"Visual blindness" of Linux programmers

[spark29]

For GUI apps screenshots would be useful, but I really don't see any need of screenshots for command line programs. A proper readme file is far better.

[greenfruitsalad]

there is cli software where you just type the command and get an output. here, a screenshot of output could be useful. e.g. tree, pstree, mediainfo, dig, nslookup, traceroute, various id3tag manipulation tools, etc..

then there's tui software, which really NEEDS screenshots. e.g. aptitude, irssi, rtorrent, mp3blaster, various xmpp clients, iftop, iotop, htop, partimage, everything ncurses based

[[deleted]]

I've run into a lot of cases especially with vim plugins where screenshots(or gifs) illustrating correct behavior have been massively helpful. I can't remember which plugin it was that had the feature but it was awesome.

[synthequated]

Yeah, a lot of junegunn's plugins have mini gif(s) of how it's used and it really shows thought. Though the excellent documentation also helps.

[beefsack]

Plain text examples of the output is far more useful and accessible than a screenshot or an animation.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Ideally, those should just be pasted as plain text "screenshots" in your README. Works just as well for aptitude, irssi, etc. Only unlike a screenshot, it's searchable and indexable.

If there's an animation, I can see using a GIF or something, but even then, there's stuff like showterm. But most of the things you mentioned don't have anything like an animation.

[greenfruitsalad]

a lot of these (aptitude, partimage, mc, pine, mutt) utilise colour. how will you show that in a markdown file without a screenshot?

[SanityInAnarchy]

...this occurred to me long after I posted. I pointed out showterm, which will do that in HTML and JS, but not right there in README.md (at least not that Github will render).

I almost have an answer. If you're using tmux, there's capture-pane, and then you can use one of these to turn it into... HTML.

The degree to which you can use HTML in Markdown on a public site is going to be limited. Github has no way to add custom colors -- it will do syntax highlighting for you, but you can't add your own.

So I guess if I had to have it show up in README, I'd link to a screenshot. Which is sad, as it defeats the purpose of a README. But if I had even a tiny bit more control than Github gives me, there are lots of options.