microsoft/Terminal

Support fonts and fonts attributes through inline escape sequences like mintty and vte52

Open

#6,779 opened on Jul 3, 2020

View on GitHub
 (12 comments) (3 reactions) (0 assignees)C++ (3,212 forks)batch import
Area-FontsArea-VTHelp WantedIssue-TaskProduct-Terminal

Repository metrics

Stars
 (35,764 stars)
PR merge metrics
 (Avg merge 27d 19h) (24 merged PRs in 30d)

Description

Escape sequences to set fonts and their attributes are ignored, instead they are displayed as raw

Terminals support escape sequences to alter the fonts. Windows Terminal at the moment only support basic colors and reverse colors

This is linked to #109 #2916 #5461 #5462 #6703 and #6205 as currently most of the VTE52 font attributes are not supported.

Full support can be tested with: https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-testsuite/ansi-vte52.sh

Expected output: https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-testsuite/blob/master/test-passed-part1.jpg

It would be desirable to support all mintty font attributes, including support for alternative fonts, using ECMA-48 SGR codes. This would be linked to #1163 for usecases like CJK.

Mintty patch implementing this is on https://github.com/mintty/mintty/commit/1250829806d3da2f05b3207183b190747d2cc127

This allows sequences like:

echo "\e[12mVery thin font\e[0m"

image

Contributor guide

Research direction
Study the mintty commit referenced in the issue to understand how font escape sequences are implemented. Then examine the VT parser in the Terminal codebase, focusing on how existing SGR codes are handled. Identify where to add new font attributes and implement them following the pattern of existing ones.
Tech stack
cpp
Domain
cli
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
GitC++
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
40