Congrats to the Windows Terminal team member who went through the process of getting a PhD to implement this.
The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
31–40 of 40 posts
Re: The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
You realize there are such things as corporate policies, right?
I have a hard time imagining a situation where you'd need Sixel images in a corporate setting.
You’ve never run Gnuplot to examine some data? It is super convenient to run it and see the plot right there inline in your terminal.
Re: The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
#33https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel
So this is basically writing to the terminal as if it's a six pin dot matrix printer? Are Sixel images actually used very often these days? Is support in Windows Console a big deal, or just lots of fun?
Re: The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
#34https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel
So this is basically writing to the terminal as if it's a six pin dot matrix printer? Are Sixel images actually used very often these days? Is support in Windows Console a big deal, or just lots of fun?
I think it was necroed by a Japanese Twitter addict(@tsutsuii) to display Twitter user icons without X on NetBSD/luna68k, then others started doing all sorts of unholy things with it from w3m with images to terminal-based RDP client.
There aren't a lot of "legitimate" use cases for now, I believe, but it's neat, and IMO an image mode extension for tty kind of makes it whole.
Re: The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a hard time imagining a situation where you'd need Sixel images in a corporate setting.
You’ve never run Gnuplot to examine some data? It is super convenient to run it and see the plot right there inline in your terminal.
Nope. Never had an application like that, although thanks for the example, it makes sense.
Re: The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
#36Congrats to the Windows Terminal team member who went through the process of getting a PhD to implement this.
[deleted]
Re: The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
conhost is in the terminal repo? Huh interesting, that surprises me.
Conhost and Terminal share quite a lot of code in fact. The text buffer, the renderer, the VT sequence parser - all that's the same codebase. That allows bugfixes and improvements to the the Terminal to also flow back to the vintage console (for people who still use that)
Interesting tidbit - thank you for sharing. That's handy for those who prefer the vintage console (including myself).
Re: The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
#38I kind of lament that a format that was invented for dot matrix printers, where switching heads is a costly operation, transfer speeds don't matter since moving the head is a bottleneck, and color accuracy doesn't matter as the technology wasn't there yet, is being revived, as opposed to some of the more modern ideas for doing this... It doesn't make sense in a terminal emulator context at all.
Re: The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
#39that's nice, but .. wouldn't it be better to implement kitty graphics directly at this time ? https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/graphics-protocol/
kitty is a product of a single open-source project, Sixel is a product of DEC with multiple independent implementations. DEC is out of business and there's very little risk of anyone coming out with a new version of VT333/VT340 reference manual, so Windows Terminal/conhost can have its own implementation of Sixel and ensure interoperability with other implementations as it sees fit, as opposed to committing to either…
Kitty's standard is described for other people to implement both emulators and clients for. Since this relationship already exists, there's enough friction between emulators implementing new features, and clients actually using them (in a backwards-incompatible way), that I believe one can be relatively sure their emulator will support clients well into the future.
Either way, I agree that kitty's protocol should become a versioned standard, but I also don't think that people will be very quick to change it at this point.
Re: The Windows Console gets support for Sixel images
#40https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel
So this is basically writing to the terminal as if it's a six pin dot matrix printer? Are Sixel images actually used very often these days? Is support in Windows Console a big deal, or just lots of fun?
> So this is basically writing to the terminal as if it's a six pin dot matrix printer?
Yes, if that dot matrix printer could then also select any color you like. Sixels can do full color images.
> Are Sixel images actually used very often these days?
No, but support and use of them is increasing, not decreasing as one might expect.