ImagePreview

Description

ImagePreview is a plugin that helps display preview of images in a neovim environnement. If you're like me and you don't want to use Xterm, Kitty etc. for whatever reason, you can't really preview full blown images in your basic terminal.
This is why I decided to create a program that could display ascii rendering of images. As such, I'm fully conscious of the fact that it is what it is. The resolution depending largely on the original image's details.

The plugin is currently checking for .png, .jpg, .jpeg and .webp images.

📦 Installation

Requirements

• Imagemagick (I used 6.9.11 but older versions should be good)
• Neovim >= 0.5.0
• nvim-tree.lua (I should be using 1.11.0 but older versions should be good)
• nui.nvim (already marked as a dependency in lazy.nvim)

Supported distributions

While the plugin should theorically work on gnome-based distributions, I did not test it on other distro than Ubuntu 22.04.05
If you're interested, don't hesitate to apply for a merge request to add your distro to the list of supported ones.

Gnome-Based Distributions

I suppose that you have a /etc/default/console-setup file that configure your ttys. This file must have those lines, which describe the current font in use for them.

FONTFACE="\[FONT\]-\[TYPE\]"
FONTSIZE="8x[SIZE]"

⚠️ Beware : for this to work, I'm using the system-wide font. Please uncheck the "custom font" option in your gnome terminal preferences. (Don't worry, the plugin revert back to the custom font when it's done).

⚙️ Configuration

Lazy.nvim

{
    "Akutchi/ImagePreview",
    dependencies = { "MunifTanjim/nui.nvim" }    
}

To create the key binding, copy/paste this in your config.lua file, or wherever your config is :

Neovim

vim.keymap.set('n', '<leader>ip', require('imagepreview').Preview, { noremap = true, desc = "Preview an image" })

Lunarvim

lvim.builtin.which_key.mappings["i"] = {
  name = "Image",
  p = { "<cmd>lua require('imagepreview').Preview()<cr>", "Preview an image" }
}

Usage

Its usage is pretty basic. First, open the tree explorer with <leader>e, and place the cursor on the image you want to preview. Then, use <leader>ip to preview your image. Clicking anywhere else the ascii rendering close the preview.

Credits

This is my first neovim plugin. It was hell to create, and as such, I'd like to thank some people that helped me create my plugin (without them knowing, ofc). Those are,

• m4xshen for the general idea on how to create a local plugin.
• D029 and Folke for understanding lua modules and the require function and how to add my local plugin to the lua path.
• Gonçalo Alves for knowing how to locally reload my plugin using lazy.nvim.
• TheZoraiz for their code which first allowed me to create my plugin with an external dependency, and later on which code I partly took to port it from go to lua.
• In all of this fucking mess that is my browser history, to whomever got me the solution to change this fucking terminal font family and size with gsetting.
• Sunjon which helped me understand that, in neovim, dimming is not done by actually dimming your font, but by creating an opaque overlay (there may be other methods tho).