NEWS

Chafa releases
==============

1.14.0 (2024-01-08)
-------------------

This is a feature release with mostly practical improvements and bug fixes.
It also adds a modest amount of new API in preparation for things to come.

* Removed ImageMagick loader support. Packagers can now remove this dependency
  (github#157).

* Polite mode is now off by default. The new default eliminates cursor flicker
  and makes the output more robust against unusual terminal settings. The old
  behavior can be restored with "--polite on".

* Added image loaders for the AVIF and QOI formats. Thanks to @jerch for
  suggesting the latter.

* sRGB gamma is now handled correctly in scaling operations.

* New option: --passthrough=<auto|none|screen|tmux>. This allows passing
  graphics protocols like Sixels, iTerm and Kitty through a terminal
  multiplexer. It will be enabled automatically for Kitty, and can be enabled
  manually for other protocols with more limited support (github#116,
  github#162, thanks to Samantha Collins and @m040601).

* New option: --view-size=<WxH>. Specifies width and height of the viewport,
  overriding the detected terminal size (github#140, reported by Jamin
  Thornsberry).

* New option: --fit-width. Fits images to the width of the viewport, allowing
  them to be taller than the viewport's height (github#115, thanks to
  @SuperDuperDeou).

* New option: --relative=<bool>. Enables relative cursor positioning. Useful if
  you've pre-positioned the cursor at a particular offset where you want frames
  to appear, but tends to make the output illegible in pagers, e.g. 'less -R'
  (github#146, thanks to @Delgan and @AnonymouX47).

* New option: --exact-size=<auto|on|off>. Preserves the input pixel size when
  possible. Useful to avoid artifacts caused by resampling (github#119,
  reported by @ErrorNoInternet).

* New symbol selector: "imported". This selects glyphs loaded with
  --glyph-file (github#124, reported by @clort81).

* MS Windows: Experimental support for ConHost output (-f conhost). This allows
  direct output on older versions of MS Windows (github#170, @oshaboy).

* Fontgen: Added a BDF font writer (Mo Zhou).

* Fontgen: Cleanup and modernization (Mo Zhou).

* The help text and manual page were overhauled for readability, and the API
  documentation now includes symbol indexes by version and deprecation status.

* Added a zsh completion script (Wu Zhenyu).

* Installation methods added: Scoop (Launch Lee) and Winget (@sitiom).

* CI: Ported to GitHub actions (Erica Ferrua Edwardsdóttir).

* Bug fixes:
  github#107  "Unknown file format" when using AVIF on stdin (found by @ndren).
  github#152  Broken linking with libwebp-1.3.1 (found by Vladimír Čunát).
  [unfiled]   Fix make check with --without-tools (Samuel Thibault).
  [unfiled]   Fix --duration not working well with still images (@Delgan).
  [unfiled]   Fix sixel rendering of animations (@Delgan).
  [unfiled]   Fix operator precedence in geometry calculation (Johan Mattsson).

1.12.5 (2023-05-21)
-------------------

This is a bugfix release.

* Bug fixes:
  github#123  Crash on canvas created with chafa_canvas_new_similar()
              (reported by Erica Ferrua Edwardsdóttir).
  github#141  Distortion when rowstride is not a multiple of 4 (reported by
              @jstkdng).
  [unfiled]   Missing comma in --help output (reported by @Freed-Wu).

1.12.4 (2022-11-12)
-------------------

This release improves support for Microsoft Windows and fixes several bugs.

* MS Windows: Added support for Unicode command-line arguments.

* MS Windows: Enabled support for building a DLL.

* Improved quality of accelerated symbol picking (the default with -w 6 and
  lower), especially along sharp edges.

* The XWD loader now supports unaligned image data, which can occur when the
  header is of an uneven length. Such images will no longer be rejected.

* Bug fixes:
  github#100  Reading image data from stdin fails on Windows (reported by
              @TransparentLC).
  github#104  Artifacts with transparent animations on Kitty (reported by Akash
              Patel).
  github#112  Bad documentation for -c default (reported by Jakub Wilk).
  github#113  Autogen/build fails on CentOS 7 (partial solution) (reported by
              Ivan Shatsky).
  huntr.dev   Uncontrolled memory allocation in lodepng (reported by
              @JieyongMa).
  [unfiled]   -lm should not be in pkg-config Libs: list (Tomasz Kłoczko).
  [unfiled]   The --watch switch was broken with the introduction of --animate.

1.12.3 (2022-07-01)
-------------------

A bug crept into the previous release that prevented successful package builds
in some environments. This has been fixed.

