ansisvg

Convert ANSI to SVG.

Pipe output from a program thru ansisvg and it will output a SVG file on stdout.

Can be used to produce nice looking example output for presentations, markdown files etc. Note that it does not support programs that do cursor movements like ncurses programs etc.

./colortest | ansisvg > colortest.ansi.svg

Produces colortest.ansi.svg:

$ ansisvg -h
Usage of ansisvg:
  -charboxsize value
    	Character box size (default 8x16)
  -colorscheme string
    	Color scheme (default "Builtin Dark")
  -fontname string
    	Font name
  -fontsize int
    	Font size (default 14)
  -transparent
    	Transparent background
  -width int
    	Terminal width (auto)

Color themes are the ones from https://github.com/mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes

Install

To build you will need at least go 1.16 or later.

Install latest master and copy it to /usr/local/bin:

go install github.com/wader/ansisvg@master
cp $(go env GOPATH)/bin/ansisvg /usr/local/bin

Development

Build from cloned repo:

go build -o ansisvg main.go

Tricks

ANSI to PDF or PNG

... | ansisvg | inkscape --pipe --export-type=pdf -o file.pdf
... | ansisvg | inkscape --pipe --export-type=png -o file.png

Use bat to produce source code highlighting

bat --color=always -p main.go | ansisvg

Use script to run with a pty

script -q /dev/null <command> | ansisvg

ffmpeg

TERM=a AV_LOG_FORCE_COLOR=1 ffmpeg ... 2>&1 | ansisvg

jq

jq -C | ansisvg

Development

Run all tests and write new difftest outputs

WRITE_ACTUAL=1 go test ./...

Visual inspect outputs in browser:

for i in ansisvg/testdata/*.ansi.svg; do echo "$i<br><img src=\"$i\"/><br>" ; done  > all.html
open all.html

Using ffcat:

for i in ansisvg/testdata/*.ansi; do echo $i ; cat $i | go run main.go | ffcat ; done

Licenses and thanks

Color themes from https://github.com/mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes, license https://github.com/mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes/blob/master/LICENSE

Uses colortest from https://github.com/pablopunk/colortest and terminal-colors from https://github.com/eikenb/terminal-colors.

TODO and ideas

• Bold
• Underline overlaps a bit, sometimes causing weird blending
• Somehow use <tspan>/textLength to produce smaller output. Maybe em/ch CSS units for background rects, but seems inkscape do not like ch. Would also make it nicer to copy text from SVG.
• Handle vertical tab and form feed (normalize into spaces?)
• Handle overdrawing
• More CSI, keep track of cursor?
• PNG output (embed nice fonts?)