Basic Usage

Static snapshot

Generating command:

term-transcript exec --palette gjm8 rainbow

Here, --palette defines the color palette to use for the 16 base ANSI colors.

Note

rainbow is an executable script for end-to-end tests.

Static snapshot (pure SVG)

--pure-svg flag makes term-transcript to produce pure SVG instead of default HTML-in-SVG. This is more compatible (HTML-in-SVG is not supported by all SVG browsers), but has its quirks. In particular, font advance width is set to an imprecise hard-coded value unless a font is embedded into the snapshot; this may lead to various display artifacts, such as stretched or compressed text, interrupted underlines, etc.

Generating command:

term-transcript exec --pure-svg --palette gjm8 rainbow

Animated snapshot

Generating command:

term-transcript exec --palette powershell --line-height=18px \
   --scroll --pty --window='rainbow, rainbow --long-lines' \
   rainbow 'rainbow --long-lines'

Note

The --pty flag creates a pseudo-terminal for capture instead of default pipes.

Tip

Scroll animation is highly customizable! See Window Appearance section for details.

Line height

In the example above, --line-height explicitly sets the line height for the snapshot. It can be specified both in pixels or in ems (i.e., relative to the font size which is hard-coded to 14px). By default, line height is set to 1.2em = 16.8px, unless a font is embedded, in which case the optimal line height is obtained from the font metrics.

Advance width

--advance-width sets the advance width (aka char width) of a font. Similarly to --line-height, it can be measured in either pixels or ems.

Advance width is important for pure SVG since it’s relied upon to correctly position background color boxes. If a font is embedded, advance width is obtained from font metrics. Otherwise, it’s estimated as 8px (~0.57em), which may lead to stretched or compressed layout, depending on the font used. You may want to override the advance width in this case, or to embed the font into the snapshot in this case.

Important

Currently, advance width is ignored for the default (HTML-in-SVG) template.

See font examples for the examples of setting --advance-width.