Images on ttys

Images on ttys

[Mark Plaksin]

It would be cool if Emacs could display images on ttys.  This would be
especially cool now that multi-tty exists.  One could use emacs-w3m (or
w3m or whatever) as her primary browser and get the sometimes-necessary
images even when connected remotely over ssh.  Unfortunately I have no
idea how hard this is and I'm not the right person to do it.  But...

w3m in xterm and rvxt displays images.  Apparently it works in Linux
framebuffers too (i.e., on what are often text-only consoles).  One way
to see it in action is with Debian's w3m-img package (I run unstable).

I don't know enough to explain how it works but the best-looking
description I've found is in the w3m documentation:
http://w3m.cvs.sourceforge.net/w3m/w3m/doc/README.img?revision=1.4&view=markup

Re: Images on ttys

[Andreas Schwab]

Mark Plaksin <happy@mcplaksin.org> writes:

> w3m in xterm and rvxt displays images.

It's a hack.  It requires access to the widget tree of the terminal
emulator it is running in, figuring out the right widget where to put
the images (that's why it works only on terminal emulators it knows
about).  And of course, it needs to have access to the X server in the
first place.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Images on ttys

[Mark Plaksin]

Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> writes:

> Mark Plaksin <happy@mcplaksin.org> writes:
>
>> w3m in xterm and rvxt displays images.
>
> It's a hack.  It requires access to the widget tree of the terminal
> emulator it is running in, figuring out the right widget where to put
> the images (that's why it works only on terminal emulators it knows
> about).  And of course, it needs to have access to the X server in the
> first place.

Is it possible to do it right?  Is anybody working on it?

As an end user it's a pretty exciting idea.

Re: Images on ttys

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:15:06 -0400 Mark Plaksin wrote:

> Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> writes:
>
>> Mark Plaksin <happy@mcplaksin.org> writes:
>>
>>> w3m in xterm and rvxt displays images.
>>
>> It's a hack.  It requires access to the widget tree of the terminal
>> emulator it is running in, figuring out the right widget where to put
>> the images (that's why it works only on terminal emulators it knows
>> about).  And of course, it needs to have access to the X server in the
>> first place.
>
> Is it possible to do it right?  Is anybody working on it?
>
> As an end user it's a pretty exciting idea.

If you have an X server already running and want look at images inside
emacs, why do you run it in a terminal emulator?

This makes absolutely no sense to me.

David

Re: Images on ttys

[Mark Plaksin]

David Hansen <david.hansen@gmx.net> writes:

> On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:15:06 -0400 Mark Plaksin wrote:
>
>> Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> writes:
>>
>>> Mark Plaksin <happy@mcplaksin.org> writes:
>>>
>>>> w3m in xterm and rvxt displays images.
>>>
>>> It's a hack.  It requires access to the widget tree of the terminal
>>> emulator it is running in, figuring out the right widget where to put
>>> the images (that's why it works only on terminal emulators it knows
>>> about).  And of course, it needs to have access to the X server in the
>>> first place.
>>
>> Is it possible to do it right?  Is anybody working on it?
>>
>> As an end user it's a pretty exciting idea.
>
> If you have an X server already running and want look at images inside
> emacs, why do you run it in a terminal emulator?

I run Emacs on my desktop at work and connect to it (via multi-tty) when
I'm at home.  Displaying an X frame at home over SSH + DSL is too slow
so I use a tty.

Re: Images on ttys

[Kim F. Storm]

Mark Plaksin <happy@mcplaksin.org> writes:

> I run Emacs on my desktop at work and connect to it (via multi-tty) when
> I'm at home.  Displaying an X frame at home over SSH + DSL is too slow
> so I use a tty.

I run X over a DSL line all the time - and it runs quite well
when I disable some of the graphic elements:

- turn off the tool-bar  (important)
- turn off the menu-bar
- turn off the blinking cursor

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk