Output formats
WebP, GIF, APNG, PNG and plain text, for everywhere that will not take an SVG.
An SVG is the right format for a README and the wrong one nearly everywhere else. Social sites, chat apps and issue trackers mostly reject it. Six other formats cover that, and all of them work on all three commands.
ttysvg build demo.tape --webp demo.webp
ttysvg render session.json --gif demo.gif --scale 2
ttysvg record --png shot.png -- ./my-toolEvery animated format rasterizes each frame and carries the timing the animation already has, so the result plays exactly like the SVG.
The flags
| Flag | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
--webp | off | Animated WebP, true color and far smaller than a GIF |
--gif | off | Animated GIF, the format everything accepts |
--apng | off | Animated PNG, true color, only the changed part of each frame is stored |
--png | off | A single still |
--png-at | last frame | Take the still from a moment instead, as in --png-at 3s |
--txt | off | The final screen as plain text, for grepping and diffing |
--scale | 1 | Multiply the pixel size, so 2 gives a retina bitmap |
--light | off | Rasterize the light palette instead of the dark one |
--also-light | off | Write the other palette too, alongside the first |
Which one to pick
The same 93 frame recording, written four ways:
| Format | Size |
|---|---|
--webp | 34 KB |
--apng | 96 KB |
| SVG | 424 KB |
--gif | 900 KB |
Pick WebP unless something in the chain refuses it. The same recording is usually an order of magnitude smaller as WebP than as GIF, and it keeps every color instead of being crushed to a palette of 256. GIF remains the safe answer for anywhere that has not caught up, notably X.
APNG stores only the bounding box of what changed since the previous frame, which is where its number comes from. Writing every frame in full came to 1.5 MB, worse than the GIF.
Light and dark
A bitmap cannot carry the switch the SVG has, so raster output commits to one
palette. Dark is used unless you pass --light, and --also-light writes both
in one pass, naming the second file demo-light.webp.
ttysvg render session.json --webp demo.webp --also-lightThe SVG is still written either way, so the theme aware version can stay in your README while the WebP goes everywhere else.
A still from the middle
The last frame is usually the least interesting moment, because the command has finished and the prompt is back.
ttysvg render session.json --png card.png --png-at 3s --scale 2That is also how to make a social card, and it is what produced this site's own.