* Increased GLib minimum version to 2.26.

* Enabled a few compiler warnings not included in '-Wall -Wextra' in order to
  catch more potential issues early. Also started using '-Werror' selectively.

* Silenced deprecation warnings for older GLib APIs that we would like to
  keep using a bit longer.

* Bug fixes:
  github#96  Regression: Fails to build on Linux/Debian (reported by Mo Zhou).

1.12.2 (2022-06-28)
-------------------

This release adds basic support for Microsoft Windows.

* Made everything compile for the x86_64-w64-mingw32 target using gcc.

* Added support for the Windows 10 Command Prompt.

* Improved error reporting.

1.12.1 (2022-06-20)
-------------------

This release fixes one important input validation bug and several instances of
undefined behavior revealed by fuzzing.

* Increased GLib minimum version to 2.20.

* Added 12 new test inputs, including bad inputs to handle gracefully.

* Added a few symbols to API documentation that were accidentally left out.

* Bug fixes:
  huntr.dev  CVE-2022-2061: Out-of-bounds read in libnsgif's lzw_decode()
             (Sudhakar Verma of CrowdStrike).
  [unfiled]  Undefined behavior in libnsgif due to uninitialized frame fields.
  [unfiled]  Signed integer overflow in chafa_pack_color().
  [unfiled]  Integer overflow in normalization pass on some images.
  [unfiled]  Potential unaligned access with corrupt XWD images.
  [unfiled]  Integer overflow in quantization on some images.
  [unfiled]  Calculating offset from NULL pointer in LodePNG.

1.12.0 (2022-06-06)
-------------------

This is a feature release with new image loaders aimed at phasing out
ImageMagick. It also has new convenience functions, character art improvements,
tests and bug fixes.

Special thanks go to the very fine security researchers at huntr.dev for their
help in hardening Chafa over the last few releases.

* The ImageMagick dependency is now optional and deprecated. Packagers are
  encouraged to drop the ImageMagick dependency (--without-imagemagick) and
  add direct dependencies on relevant image codecs. ImageMagick support will be
  removed in a future release.

* Added image loaders for the following formats: JPEG, SVG, TIFF, WebP. Like
  the existing GIF, PNG and XWD loaders, these are much faster and generally
  safer than their ImageMagick counterparts. If ImageMagick is enabled, it will
  be used as a fallback. Supported image loaders will be listed in the
  --version output.

* Implemented a 16/8 mode producing 8 colors and an additional 8 bright
  foreground-only colors for a total of 16 foreground and 8 background colors.
  When using ANSI escape sequences in symbol mode, the sequence for bold text
  is used to enable bright colors. This scheme corresponds to that of the IBM
  PC's VGA hardware text modes and was popular with terminal emulators in the
  late 1980s to early 2000s.

  With a few tweaks, output from this mode can be turned into ANSI art scene
  .ANS files compatible with utilities like the wonderful Ansilove, e.g:

  $ chafa -f symbols -c 16/8 -s 80 --symbols space+solid+half --fill stipple \
      in.jpg | tr -d '\n' | iconv -c -f utf8 -t cp437 > out.ans
  $ ansilove out.ans -o out.png

* New builtin Latin symbols (available with --symbols latin). This class
  comprises most of the symbols from the Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A
  and -B, IPA Extensions and Spacing Modifier Letters plus a few Latin-like
  symbols from other ranges, using Terminus as the reference font. The ASCII
  class is also a subset of this class.

* Reworked ASCII symbols to be more representative of modern terminal fonts. As
  with the other Latin ranges, the reference font is now Terminus.

* New option: --scale <n>. This takes a real number specifying the on-screen
  scaling factor relative to the input's pixel size, respecting the terminal
  size. The special argument 'max' will fit the output to the terminal. The
  defaults are 1.0 for iTerm, Kitty and sixels, and 4.0 for symbols. Suggested
  by Lionel Dricot in github#84.

* Deprecated option: --zoom. Use '--scale max' instead.

* Added a battery of simple tests that can be run with 'make check'.

* Made 'configure' friendlier. It's now more lenient with dependencies, and
  the summary is more detailed and colorized if possible.

* Bug fixes:
  github#62  Too big alloc on bogus terminal dimensions (reported by
             Sotiris Papatheodorou and Mo Zhou).
  huntr.dev  Null pointer dereference caused by calling post_func on unused
             batch entries (reported by @han0nly).
  [unfiled]  Small memory leaks when using iTerm and Kitty formats.
  [unfiled]  Wide symbol coverages leaked in symbol map destructor.
  [unfiled]  No error code if files failed to load.

