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Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

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Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#21

Post by foob »

This is pretty awesome. I'm a big fan of both SVG animations and terminal recorders, so this is right up my alley. I previously built a small library called svganimator for creating smooth animations between static SVG images [1], used generated SVG animations to help design the Wayback Machine loading animation [2], and also put together a fairly comprehensive comparison of terminal recording solutions [3]. I'll need to update the comparisons to include termtosvg, I can't wait to try it out and see what the file sizes look like.

As others have mentioned, the major issue with SVG animations is that Microsoft doesn't plan to ever include support for them in Edge. This means that you either need to create fallbacks specifically for Microsoft browsers, or to disregard that portion of the market on your website. It's a real shame because SVG/SMIL allows you to create high quality animations which require a fraction of the bandwidth that would be necessary for comparable GIF or video files.

[1] - https://github.com/sangaline/svganimator

[2] - https://intoli.com/blog/designing-the-wayback-machine-loadin...

[3] - https://intoli.com/blog/terminal-recorders/

Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#22

Post by d_ »

foob wrote: post #21

This is pretty awesome. I'm a big fan of both SVG animations and terminal recorders, so this is right up my alley. I previously built a small library called svganimator for creating smooth animations between static SVG images [1], used generated SVG animations to help design the Wayback Machine loading animation [2], and also put together a fairly comprehensive comparison of terminal recording solutions [3]. I'll nee…

> the major issue with SVG animations is that Microsoft doesn't plan to ever include support for them in Edge.

And here I thought the Edge team left behind the mistakes of IE.

Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#23

Post by arendtio »

A few weeks ago I tried to convert one of my asciinema recordings to a SVG with svg-term-cli [1], but the result had big problems with some browsers, so I took the more mainstream gif approach again.

Anybody tried termtosvg with different browsers yet?

[1]: https://github.com/marionebl/svg-term-cli

Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#24

Post by WorldMaker »

d_ wrote: post #22
foob wrote: post #21

This is pretty awesome. I'm a big fan of both SVG animations and terminal recorders, so this is right up my alley. I previously built a small library called svganimator for creating smooth animations between static SVG images [1], used generated SVG animations to help design the Wayback Machine loading animation [2], and also put together a fairly comprehensive comparison of terminal recording solutions [3]. I'll nee…

> the major issue with SVG animations is that Microsoft doesn't plan to ever include support for them in Edge. And here I thought the Edge team left behind the mistakes of IE.

Edge doesn't have an infinite budget, and they say they've tried to prioritize based on how common the standards are found used in the wild and how active the requests on UserVoice are. Doesn't look like there is even currently a tracked UserVoice for it:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor...

Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#25

Post by laurent123456 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #24
d_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the major issue with SVG animations is that Microsoft doesn't plan to ever include support for them in Edge. And here I thought the Edge team left behind the mistakes of IE.

Edge doesn't have an infinite budget, and they say they've tried to prioritize based on how common the standards are found used in the wild and how active the requests on UserVoice are. Doesn't look like there is even currently a tracked UserVoice for it: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor...

It's in there under "SVG+SMIL Animation" but the status is "Not currently planned". Here[0] they say that they consider the feature deprecated.

[0] https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor...

Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#26

Post by swebs »

chrismorgan wrote: post #19

The primary casualty of using SVG animations is IE/Edge support; SMIL is not currently planned: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor... . It would be good to adjust the failure mode so that if SMIL is not supported then at least a meaningful frame (probably the last, though scrolling makes it difficult to decide!) is shown, rather than just a blank rectangle.

Jesus, it's 2018 and they still can't even figure out how to implement animated PNGs? Real browsers had this 10 years ago. What the hell is wrong with Microsoft? Are they really just so incompetent, or is there a more insidious business reason why they don't want more animated formats on the web?

Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#27

Post by foob »

WorldMaker wrote: post #24
d_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the major issue with SVG animations is that Microsoft doesn't plan to ever include support for them in Edge. And here I thought the Edge team left behind the mistakes of IE.

Edge doesn't have an infinite budget, and they say they've tried to prioritize based on how common the standards are found used in the wild and how active the requests on UserVoice are. Doesn't look like there is even currently a tracked UserVoice for it: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor...

It is on UserVoice [1], and it has over two thousand votes there. They've marked that as "sorry, no plans," and they've marked previous issues as "by design" [2]. They use Chrome announcing plans to deprecate SVG animations as their primary justification, but Chrome backtracked on those plans after realizing that there were important use cases that mattered to the community [3].

> In the 15 months since we announced our intention to deprecate and eventually remove SMIL, we’ve heard a variety of opinions from members of the community. We value all of your feedback, and it's clear that there are use cases serviced by SMIL that just don’t have high-fidelity replacements yet. As a result, we’ve decided to suspend our intent to deprecate and take smaller steps toward other options.

I understand that they don't have an infinite budget, but it really seems like they made their mind up here years ago and haven't been interested in listening in the community since then. It's also a bit circular to "prioritize based on how common the standards are found used in the wild" when they're single-handedly responsible for preventing developers from using SVG animations "in the wild" in the first place.

[1] - https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge-dev...

[2] - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor...

[3] - https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-d...

Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#28

Post by OskarS »

foob wrote: post #21

This is pretty awesome. I'm a big fan of both SVG animations and terminal recorders, so this is right up my alley. I previously built a small library called svganimator for creating smooth animations between static SVG images [1], used generated SVG animations to help design the Wayback Machine loading animation [2], and also put together a fairly comprehensive comparison of terminal recording solutions [3]. I'll nee…

Honestly, if you're recording terminal sessions, it's probably fine to not support Edge. I doubt any significant portion of your audience is going to be using it, and even if they do, they're going to be perfectly understanding when you say "sorry, Edge doesn't support SVG animations, use a different browser".

Shitty of Microsoft, though. If they aren't going to support it, it's not going to be widely deployed. I expect better of the new and improved Microsoft.

Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#29

Post by skykooler »

okket wrote: post #2

The example animation looks broken in Safari (including Tech Preview 59), works in Chrome 67 (of course), and in Firefox 61. [Edit: This seems to be a macOS/driver bug affecting only some models]

It also doesn't work in the Windows default browser, but I think that's an Edge case.

Re: Show HN: Termtosvg – Record terminal sessions as SVG animations

#30

Post by tambourine_man »

d_ wrote: post #22
foob wrote: post #21

This is pretty awesome. I'm a big fan of both SVG animations and terminal recorders, so this is right up my alley. I previously built a small library called svganimator for creating smooth animations between static SVG images [1], used generated SVG animations to help design the Wayback Machine loading animation [2], and also put together a fairly comprehensive comparison of terminal recording solutions [3]. I'll nee…

> the major issue with SVG animations is that Microsoft doesn't plan to ever include support for them in Edge. And here I thought the Edge team left behind the mistakes of IE.

That it a bummer. Any thoughts on the feasibility of outputting js canvas instead? And the performance file size tradeoffs
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