Version: | 0.1 |
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Copyright: | Copyright (c) 2009-2012 Justine Tunney |
Manual section: | 3 |
Manual group: | Library Calls |
Download and extract the latest version:
sudo apt-get install gcc python-imaging python-setuptools sudo python setup.py install
Run the demo to see what's available:
python -m fabulous.demo
4-bit color. These colors and styles are standard and work almost everywhere. They are useful in helping make your program output easier to read:
from fabulous import bold, magenta, highlight_red print bold(magenta('hello kitty')) print highlight_red('DANGER DANGER!') print bold('hello') + ' ' + magenta( kitty') assert len(bold('test')) == 4
8-bit color. If you want to spice things up a bit, Fabulous supports xterm256 colors:
from fabulous import fg256, bg256 print fg256('#F0F', 'hello kitty') print fg256('magenta', 'hello kitty')
Way cool text. This is something neat you can use when you program starts up to display its name with style:
from fabulous import text print text.Text("Fabulous", color='#0099ff', shadow=True, scew=5)
Fabulous lets you print images, which is more fun than useful. Fabulous' unique method of printing images really shines when used with semi-transparent PNG files. When blending backgrounds, Fabulous assumes by default that your terminal has a black background. Don't worry if your image is huge, it'll be resized by default to fit your terminal:
from fabulous import utils, image print image.Image("balls.png") # adjust for a white background utils.term.bgcolor = 'white' print image.Image("balls.png")
It's scriptable too (like img2txt)
python -m fabulous.image balls.png >balls.txt cat balls.txt
This is very useful tool for monitoring what your Python scripts are doing. It allows you to have full verbosity without drowning out important error messages:
import time, logging from fabulous import logs logs.basicConfig(level='WARNING') for n in range(20): logging.debug("verbose stuff you don't care about") time.sleep(0.1) logging.warning("something bad happened!") for n in range(20): logging.debug("verbose stuff you don't care about") time.sleep(0.1)
Here's how Fabulous compares to other similar libraries:
- fabulous: Licensed MIT. Focuses on delivering useful features in the simplest, most user-friendly way possible (without a repulsive name.) Written in pure-python but will attempt to auto-magically compile/link a speedup library. ~1,000 lines of code.
- libcaca: WTFPL. This is the established and respected standard for doing totally insane things with ascii art (ever wanted to watch a movie on the command line?) Weighing in at ~72k lines of C, this project is a monster. It uses an older, more complex text/dithering-based rendering method. Compared to fabulous, some images look better, some worse. I found the docs somewhat difficult to follow and couldn't find support for transparency or 256-colors.
- asciiporn: GPL. Similar to libcaca but has an interesting feature for drawing math graphs to the terminal... Needs to compile C code, requires numpy/python2.6, and I couldn't get the darn thing to work. Aprox 17k lines of code.
- pygments: BSD. Has excellent support for terminal syntax highlighting.
- termcolor: GPL. Only supports 4-bit ANSI colors.