Dropping by, as I saw your HN comment. You mentioned you need more sixel examples so I forked the sixel branch on https://github.com/csdvrx/tmux where I added sixels/ with the traditional sixel test images and a gnuplot script that you can use with X Y parameters to generate test images of any size. This should allow you to check how the slow terminal code interacts.

Having sixel pictures disappear when changing panes is already good. If you want to do more, there seems to be 2 ways:

if you want to be able to redraw, you want to keep the images around: mlterm and other simply save the .six files. Storing sixels create the problem of where to save (suggestion: ~/.tmux/%PID%PANE) and how much to keep (suggestion: as many as would fit given the history size and screen resolution, with each sixel converted to an equivalent height in lines: vimperator3 is almost a full page on my terminal).
You could also just keep the full string in memory. Sixels are not large. A simple rule of thumb could be 5 sixels per panel. Or just 1.

Still I am not sure keeping many pictures is such a good idea. There is little interest in displaying sixels from the scroll history. They are mostly useful for the live commands. Instead, I would suggest using libcaca for off screen images.

the alternatively is that all sixel images would be converted to ANSI art and stored in the history as such. Then, upon redraw, tmux could display this close match of the sixel image. It would also provide something to be shown on terminals that do not provide sixel support, a fallback mode (more accurate with 16 million colors, but better than nothing even with 256 colors). It would also remove the resizing problem: just show the sixel picture on the tmux that generated it (as you already have the cell size), and show the ansi art of a matching size on others.

The license of libcaca is very permissive, so it should not be a problem to have it as a dependency. It would also allow a simpler way to start, with a solution that could later be refined based on needs (ex: first use the best cell size and scale to show on other connected tmux) and later figure the best way to display sixel when scrolling through history

What do you think?

Uh oh!

Feature request: SIXEL display support. #1613

Description

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Issue actions