts with scripts without even bothering to scp the data first.

    Also, Notebooks in the terminal is wonderful!

    Check https://github.com/koppa/matplotlib-sixel

  • libsixel

    A C language SIXEL encoder/decoder implementation, forked from saitoha/libsixel after @saitoha vanished. Receives security patches, accepts PR's filed preferably here but also at saitoha/libsixel. (by libsixel)

    First, stop accusing me of being emotional.

    Second, tell me why 24 bits colors is insufficient for drawing into the terminals?

    > then we have nothing technical to discuss

    I think you may be right there.

    > starting with a baseline of a broken format that doesn't work

    Look at that https://github.com/hackerb9/sixvid and that https://github.com/libsixel/libsixel and tell me precisely what doesn't work, in your own words.

  • mosh-windows-wrappers

    Discontinued Windows native port of Mobile Shell (mosh).

    Although there's no mosh-server, some people actually ported the mosh-client[1] to Windows using C#. This client is currently being used in the popular Fluent Terminal for Windows[2].

    [1]: https://github.com/jumptrading/mosh-windows-wrappers

  • FluentTerminal

    A Terminal Emulator based on UWP and web technologies.

  • libsixel

    A SIXEL encoder/decoder implementation derived from kmiya's sixel (https://github.com/saitoha/sixel).

  • indent-rainbow

    > Some people like it bold, some people like the color to be intensified instead when using `SGR 1` (which is responsible for making font intensified/bold).

    Indeed, and the right solution is a config options, just as was done in Windows Terminal, since nobody is wrong: it's just a matter of preferences!

    The right technical way of handling preferences is offering more choices to the users, with some sane default that will satisfy most users.

    Personally, I love italics (I use vim and I want comments shown in italics, and I make an heavy use of bold+italics, cf https://github.com/csdvrx/indent-rainbow/blob/main/after/syn... ) but I would not want to force this option to people who don't want italics, for their own reasons that are none of my business (actually, if they reasons are good enough, it may cause me to change the default choices, but I would never remove the user freedom to make such choices in the first place)

    IMHO that's the key difference between MacOS/iOS/Gnome/new school linux on one side (fewer freedoms) and Windows/KDE/old school Linux (more freedoms)

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