1.10.3 (2022-05-04)
-------------------

This release fixes multiple input validation issues. These were found in the
'chafa' command-line tool and do not affect the library backend.

* Improved input validation in the XWD loader.

* Bug fixes:
  huntr.dev  Buffer over-read when compiled with -O0 or non-x86 target
             (reported by @JieyongMa).

1.10.2 (2022-04-25)
-------------------

This release adds security/responsible disclosure guidelines and fixes a few
issues with input validation in the 'chafa' command-line tool.

* Added disclosure guidelines in SECURITY.md (suggested by Jamie Slome).

* Bug fixes:
  huntr.dev  Null pointer dereference in libnsgif with crafted GIF file
             (reported by @JieyongMa).
  [unfiled]  File magic would not effectively rule out internal loaders.
  [unfiled]  Very big images could cause absurd allocation requests triggering
             an abort in the loader.

1.10.1 (2022-04-04)
-------------------

This release brings one small but important fix and a few minor corrections
to the documentation.

* Bug fixes:
  github#87  Garbled last row of pixels on some images (found by @hydrargyrum).
  [unfiled]  Correctly label new functions since 1.10.

1.10.0 (2022-03-20)
-------------------

This is a feature release focused on compatibility, presentation and
ergonomics.

* New option: --animate <bool>. On by default. Can be turned off to replace
  animations with a still frame. Suggested by Lionel Dricot in github#79. 

* New option: --center or -C <bool>. Off by default. Can be turned on to center
  images. Suggested by Lionel Dricot in github#83.

* New options: --margin-bottom <n> and --margin-right <n>. These permit
  using all available space (with --margin-bottom 0) or some smaller amount.
  Suggested by @crmabs in github#61.

* New option: --polite <bool>. On by default. Can be turned off to correct
  issues caused by previous terminal state (e.g. no sixel scrolling) and
  improve presentation (e.g. by temporarily hiding the cursor). This can
  leave the terminal in an altered state, which is somewhat rude.

* New option: --threads <n>. Allows manually specifying the number of threads
  to use. Defaults to one per detected logical CPU core.

* When invoked with redirected input and no arguments, act like a filter as
  if invoked with "-". Here's an example that downloads an image, converts it
  to Unicode text and mails it to hello@example.com:

  $ curl https://hpjansson.org/chafa/img/lc.jpg \
    | chafa -f symbols -c none -s 77 --invert --dither bayer \
    | mailx hello@example.com

* If input or output is being redirected, default to playing animations only
  once instead of looping forever. This can be overridden with '-d inf'.

* Replaced obsolete Autoconf macros (Mikel Olasagasti Uranga).

* Improved image loaders:
  - GIF: Load GIF87a images as well as GIF89a.
  - PNG: Add an internal copy of LodePNG, bypassing ImageMagick. This improves
    performance and helps with eventually phasing out the latter.
  - XWD: Support images generated by 'convert'.

* Improved terminal support:
  - Contour: Enable sixel support (Dmitry Atamanov).
  - foot: Open-ended TERM string matching (Daniel Eklöf).
  - Konsole: Enable sixel support (Dmitry Atamanov).
  - WezTerm: Enable sixel support.

* Bug fixes:
  github#76  Smolscale uses too much stack space (found by Hoang Nguyen).
  github#81  Chafa --version is returned to stderr, not stdout (found by
             Lionel Dricot).
  [unfiled]  Potential memory overrun when using Floyd-Steinberg dithering
             in symbols mode.
  [unfiled]  iTerm2 compatibility issue with WezTerm and possibly others.

1.8.0 (2021-08-31)
------------------

This is a major feature release.

* Added basic support for the Kitty and iTerm2 graphics protocols. These are
  enabled automatically when corresponding terminal support is detected, or
  manually with '-f kitty' or '-f iterm'.

* Implemented an 8-color mode, selectable with '-c 8' (Øyvind Kolås).

* Implemented a foreground-only switch, '--fg-only'. This produces character
  art using foreground colors only, and will avoid modifying or resetting
  the background color. Looks best with non-contiguous symbols (e.g. ascii).

* Added builtins for Japanese kana fullwidth symbols. These can now be used
  without loading any external fonts (try '-c none --symbols wide').

* Added builtins for legacy computer symbols (mainly wedges and sextant
  blocks). These were widely used in PETSCII and Teletext, and can be enabled
  using --symbols or --fill with their respective tags: legacy, wedge and
  sextant (Øyvind Kolås).

* Since there is a growing number of builtin symbols that may not be available
  everywhere, the default selection has been restricted to the widely supported
  block and border sets.

