{"id":174,"date":"2018-04-24T22:18:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T20:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/?p=174"},"modified":"2022-06-19T00:35:33","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T22:35:33","slug":"introducing-chafa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Chafa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/chafa\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"\/chafa\/img\/chafa-logo.gif\" alt=\"Chafa logo\" width=\"488\" height=\"310\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here's something I didn't know: The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/VT100\" rel=\"nofollow\">DEC VT100<\/a> turns 40 in August. This factlet comes courtesy of Wikipedia, as I'm not quite old and wise enough to have made its acquaintance outside of a museum. None the less, the VT100 and its extended family of hard-working office furniture has always been with me in terms of the ECMA-48 standard, better known as ANSI X3.64 or simply (and these days, probably as accurately as any formal descriptor) \"<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ANSI_escape_code\" rel=\"nofollow\">ANSI codes<\/a>\", which it helped pioneer.<\/p>\n<p>This pinnacle of 1970s UX is somehow still going <a href=\"https:\/\/debarshiray.wordpress.com\/2018\/04\/16\/gnome-terminal-3-28-x-lands-in-fedora\/\">strong<\/a>, and recent developments like <a href=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/XVilka\/8346728\" rel=\"nofollow\">lots and lots of colors<\/a>, ubiquitous Unicode support, good monospace fonts, etc. have opened up some interesting possibilities for creative abuse in a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ASCII_art\" rel=\"nofollow\">rich tradition<\/a> that dates all the way back to manual typewriters, if not further. Previous entrants in this category are the venerable <a href=\"http:\/\/aa-project.sourceforge.net\/aalib\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">aalib<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/caca.zoy.org\/wiki\/libcaca\" rel=\"nofollow\">libcaca<\/a>, and more recently there's <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/hzeller\/timg\" rel=\"nofollow\">timg<\/a> and others that use the U+2580 half-block symbol.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote a small tool to further improve on this. It combines a range of Unicode symbols in an attempt to minimize the squared error of the output, and has plenty of bells and whistles besides. <a href=\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/chafa\/\">Check it out<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here's something I didn't know: The DEC VT100 turns 40 in August. This factlet comes courtesy of Wikipedia, as I'm not quite old and wise enough to have made its acquaintance outside of a museum. None the less, the VT100 &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[20,19,22,21,39],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computing","category-technical","tag-ansi-art","tag-chafa","tag-release","tag-terminal-graphics","tag-textmode"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Introducing Chafa - Et tu, Cthulhu<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"First announcement of Chafa, an open source tool for displaying beautiful graphics in most terminal environments, both modern or classic.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Introducing Chafa - Et tu, Cthulhu\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"First announcement of Chafa, an open source tool for displaying beautiful graphics in most terminal environments, both modern or classic.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Et tu, Cthulhu\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-04-24T20:18:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-06-18T22:35:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/chafa-logo-still.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"488\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"310\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Hans Petter Jansson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@hpj\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@hpj\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hans Petter Jansson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Hans Petter Jansson\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/#\/schema\/person\/a86f9dc39a36a8184d6e6f9a759f235c\"},\"headline\":\"Introducing Chafa\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-04-24T20:18:19+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-06-18T22:35:33+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/\"},\"wordCount\":197,\"commentCount\":6,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/#\/schema\/person\/a86f9dc39a36a8184d6e6f9a759f235c\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/chafa-logo-still.png\",\"keywords\":[\"ansi art\",\"chafa\",\"release\",\"terminal graphics\",\"textmode\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Computing\",\"Technical\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/hpjansson.org\/blag\/2018\/04\/24\/introducing-chafa\/\",\"name\":\"Introducing Chafa - 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