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In my post, I mention that iTerm supports inline images (although only in nightly builds so far). So does Terminology.

xterm actually support Sixel graphics now (although with 16 colors and a configure flag being set). Other terminals also support Sixel graphics, but not all terminal emulators and not the primary ones (Terminal.app, PuTTY, iTerm2, GNOME Terminal, etc).

Sixel and Regis graphics used to be available in actual terminals. I didn't mention Regis graphics in my post, nor did I mention Tektronix graphics, also available in vintage terminals. Both Sixel and Regis graphics were designed by DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation). Sixel was raster-based while Regis was vector-based.

Should we bother with Sixel today? Who knows? But there used to be standards for this sort of thing, but in the actual physical terminals, before we all switched to terminal emulators, most of which stuff with VT100 / VT220 emulation rather than anything too advanced. (Regis was available in the VT240, while Sixel came with the VT340, I think.)

Once the iTerm inline image support is out in an actual release, I have some tools that I'll update to support soon after.

But I have some follow up posts where I'll talk about some of this in-depth. This wasn't a random one-off post that I wrote. :)




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