Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
1–10 of 37 posts
Re: Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
#2I recently found out that XTerm supports sixels natively if started with the "-ti 340" option. For example gnuplot can make use of that feature using the command "set terminal sixlegd".
It turns out because of the way sixels are encoded (six vertical pixels in a row using bitplanes) it packs better than png when used in conjunction with the bzip2 packer. Every image can simply be encoded to sixel with imagemagick using "convert image.png sixel:- > image.six"
Personally I think sixels are genius should be used much more often.
Re: Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
#3I recently found out that XTerm supports sixels natively if started with the "-ti 340" option. For example gnuplot can make use of that feature using the command "set terminal sixlegd". It turns out because of the way sixels are encoded (six vertical pixels in a row using bitplanes) it packs better than png when used in conjunction with the bzip2 packer. Every image can simply be encoded to sixel with imagemagick usi…
GNUPlot and XTerm also support Tektronix, there's lots of info in this older discussion.
Re: Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
#4I recently found out that XTerm supports sixels natively if started with the "-ti 340" option. For example gnuplot can make use of that feature using the command "set terminal sixlegd". It turns out because of the way sixels are encoded (six vertical pixels in a row using bitplanes) it packs better than png when used in conjunction with the bzip2 packer. Every image can simply be encoded to sixel with imagemagick usi…
The Kitty terminal author also published a "terminal graphics protocol". I don't know what other terminal supports it, however.
Re: Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
#5I recently found out that XTerm supports sixels natively if started with the "-ti 340" option. For example gnuplot can make use of that feature using the command "set terminal sixlegd". It turns out because of the way sixels are encoded (six vertical pixels in a row using bitplanes) it packs better than png when used in conjunction with the bzip2 packer. Every image can simply be encoded to sixel with imagemagick usi…
>it packs better than png when used in conjunction with the bzip2 packer.
Cute! But is it fair? I don't think it's lossless - the color depth is much reduced.
Re: Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
#6This is one of my favorite Julia packages! A fast plotting utility that outputs right to the terminal is one of those things that I didn't realize I needed until I found it.
Re: Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
#7This is great! Anyone know of anything like this for Python or R?
Re: Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
#8I recently found out that XTerm supports sixels natively if started with the "-ti 340" option. For example gnuplot can make use of that feature using the command "set terminal sixlegd". It turns out because of the way sixels are encoded (six vertical pixels in a row using bitplanes) it packs better than png when used in conjunction with the bzip2 packer. Every image can simply be encoded to sixel with imagemagick usi…
>it packs better than png when used in conjunction with the bzip2 packer. Cute! But is it fair? I don't think it's lossless - the color depth is much reduced.
I took the reduced color depth into consideration. However on second glance it seems like Imagemagick does not compress PNG very efficiently with default settings. After recompressing with zopflipng PNG was easily able to beat bzip2 packed sixels. Results for 256 color 512x512 Lenna:
Sixel + bzip2: 245K
PNG Imagemagick: 467K
PNG Zopfli 10 Iterations: 188K
Re: Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
#9I recently found out that XTerm supports sixels natively if started with the "-ti 340" option. For example gnuplot can make use of that feature using the command "set terminal sixlegd". It turns out because of the way sixels are encoded (six vertical pixels in a row using bitplanes) it packs better than png when used in conjunction with the bzip2 packer. Every image can simply be encoded to sixel with imagemagick usi…
Sixels will be added to libvte (gnome-terminal): https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/254
Re: Unicode-based scientific plotting for working in the terminal
#10As somebody who grew up during the semi-graphic era, it makes me sad that we still use a 30 year old standard for terminals and cannot do direct plot in the main terminal (as opposed to the Tektronix separate window).