/durdraw

ASCII Art Animator for Linux

Primary LanguagePythonISC LicenseISC

durdraw-screenshot

              __                __
            _|  |__ __ _____ __|  |_____ _____ __ __ __
           / _  |  |  |   __|  _  |   __|  _  |  |  |  |\
          /_____|_____|__|__|_____|__|___\____|________| |  Durr....
          \_____________________________________________\|  v 0.11

OVERVIEW:

Durdraw is an ASCII and ANSI drawing and playback program for UNIX-like systems (Linux, OSX, FreeBSD, etc) that supports frame-based animation, attempting to make ANSI and ASCII art animation work more like a traditional animation studio.

Durdraw runs in the terminal and is shell script friendly, for those wanting to spice up their automations.

It has editing features such as importing ascii files to frames, duplicating and deleting frames, flipping between frames, and frames-per-second speed control during playback. It supports the mouse.

Files can be loaded and saved in ASCII (.asc, .txt) or in DUR animation format. Files can also be saved in animated GIF, PNG and ANSI formats.

REQUIREMENTS:

  • Python 3
  • Pillow or PIL Python module

ALSO RECOMMENDED:

  • For animated GIF export, install: Ansilove (https://ansilove.org/)

  • For IBM-PC ANSI art support: Install a terminal and font (like the included vga.pcf) that supports Code Page 463 (US-Latin-1, Western ASCII, etc) encoding for IBM-PC Extended ASCII. ANSI art doesn't show up correctly in UTF-8 terminals. See optional instructions below for configuring mrxvt for this purpose.

INSTALLATION:

  • Copy the file "durdraw" to a nice place like /usr/local/bin/ or ~/bin/
  • Copy the file "durhelp.dur" to /usr/local/share/durdraw/ or ~/.dur/ or /usr/share/durdraw

OPTIONAL INSTALLATION:

For animated GIF export, install Ansilove and make sure it is is in your path. (Recommended)

If you want to try making animated ANSI art with durdraw, you need a terminal and font that supports ASCII encoding and IBM's Code Page 437. You can find fonts in the "extras" directory for this purpose.

Note that ANSI art character support is experimental.

In Linux/X11, here is one way to set that up:

  • Install mrxvt
  • Install vga.pcf by copying it to /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc and then running these commands: $ mkfontdir /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/ $ xset fp rehash
  • Give mrxvt IBM-PC colors by copying the contents of Xdefaults into your own ~/.Xdefaults file. You can create ~/.Xdefaults if it does not exist.
  • Launch mrxvt with: mrxvt -fn vga -bg black -fg grey

If you are using macOS or MacOS X and want IBM-PC ANSI art support in Terminal.app:

  1. Install dos437.ttf font (included) by double-clicking it.
  2. Create a profile in Terminal Preferences/Settings with the following settings (similar settings can be applied in iTerm):
    • In Text tab, Font set to dos437 (I like 9pt) and "Display ANSI colors"
      and "Use bright colors for bold text" are checked
    • In Keyboard tab, "Use option as meta key" selected
    • In "Advanced" tab, Character encoding set to "Western (ASCII)"
    • Set background color to black (low or no transprency) and foreground color to white

Once this is setup, pass "-A" to durdraw's command-line to allow you to use F1-F12 to input ANSI block characters.

COMMAND LINE USAGE:

You can play a .dur file or series of .dur files with: $ durdraw -p filename.dur $ durdraw -p file1.dur file2.dur file3.dur ...

Other command-line options:

usage: durdraw [-h] [-p PLAY [PLAY ...]] [-q | -w | -x TIMES] [--nomouse] [-A] [-u UNDOSIZE] [-V] [filename]

positional arguments: filename .dur or ascii file to load

optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -p PLAY [PLAY ...], --play PLAY [PLAY ...] Just play .dur file or files, then exit -q, --quick Skip startup screen -w, --wait Pause at startup screen -x TIMES, --times TIMES Play X number of times (requires -p) --nomouse Disable mouse support -A, --ansi ANSI Art Mode - Use F1-F10 keys for IBM-PC ANSI Art characters (Code Page 437 extended ASCII) -u UNDOSIZE, --undosize UNDOSIZE Set the number of undo history states - default is 100. More requires more RAM, less saves RAM. -V, --version Show version number and exit

INTERACTIVE USAGE/EDITING:

Use the arrow keys (or mouse) and other keys to edit, much like a text editor. Also:

  alt-k - next frame                  alt-' - delete current line
  alt-j - prev frame                  alt-/ - insert line
  alt-n - iNsert current frame clone  alt-, - delete current column.
  alt-N - appeNd empty frame          alt-. - insert new column
  alt-p - start/stop Playback         alt-c - Clear canvas/movie
  alt-d - Delete current frame        alt-m - Mark selection
  alt-D - set current frame Delay     F1-F10 - insert character
  alt-+/alt-- increase/decrease FPS   alt-z - undo
  alt-M - Move current frame          alt-r - Redo
  alt-up - next fg color              alt-s - Save
  alt-down - prev fg color            alt-o - Open
  alt-right - next bg color           alt-q - Quit
  alt-left - prev bg color            alt-h - Help
  alt-R - set playback/edit Range     alt-g - Go to frame #

Can use ESC or META instead of ALT

OTHER TIPS:

* The mouse can be used for moving the cursor (even over SSH) and
  clicking buttons, if your terminal supports Xterm mouse reporting.
  In iTerm2 this is under Profiles, Terminal and Terminal Emulation.

* If extended characters are not working in gnu screen, try running the
  following screen command (by pressing ctrl-a and typing):
    :utf8 off off
  then type "clrl-a l" to redraw the window.

CREDITS:

Sam Foster (http://cmang.org)

Homepage: http://cmang.org/durdraw

LEGAL:

Durdraw is Copyright 2009-2021 Sam Foster samfoster@gmail.com

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

License for dos437.ttf font: Copyright (c) 2011 joshua stein jcs@jcs.org

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

The vga.pcf font was taken from the Dosemu project and appears to be in the public domain. Further discussion on its copyright status can be found at http://www.dosemu.org/docs/misc/COPYING.html