Terminalizer

Record your terminal and generate animated gif images

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Built while listening to Nyan Cat 😛

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Table of Contents

• Features
• What's Next
• Installation
• Getting Started
• Compression
• Usage
  • Config
  • Record
  • Play
  • Render
  • Share
  • Generate
• Configurations
  • Recording
  • Delays
  • GIF
  • Terminal
  • Theme
  • Watermark
  • Frame Box
    • Null Frame
    • Window Frame
    • Floating Frame
    • Solid Frame
    • Solid Frame Without Title
    • Styling Hint
• FAQ
• Issues
• License

Features

• Highly customizable.
• Cross platform (Linux, Windows, MacOS).
• Custom window frames.
• Custom font.
• Custom colors.
• Custom styles with CSS.
• Watermark.
• Edit frames and adjust delays before rendering.
• Skipping frames by a step value to reduce the number of rendered frames.
• Render images with texts on them instead of capturing your screen for better quality.
• The ability to configure:
  • The command to capture (bash, powershell.exe, yourOwnCommand, etc)
  • The current working directory.
  • Explicit values for the number of cols and rows.
  • GIF quality and repeating.
  • Frames delays.
  • The max idle time between frames.
  • Cursor style.
  • Font.
  • Font size.
  • Line height.
  • Letter spacing.
  • Theme.

What's Next

• Terminalizer on Cloud terminalizer.com.
• Global configurations at the home directory.
• The share command to upload a recording file and get a link for an online player.
• The Generate command to generate a web player for a recording file.

Installation

You need to install Node.js first, then install the tool globally using this command:

npm install -g terminalizer

Still facing an issue? Check the Issues section or open a new issue.

The installation should be very smooth with Node.js v9 or lower. For newer versions, if the installation is failed, you may need to install the development tools to build the C++ add-ons.

⚠️ Terminalizer uses some C++ add-ons that require building. Until we release the first stable version that will include prebuilt binaries for different OSs you may need to install some tools to build for now. Try the following, if they don't solve your installation issue, check https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp#installation.

For MacOS

xcode-select --install

For RHEL, CentOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora

yum update
yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

For Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential

For openSUSE/SUSE

zypper refresh
zypper update
zypper install -t pattern devel_C_C++

For Arch Linux and derivatives

sudo pacman -Syyu
sudo pacman -S base-devel

Verifying Installation

gcc -v
make -v

Getting Started

Start recording your terminal using the record command.

terminalizer record demo

A file called demo.yml will be created in the current directory. You can open it using any editor to edit the configurations and the recorded frames. You can replay your recording using the play command.

terminalizer play demo

Now let's render our recording as an animated gif.

terminalizer render demo

Compression

GIF compression is not implemented yet. For now we recommend https://gifcompressor.com.

Usage

You can use the --help option to get more details about the commands and their options

terminalizer <command> [options]

Config

Generate a config file in the current directory

terminalizer config

Record

Record your terminal and create a recording file

terminalizer record <recordingFile>

Options

-c, --config   Overwrite the default configurations [string]
-d, --command  The command to be executed           [string] [default: null]

Examples

terminalizer record foo                      Start recording and create a recording file called foo.yml
terminalizer record foo --config config.yml  Start recording with your own configurations

Play

Play a recording file on your terminal

terminalizer play <recordingFile>

Options

-r, --real-timing   Use the actual delays between frames as recorded        [boolean] [default: false]
-s, --speed-factor  Speed factor, multiply the frames delays by this factor [number] [default: 1]

Render

Render a recording file as an animated gif image

terminalizer render <recordingFile>

Options

-o, --output   A name for the output file                                      [string]
-q, --quality  The quality of the rendered image (1 - 100)                     [number]
-s, --step     To reduce the number of rendered frames (step > 1) [number] [default: 1]

Share

Upload a recording file and get a link for an online player

terminalizer share <recordingFile>

Generate

Generate a web player for a recording file

terminalizer generate <recordingFile>

Configurations

The default config.yml file is stored in the root directory of the project. Execute the below command to copy it to your current directory.

