MrMarble / termsvg

Record, share and export your terminal as a animated SVG image.

Record, share and export your terminal as a animated SVG image.

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Overview

TermSVG is an all in one cli tool to record, replay and export your terminal session to svg. It uses the same format as asciinema so you can convert asciicast files to SVG or use the asciinema player with a TermSVG recording.

Installation

Manually

You can download a pre compiled binary directly from the releases for your OS/Architecture.

Go cli

If you already have Go in your system you can use go install

go install github.com/mrmarble/termsvg/cmd/termsvg@latest # or target a specific version @v0.6.0

Install script

I made an installation script that should download the latest available version corresponding to your OS and architecture. sudo is needed to copy the binary to /usr/local/bin

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MrMarble/termsvg/master/scripts/install-termsvg.sh | sudo -E bash -
# or with wget
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MrMarble/termsvg/master/scripts/install-termsvg.sh | sudo -E bash -

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Usage

termsvg is composed of multiple commands, similar to git, docker or asciinema.

When you run termsvg with no arguments help message is displayed, listing all available commands with their options.

rec <filename>

Record terminal session.

By running termsvg rec <filename> you start a new recording session. The command (process) that is recorded can be specified with -c option (see below), and defaults to $SHELL which is what you want in most cases.

You can temporarily pause recording of terminal by pressing Ctrl+P. This is useful when you want to execute some commands during the recording session that should not be captured (e.g. pasting secrets). Resume by pressing Ctrl+P again.

Recording finishes when you exit the shell (hit Ctrl+D or type exit). If the recorded process is not a shell then recording finishes when the process exits.

The resulting recording (called asciicast) is saved to a local file. It can later be replayed with termsvg play <filename> and/or exported to svg with termsvg export -i <filename>.

Available options:

• -c, --command=<command> - Specify command to record, defaults to $SHELL

play <filename>

Replay recorded asciicast in a terminal.

This command replays given asciicast (as recorded by rec command) directly in your terminal.

Playing from a local file:

termsvg play /path/to/asciicast.cast

Available options:

• -i, --idle-time-limit=<sec> - Limit replayed terminal inactivity to max <sec> seconds
• -s, --speed=<factor> - Playback speed (can be fractional)

For the best playback experience it is recommended to run termsvg play in a terminal of dimensions not smaller than the one used for recording, as there's no "transcoding" of control sequences for new terminal size.

export <filename>

Export recorded asciicast to svg.

This command exports given asciicast (as recorded by rec command) to svg.

Exporting from a local file:

termsvg export /path/to/asciicast.cast

Available options:

• -o, --output=<file> - Output svg to be created. Defaults to [input].svg
• -m, --minify - Minify svg using Minify

Example

Asciinema recording inverted pendulum

More at the examples folder

Contributing

If you want to contribute to this project check out CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

All code is licensed under the GPL, v3 or later. See LICENSE file for details.