5 ms·

Do any terminals support overprinting? This could radically change what is possible in TUIs

• yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  I don't know about overprinting per se, but you can already use whatever foreground+background colors you want; how much benefit would overprinting be?
  • joouha 2y ago
    This would allow more complex shapes to be drawn by combining multiple glyphs, which would be useful for complex TUI applications (there are only a limited number of box-drawing characters available) Also, this could allow drawing more than two colours per terminal cell.
    • wonger_ 2y ago
      That's an interesting idea. The closest thing I can think of is using an extended box-drawing font: https://hpjansson.org/blag/2024/01/18/chafa-1-14-all-singing-all-dancing/#:~:text=all%20the%20shapes%20you%20could%20ever%20want https://hpjansson.org/blag/2024/01/18/chafa-1-14-all-singing.... That doesn't solve the two-colors-per-cell challenge. But it makes for some very realistic terminal images. For higher fidelity rendering, I think the next best option is supporting image protocols like sixels or Kitty inline raster images. I'm not sure how overprinting would compare to existing options.
      • joouha 2y ago
        I've just found that Mintty supports this https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/CtrlSeqs#overstrike https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/CtrlSeqs#overstrike
    • yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      Oh, like making arrows by overlaying - with > or ^ with |. I could see that.