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

Have you read this issue? It goes more into detail about the issues with sixel: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/terminal-wg/specifications/-/...

If these issues keep coming up, and you keep saying "sixel isn't broken" then we have nothing technical to discuss and it's going off into emotional rant territory. You have to respond to the actual technical concerns. In addition to all those things, the restriction to only paletted images makes it so I personally won't use it, it cannot be used to do any kind of accurate graphics. If you wanted to work on a new protocol that wasn't broken, I think that would be great too.

Also I think you are making more erroneous and emotional arguments when you say these things:

>And I question the motives of people associated with a project whose official stance is that it's acceptable to plan technical hurdles to prevent people from using themes

This is misinformation, GNOME is not preventing people from using themes. I can go into more detail if you like.

>I have no interest in wasting hours writing then submitting code to people who have put into writing the reasons why they are playing the clock against sixel support (as if I couldn't have read between the lines...), and who have said previously they would use their positions to veto the inclusion.

You don't need to submit any code, you could produce a fork as you already have done. Then once that's done, you could send it to someone else who could get it cleaned up for submission, if you were interested. Please don't fixate on fighting someone or arguing with one person's statements when the actual state of the project contradicts that.

>Don't be so focused on one format. There needs to be a foot in the door, after which other formats can be added. It's just a bootstrapping problem.

This doesn't make sense, the issue here seems to be the sixel protocol itself, and getting a foot in the door won't help when the format itself is broken. You would need to go back to square one in any case to design a new protocol. I think it's good to have a project that can convert between the different formats, but starting with a baseline of a broken format that doesn't work is just going to ensure that everything stays broken.

Also, using sixel to display animations seems like an extremely bad idea. You'll always get horrible performance that way. That to me seems just like it's growing towards a really bad and outdated reinvention of an X11 or RDP-style protocol. I'd say it's a mistake to pursue that.

>Maybe that will encourage the VTE team to do what the users want?

I posted a link to it, but VTE already has started adding support for Sixel.

> 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...

Wow, this confirms a lot of my impressions:

>> In 2012, we submitted a tiny patch exposing the APIs needed for the keyboard text selection, hints mode and other features. Despite support from multiple other projects, the patch was rejected. It's now almost a decade later and no progress has been made. There is no implementation of these kinds of features in VTE and it's unlikely they'll be provided either internally or as flexible APIs. This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their hostility towards other projects using VTE as a library. GTK and most of the GNOME project are much of the same. Avoid them and don't make the mistake of thinking their libraries are meant for others to use.

This is exactly why sixel-tmux exists as a separate entity!

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

I'll keep my fingers crossed, but right now, there seems to be a lot of good will. I will do everything I can.

You're saying you're "reading between the lines", that reads to me like an emotional statement, not a technical one. Please let's focus on the technical issues at hand and what has actually been said, not on what we think someone might be saying.

>tell me precisely what doesn't work, in your own words.

I already explained it, I've used sixel in Xterm and Foot and I don't like it, the restriction to paletted images makes everything look bad. Also, changing the font size breaks the images. Also, the protocol is still terrible on bandwidth, if you use it to try to transmit 1080p video over ssh (as someone is bound to do) then you will encounter the same bandwidth issues. Again please read this issue if you want to know more about my stance, I agree with everything it's saying: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/terminal-wg/specifications/-/...

So sixel-tmux is not going to help me, sorry. It may even make things worse for me if apps are trying to use it when I don't want it. If you want some more suggestions on what to do to help, I can give those. But you're also welcome to not listen to me if you disagree. Maybe you have to accept that I am just not in your target audience, but that's no reason to accuse other maintainers of trying to hold me hostage.

Edit: I said earlier that I think it would be a good goal to support the various image protocols, I would be happy to use this if eventually an image protocol was added there that wasn't seriously flawed. But the apps and terminal emulators will still have to be changed to support that, so supporting sixel doesn't really help towards that goal at all, and in some ways it impedes it because those projects might be expected to maintain that as a backwards compatibility option. That's what I meant earlier, I think you may be approaching this problem from the wrong angle.

> the restriction to paletted images makes everything look bad

Not with 16 million colors. That's what 24 bit color mean (2^16) also called "truecolor" mode

> Also, changing the font size breaks the images.

Not on mintty. I can change the font size up and down, it even resizes the sixels in proportion so the images remain aligned to the text in a pixel-perfect way.

It's a terminal problem. You are using bad terminals. I grant you that xterm is the least worst option on linux, but do yourself a favor and try mintty on Windows.

> Also, the protocol is still terrible on bandwidth

Are you using telnet on remote hosts? Unless you do that, with ssh, compression means I can stream video (!!!) just like on local hosts (where bandwith is not an issue)

> It may even make things worse for me if apps are trying to use it when I don't want it.

In the future, sixel-tmux will intercept sixels live and rewrite them into other format, like iTerm or kitty.

How is that making things harder for you?

If you really don't want sixel even if your terminal supports them, use the appropriate terminfo and you will see nothing.

> seriously flawed

You have yet to tell me the flaws in your own words, flaws that are not due to a given terminal.

Try to use sixel to play videos in mintty, with 24 bit support so palettes aren't a problem. Then try tweaking the font size (why not!), notice how it remains a perfect user experience, then we'll talk again.

For now, all I see is FUD.

@zadjii, in case it's not clear enough from my praises on how promising Windows Terminal Preview is, thanks a lot for all the wonderful work you're doing with the Windows Terminal team.

At first I was afraid the project would take the easy way out and ignore hard features or take shortcuts (ex: SGR1 : bold or bright? or both? or none?) but you have shown you are willing to do what it takes to properly support applications.

This is not just in line with the reputation of Microsoft when it comes to backwards compatibility, but going above and beyond to make sure everything works perfectly.

When sixel support is added to WT, it will replace mintty as my favorite terminal -- and I'm very picky when it comes to terminals.

WT is a wonderful contribution to the open source world, and I hope it will inspire similar terminals on Linux (or be usable through wine)

Oh, and uh, my apologies if you felt my contribution to the sixel thread (PR #448) were out of line. Since your last message, I've realized my posts may be off topic, as a degraded mode is not what most people may want, even as a stopgap measure, so I've stopped posting there.