Re:WordPerfect for UNIX (1992)
by retrocryptid on Monday July 18, 2022 @04:57PM
(#32143576)
The idea here is you can get graphics via a ssh connection. You don't need to setup a web interface to collect and process metrics.
It's useful cause you don't have to take your fingers off the keyboard to get graphical information.
And yeah. I would be just as happy to use NAPLPS, but Sixel support is what we have.
sixel works fine, and is better supported than a "new de facto standard" the doesn't even exist yet. It's not at all true that no popular windows s/w supports it - mintty/wsltty supports it just fine and is widely used.
No, a better standard does exist: https://iterm2.com/documentation-images.html
In fact, mintty already supports it. Only xterm doesn't. Sixel really is just retrocomputing at this point.
† xterm and iTerm2 are the only widely-used terminal emulators nowadays that support sixels. Few Linux users use plain old xterm nowadays due to lack of desktop integration, and iTerm2 is not the OS default terminal (and it supports a better image format anyway). Also note that no popular Windows terminal emulators (conhost.exe, conemu, Microsoft Terminal) support sixels at all.