Use any editor to edit the copied config.yml, then use the -c option to override the default one.

terminalizer config

Recording

• command: Specify a command to be executed like /bin/bash -l, ls, or any other command. The default is bash for Linux or powershell.exe for Windows.
• cwd: Specify the current working directory path. The default is the current working directory path.
• env: Export additional ENV variables, to be read by your scripts when starting the recording.
• cols: Explicitly set the number of columns or use auto to take the current number of columns of your shell.
• rows: Explicitly set the number of rows or use auto to take the current number of rows of your shell.

Delays

• frameDelay: The delay between frames in ms. If the value is auto use the actual recording delays.
• maxIdleTime: Maximum delay between frames in ms. Ignored if the frameDelay isn't set to auto. Set to auto to prevent limiting the max idle time.

GIF

• quality: The quality of the generated GIF image (1 - 100).
• repeat: Amount of times to repeat GIF:
  • If value is -1, play once.
  • If value is 0, loop indefinitely.
  • If value is a positive number, loop n times.

Terminal

• cursorStyle: Cursor style can be one of block, underline, or bar.
• fontFamily: You can use any font that is installed on your machine like Monaco or Lucida Console (CSS-like list).
• fontSize: The size of the font in pixels.
• lineHeight: The height of lines in pixels.
• letterSpacing: The spacing between letters in pixels.

Theme

You can set the colors of your terminal using one of the CSS formats:

• Hex: #FFFFFF.
• RGB: rgb(255, 255, 255).
• HSL: hsl(0, 0%, 100%).
• Name: white, red, blue.

You can use the value transparent too.

The default colors that are assigned to the terminal colors are:

• background: transparent
• foreground: #afafaf
• cursor: #c7c7c7
• black: #232628
• red: #fc4384
• green: #b3e33b
• yellow: #ffa727
• blue: #75dff2
• magenta: #ae89fe
• cyan: #708387
• white: #d5d5d0
• brightBlack: #626566
• brightRed: #ff7fac
• brightGreen: #c8ed71
• brightYellow: #ebdf86
• brightBlue: #75dff2
• brightMagenta: #ae89fe
• brightCyan: #b1c6ca
• brightWhite: #f9f9f4

Watermark

You can add a watermark logo to your generated GIF images.

watermark:
  imagePath: AbsolutePathOrURL
  style:
    position: absolute
    right: 15px
    bottom: 15px
    width: 100px
    opacity: 0.9

• watermark.imagePath: An absolute path for the image on your machine or a URL.
• watermark.style: Apply CSS styles (camelCase) to the watermark image, like resizing it.

Frame Box

Terminalizer comes with predefined frames that you can use to make your GIF images look cool.

• frameBox.type: Can be null, window, floating, or solid.
• frameBox.title: To display a title for the frame or null.
• frameBox.style: To apply custom CSS styles or to override the current ones.

Null Frame

No frame, just your recording.

Don't forget to add a backgroundColor under style.

frameBox:
  type: null
  title: null
  style:
    backgroundColor: black

Window Frame

frameBox:
  type: window
  title: Terminalizer
  style: []

Floating Frame

frameBox:
  type: floating
  title: Terminalizer
  style: []

Solid Frame

frameBox:
  type: solid
  title: Terminalizer
  style: []

Solid Frame Without Title

frameBox:
  type: solid
  title: null
  style: []

Styling Hint

You can disable the default shadows and margins.

frameBox:
  type: solid
  title: null
  style:
    boxShadow: none
    margin: 0px

FAQ

How to support ZSH

The default command that gets recorded for Linux is bash -l. You need to change the default command to zsh.

• Generate a config file in the current directory

terminalizer config

• Open the generated config file in your preferred editor.
• Change the command to zsh:

command: zsh

• You may need to change the font, check the font that is used in your terminal:

fontFamily: "Meslo for Powerline, Meslo LG M for Powerline"

• Use the -c option to override the config file:

terminalizer record demo -c config.yml

Issues

error while loading shared libraries: libXss.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Solution:

sudo yum install libXScrnSaver

error while loading shared libraries: libgconf-2.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Solution:

sudo apt-get install libgconf-2-4

License

This project is under the MIT license.