The Null Device

You've probably seen this already: w3m, a text-mode web browser which can display inline images in an xterm.

Yes, xterms apparently have character codes for showing bitmaps. Wonder how long until the Linux framebuffer console gets those as well...

There are 4 comments on "":

Posted by: oliver http:// Thu Apr 25 14:45:02 2002

Actually, it does it by poking around in X and drawing over your window without its permission.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Fri Apr 26 10:15:14 2002

Interesting. How long has this been part of xterm? Is it standard, or is it Linux-specific? Is it documented anywhere?

Posted by: oliver http:// Fri Apr 26 15:15:19 2002

It's part of X. Your xterm sets environment variables for WINDOWID, DISPLAY, and XAUTHORITY, and that's enough for an app to figure out how to connect to your display and which window to scribble on.

If you don't have WINDOWID set, you can fool it. Try this:

unset WINDOWID sleep 5; w3m <some site>

..then switch focus to another window like your graphical web browser.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Sat Apr 27 08:45:51 2002

Ah. :-( Now if it was something neater, such as an escape code meaning "the following N bytes are a X by Y bitmap in encoding Z; draw it in such and such cells", that'd be pretty cool (and portable).

It'd be almost like the BBC Micro's extended control codes.