AnsiGL / Blog: Recent posts

I just wanted to apologize since there hasn't been much progress on the project lately. Other things in life got in the way a little bit (though, lucky you, I'll spare the details).

I mention this simply because I have a lot of notes on my whiteboard still about what I had planned next for the project, and I've been noticing a relatively-steady (albeit small) stream of downloaders that I feel like I'm neglecting now. I have no idea if any of those downloads actually translates into people using AnsiGL, but I like to think that way anyway. :)... read more

As I've been working on AnsiGL, there have been a few simple "rules" that I've been following I go along. Most of these things are probably old concepts to most of you, but hopefully these will help provide a little bit of insight for any up-and-coming programmers and for anyone who might contribute code to the project. I feel it's important to share some of this not only for better understanding of the code in the project, but also to make sure that any potential developers can strive for the same basic goals. If nothing else, it might help answer why certain things were done the way they were done.... read more

Ultimately, I'd like to have the users of AnsiGL be the top contributors to the direction the project takes. The more stable, easy-to-use, and feature-complete things are, the nicer everything will be for all of us. :)

So with that in mind, to all of those who might be already be using AnsiGL: Please, don't be afraid to post feedback! There are multiple kinds of feedback that are absolutely valuable to the project. The discussion area has a few forums available for this already, and feedback about this project page is also welcome!... read more

...is the term I like to use for what I'm coming up upon within the project... For me, it's that time when everything comes back together into a complete whole after you've broken down a few separate code components, simultaneously, in order to rebuild both with new (often intertwined) features.

Interestingly enough, the very next features added to the project were the ones that I previously had assumed would be afterthought additions...especially since many terminals/terminal emulators can't/don't/won't display the full range of 256 colors, etc. UTF-8 support simply ended up being simple enough that it got caught up in the midst of it all and thrown in as a "meh, why not" sort of addition.... read more

There are a few major things working their way into my branch of the code right now: Color palettes, 256 color support, and unit testing.

After looking into the ncurses integration, especially after learning (the hard way, remember kids, RTFM) about only being able to have 64 total color pair combinations (effectively only 64 foreground/background combinations) at any given time, I decided that AnsiGL could benefit from having color palettes in similar fashion...but less restrictive and easier to use (as was the whole motivation with this project...ncurses limitations of this nature).... read more