Chafa 1.18.0

This is a feature and bugfix release.

• Increased GLib minimum version to 2.58 (released in 2018).

• New options: --files=FNAME and --files0=FNAME. These allow reading lists of input files from a file or standard input. Paths can be separated by newlines or a zero byte (--files0). These options can be specified multiple times.

• New option: --link=[auto|on|off]. When used with --label, this controls whether each label should be an OSC 8-style hyperlink to its input file.

• Multiple files can now be decoded in parallel. This greatly speeds up grid mode on multi-core systems. Controllable with --threads.

• ConHost support was removed due to incompleteness and lack of interest.

• Image loaders:

  • Added support for CoreGraphics loaders on MacOS (#301, @saitoha).
  • Added support for HEIF files on all platforms (#297).

• Terminal support:

  • Improved detection of ghostty inside tmux (#296, reported by @timsofteng).
  • Added support for GNU/Hurd console.

• Tests:

  • Expanded symbol matching tests with more cases and detailed diagnostics.
  • Added a test for CLI tool return values in various scenarios.

• Bug fixes:
  #293 Don't leave stdin in non-blocking mode (found by @YanceyChiew).
  [unfiled] Use glibtoolize when libtoolize is unavailable (@saitoha).
  [unfiled] GNU/Hurd: Don't stall if pipe is closed on remote end.
  [unfiled] _mm_empty() not always called immediately after MMX use.
  [unfiled] FP division by zero possible in sixel palette generation.
  [unfiled] Don't wait for response if probing is unsupported.
  [unfiled] Wrong exit code returned on some failures.

Chafa 1.16.2

This is a bugfix release. It also improves I/O robustness and SVG rendering quality.

• Bug fixes:
  #288 SVG scaling seems to be done after bitmap conversion (found by @joveian).
  [unfiled] MinGW: Undeclared function error for strlen() (@carlo-bramini).
  [unfiled] Assert when using chafa_canvas_draw_all_pixels() with Kitty passthrough (found by @ravachol).
  [unfiled] Hangs when running with closed stdin (found by @SapphirusBeryl).
  [unfiled] Potential overrun when output dimension is exactly 1 pixel.
  [unfiled] Small memory leak on failed load in the grid layout.
  [unfiled] Occasional warnings from JPEG loader that should not be printed.

Chafa 1.16.1

This release fixes two important bugs.

• Bug fixes:
  #282 Fish completion not included in release tarball (found by @knuxify).
  #283 Piping and redirection are broken in Windows (found by @veltza).

Chafa 1.16.0

This is a feature release with lots of additional polish and some new API.

Thanks to everyone who chipped in with issues and code. Special thanks to @AnonymouX47 for helping out with the grid implementation and for going above and beyond with QA and bugfixing in general.

• Added terminal probing. Currently we can determine geometry, colors and sixel capabilities this way. This supplements the existing heuristics.

• The internal terminal database and heuristics were refactored for clarity, with new API added to simplify the configuration process.

• I/O is now threaded, resulting in improved responsiveness and pipelining.

• New option: --grid=WxH, --grid=[auto|on|off] or -g. This lays out multiple images in a grid for easy browsing.

• New option: --label=[on|off] or -l. Labels each image with its filename. Works in both continuous and grid layouts.

• New option: --probe=[auto|on|off]. Controls whether to actively probe the terminal. Can take a real number denoting how long to wait for a response.

• Sixel quality improved significantly. The quantizer was reimplemented with modern algorithms (#174), and blue noise dithering was introduced (#238).

• The new blue noise dithering is also available in symbols mode, and can be turned on with --dither noise. It can be turned off with --dither none.

• Numerous small improvements were made to sixel handling:

  • Terminal cursor placement quirks are now represented and handled.
  • Images can now cover their cell extents completely.
  • Workaround for animations "walking up the screen" on quirky terminals.

• The JPEG XL loader was improved with optional memory mapping and better container support (@oupson).

• Enabled wildcard expansion in Windows builds (#266).

• Added completions for the fish shell (@folliehiyuki) and updated those for zsh (@sstark).

• Bug fixes:
  #111 Provide auto detection of background for perception of transparency (found by @acxz).
  #228 Sixel capability not detected in foot + tmux (found by @amigthea).
  #236 Ghostty shows pwd/lock indicator when using Chafa (found by @edrozenberg).
  #238 Sixel image quality significantly different from img2sixel and ImageMagick (found by @rashil2000).
  #239 Chafa leaves echo on (found by @veltza).
  #245 JPEG file not recognized (found by @ploum).
  #246 Examples using deprecated functions (found by @sechshelme).
  #249 Sixel detection doesn't set default values (found by @veltza).
  #254 -t 1 doesn't work with -f iterm (@AnonymouX47).
  #255 Animations scroll/walk up the screen (found by @AnonymouX47).
  #265 Enable Kitty image protocol for Warp (found by @SohamP2812).
  #266 On Windows, in a cmd.exe window, filename wildcard expansion is broken (found by @garoto).
  #273 -t 1 messes up some images (found by @AnonymouX47).
  #274 -f {kitty,iterm} swaps BG color channels for SVG (found by @AnonymouX47).
  #278 Images not always padded to cell boundary (found by @veltza).
  [unfiled] Fix broken bashisms resulting in logic failure (@eli-schwartz).
  [unfiled] Small leak in chafa_canvas_print_rows() (@korei999).
  [unfiled] Uninitialized histogram in nearest-neighbor interp.

