Window Pixel Text Renderer

Installation

Example to install a release from an alpha channel:

npm i @visible-radio/[email protected]

Recall, that the github packages npm registry only supports authenticating with a P.A.T.

The consuming project will need a .npmrc file like this:

@visible-radio:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com
//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=${NPM_TOKEN}

The NPM_TOKEN variable must be set in the shell:

export NPM_TOKEN=<personal access token from github>

Because why use the things that already exist when you can build them from scratch yourself?

• It's a canvas based responsive display. Text is reflowed when the container size changes. Overflowing content is handled with scrolling.

Demo

https://visible-radio.github.io/windowPTR/

See also

• NodePTR: https://github.com/Visible-Radio/NodePTR
• react-pixel-character-editor: https://visible-radio.github.io/react-pixel-character-editor/

Markup Language

• The plan is to implement a minimal markup languag.
• Plain text can be passed in, or segments of text wrapped in <span></span>, to which various attributes can be applied.

Attributes

• <span highlight=true></span>

  • The wrapped text will be highlighted by inverting each character cell.

• <span outline=true></span>

  • The wrapped text will be outlined.

• <span color=rgb(200,200,0)></span>

  • The wrapped text will be rendered in with the specified color instead of the default color.

• Attributes can be combined

  • <span highlight=true color=rgb(0,200,190)></span>

Word wrap

• The display places words that won't fit on a line in the next line. If the word is wider than the display itself, it breaks the word at the character that would overflow.

Scrolling

• Content outside of the display is handled with x-axis scrolling.

Character set

Characters are encoded as a one dimensional array. Custom character definitions can be loaded. Defs can be built with https://visible-radio.github.io/react-pixel-character-editor/

Current API

• The project isn't currently packaged for use. This demo can be manipluated using the API temporarily exposed on window._PTR via the javascript console.

• Scroll up / down, and home / end functionallity is currently bound to the arrow keys as a development-time stopgap.

Future features:

• Tree based (as opposed to list based) layout.

• A <blink></blink> tag or blink attribute that can be customized by providing a blink function

• Teletype like drawing of characters when a message is rendered for the first time.

• Simple document manipulation - append elements to document.

• Custom animations by passing an onFirstDraw animation function to an element.

• Custom looped animations for drawn elements.

• Scroll bar

• Hover styles on elements

• onClick on elements