chafa question

[Zerogaku]

after installing chafa from the git repo, and setting up the previewer (and the previewer script) and sixel in lfrc, i notice that chafa is unable to preview any image, chafa works if i run the command normally on an image in my terminal (foot terminal) but when running it from the preview script, it does not work. chafa from the arch repo works with lf and is able to preview images normally, its just weird that the git repo is unable to work with lf.

[joelim-work]

lf checks whether the first two bytes of the previewer script output is equal to 1b 50 in order to detect sixel data. The reason why the new version of chafa doesn't work is because it inserts escape sequences at the beginning (I think the reason is to bring the terminal into a consistent state), which means lf will no longer treat the output as sixel data.

It is possible to disable this behavior, just add the --polite on option when calling chafa. Actually polite mode used to be enabled by default until commit hpjansson/chafa@0356373

I have updated the documentation to reflect this. Thanks for reporting.

[Zerogaku]

Thank you adding --polite on fixed it, one other question, is there a way to get gifs to display properly?

[joelim-work]

If you mean animating gifs, then I don't think it's possible. The previewer script is supposed to run very quickly and output the preview data (or do whatever is required to display the image) and then terminate, not continuously loop through an animation.

[Zerogaku]

ah I see thanks, I was wondering why animated gifs could not display when animation was turned on

[hpjansson]

Hey, apologies for the inconvenience. Looks like I can enable polite mode by default if LF_LEVEL is in the env. Is that the best way to do it?

[joelim-work]

Hi @hpjansson

Yes, LF_LEVEL is the recommended way to determine whether something is invoked from lf or not. Of course, there's no requirement for you to support this directly in chafa, but if you wish to do so then it would be helpful for users 👍

[hpjansson]

I think it'd be less work total if we worked around this in Chafa. The alternatives are a) lf parsing past arbitrary control sequences appearing before the image or b) users constantly running into the issue, searching for the solution, and adding it to their rc files. Both of those seem complex/error-prone.

I'm a bit wary of adding lots of exceptions for the various file browsers, but lf seems pretty popular, so... :-)

[joelim-work]

TBH, I'm equally wary of adding such workarounds directly into the code when the problem can be solved by configuration.

In any case I will keep the reported issue #1582 pinned for a while so that it is easier for users to find.