Chafa 1.14.5

This release addresses a handful of medium-severity bugs.

• Bug fixes:
  #217 Improve sixel and general terminal support inside tmux (found by @stevenwalton).
  #221 Support JPEGs with CMYK color space (found by @ploum).
  #225 Fix --font-ratio doing nothing (found by @johnd0e).
  [unfiled] Ensure CLI tool gets linked with libm.

Chafa 1.14.4

This quick follow-up release corrects the incomplete fix for the CLI argument fraction parsing. It now accepts C locale formatting in addition to that of the current locale.

• Bug fixes:
  #216 Dither intensity does not work properly (found by @veltza).

Chafa 1.14.3

This release brings important fixes for sixel rendering and Windows Terminal, plus a few other odds and ends.

• Sixel transparency has been reenabled for still frames. Animations will be pre-composited on an opaque background to prevent flicker/glitchiness (discussed in #211, big thanks to @j4james).

• Now supports the Ghostty terminal, defaulting to the Kitty graphics protocol there.

• Bug fixes:
  #185 Chafa version 1.14 breaks image preview on lf (found by @Steven79203).
  #210 Crash with -f sixels (found by @chrisant996).
  #211 Sixels are too small in Windows Terminal (found by @veltza).
  #212 Aspect-preserving calculations are off in some cases.
  [unfiled] Inconsistent fraction parsing in CLI arguments.
  [unfiled] A few small memory leaks in the JPEG XL loader.

Chafa 1.14.2

This is a bugfix release. #205 is particularly serious, since it affects many users on distributions that build with LTO enabled.

• Bug fixes:
  #203 Chafa 1.14.1 fails to build on i686 (reported by @tranzystorekk).
  #205 Symbols mode not working since 1.14.1 (reported by @folke).
  #206 Crash when importing more than 32767 glyphs (reported by @stgiga).
  [unfiled] Fix erroneous base64 encoding of final byte in some circumstances.

Chafa 1.14.1

This release brings bug fixes, compatibility improvements and some performance enhancements.

• A JPEG XL (.jxl) loader was added using libjxl (#188, @oupson).

• Added detection of the Eat "Emulate a Terminal" Emacs terminal (@sfllaw).

• Symbols mode was sped up significantly on AVX2-capable platforms.

• Tests: A new test driver was added. It will log the specifics of any failures, which aids debugging of CI builds (issue found by @cdluminate).

• Bug fixes:
  #189 Fix installation of zsh completions (@felixonmars).
  #190 Fix a small memory leak in ChafaCanvas (found by @jstkdng).
  #192 Wrong sixel padding in some circumstances (found by @dnkl).
  #195 tmux passthrough enabled when already set (found by @ronyclau).
  #196 iTerm mode not enabled automatically (found by @sudo-burger).

Chafa 1.14.0

This is a feature release with mostly practical improvements and bug fixes. It also adds a modest amount of new API in preparation for things to come.

• Removed ImageMagick loader support. Packagers can now remove this dependency (#157).

• Polite mode is now off by default. The new default eliminates cursor flicker and makes the output more robust against unusual terminal settings. The old behavior can be restored with --polite on.

• Added image loaders for the AVIF and QOI formats. Thanks to @jerch for suggesting the latter.

• sRGB gamma is now handled correctly in scaling operations.

• New option: --passthrough=<auto|none|screen|tmux>. This allows passing graphics protocols like Sixels, iTerm and Kitty through a terminal multiplexer. It will be enabled automatically for Kitty, and can be enabled manually for other protocols with more limited support (#116, #162, thanks to @newyorkthink and @m040601).

• New option: --view-size=<WxH>. Specifies width and height of the viewport, overriding the detected terminal size (#140, reported by @jaminthorns).

• New option: --fit-width. Fits images to the width of the viewport, allowing them to be taller than the viewport's height (#115, thanks to @SuperDuperDeou).

• New option: --relative=<bool>. Enables relative cursor positioning. Useful if you've pre-positioned the cursor at a particular offset where you want frames to appear, but tends to make the output illegible in pagers, e.g. less -R (#146, thanks to @Delgan and @AnonymouX47).

• New option: --exact-size=<auto|on|off>. Preserves the input pixel size when possible. Useful to avoid artifacts caused by resampling (#119, reported by @ErrorNoInternet).

• New symbol selector: imported. This selects glyphs loaded with --glyph-file (#124, reported by @clort81).

• MS Windows: Experimental support for ConHost output (-f conhost). This allows direct output on older versions of MS Windows (#170, @oshaboy).

• Fontgen: Added a BDF font writer (@cdluminate).

• Fontgen: Cleanup and modernization (@cdluminate).

• The help text and manual page were overhauled for readability, and the API documentation now includes symbol indexes by version and deprecation status.

• Added a zsh completion script (@Freed-Wu).

• Installation methods added: Scoop (@LaunchLee) and Winget (@sitiom).

• CI: Ported to GitHub actions (@GuardKenzie).

• Bug fixes:
  #107 "Unknown file format" when using AVIF on stdin (found by @ndren).
  #152 Broken linking with libwebp-1.3.1 (found by @vcunat).
  [unfiled] Fix make check with --without-tools (@sthibaul).
  [unfiled] Fix --duration not working well with still images (@Delgan).
  [unfiled] Fix sixel rendering of animations (@Delgan).
  [unfiled] Fix operator precedence in geometry calculation (@mjunix).