* If possible, we now select a visually blank character from the specified
  symbol/fill sets instead of hardcoding ASCII space for featureless cells.
  One practical upshot of this is that the constant-width braille range can
  be used to produce consistent images even in contexts with variable-width
  fonts. U+2800 (BRAILLE PATTERN BLANK) will then be used in blank cells.

* Improved terminal size detection when used with pipelines and redirection.
  This should now produce an image properly sized for your terminal:

  $ curl https://i.imgur.com/WFDEFVg.jpeg | chafa - | tee out

* ChafaCanvas gained API functions for programmatically getting and setting
  character cell contents. These are used in a new example in tests/ncurses.c
  demonstrating ncurses integration.

* Made --disable-rpath the default in order to simplify packaging.

* Added a HACKING file featuring a much needed release checklist.

* Improved terminal support:
  - Ctx will now use optimizing REP sequences at high -O levels.
  - foot now defaults to sixels (Daniel Eklöf).
  - iTerm2 now defaults to the iTerm2 protocol.
  - Kitty now defaults to the Kitty protocol.
  - st now defaults to truecolor symbols (Roman Wagner).

* Bug fixes:
  github#44  Missing error handling on stdout writes (reported by Markus
             Elfring).
  [unfiled]  Solid symbols erroneously replaced by fill in FGBG mode.
  [unfiled]  Integer formatter was not using fast path for 8-bit values.
  [unfiled]  Wrong default cell aspect used for sixel graphics.

1.6.1 (2021-06-03)
------------------

This is a bugfix release.

* Add NOCONFIGURE variable to autogen.sh to skip configure (Biswapriyo Nath).

* Bug fixes:
  github#50  SIGBUS while loading huge GIFs (reported by Grzegorz Koperwas).
  github#52  Produces small glitches in output with some images (reported by
             Sami Farin).
  github#54  Haiku port fails on 32bit (Luc Schrijvers).
  [unfiled]  Exclude RTL code points that could break the output.
  [unfiled]  Apple Terminal lacks truecolor support, so make it default to 256
             colors (reported by Behdad Esfahbod).
  [unfiled]  Fix typo affecting middle dot symbol.

1.6.0 (2021-01-15)
------------------

This release adds major features and important fixes to both libchafa and
the chafa command-line tool.

* Added support for fullwidth symbols that take up two character
  cells. These are common in East Asian scripts. Single-cell and
  double-cell symbols can be mixed, and -f symbols mode will use both
  if possible.

* New symbol tags: Alpha, digit, alnum, narrow, wide, ambiguous, ugly, bad.
  "Ambiguous" symbols have uncertain widths and may render poorly in some
  terminals. "Ugly" denotes symbols that are unsuitable for Chafa's
  cell-based graphics (multicolor emoji, ideographic descriptors, etc).
  "Bad" is a superset of these two categories. Bad symbols are always
  excluded unless explicitly enabled with e.g. CHAFA_SYMBOL_TAG_BAD
  (--symbols +bad in the frontend).

* The font loader (--glyph-file option) now does a better job with
  proportional fonts.

* Added options for controlling lossless optimization of output. Currently,
  attribute reuse and character repetition (REP sequence) are implemented.

* Added -O option to the frontend. This controls the optimization level.

* Added a simple abstraction layer for terminal control sequences
  (ChafaTermInfo and ChafaTermDb). This allows for improved terminal
  support.

* FbTerm is now supported with TERM=fbterm in the environment.

* Bug fixes:
  github#43  Fix signal handler (reported by Markus Elfring).
  [unfiled]  Crash when invalid font paths were passed on command line.
  [unfiled]  Small typo in fontgen's README (Tim Gates).
  [unfiled]  Bad contrast adjustment in images with transparency.

1.4.1 (2020-04-10)
------------------

This is a bugfix release.

* Added configure option --disable-rpath. This allows packagers to
  prevent the hard-coded library search path from being embedded in
  the chafa command-line tool (Mo Zhou, github#39).

* Added defaults for the yaft terminal.

* Bug fixes:
  github#40  Fails to build on hurd-i386 + other i386 (reported by
             Mo Zhou).
  [unfiled]  Rare failed assert with mostly transparent sixel image
             (reported by Reddit user spryfigure).
  [unfiled]  Minor typo in function docstring.

1.4.0 (2020-04-01)
------------------

This release adds major features to both libchafa and the chafa
command-line tool.

* Added sixel graphics support. Chafa will automatically produce sixels
  if the connected terminal supports it. It can also be forced using the
  new -f or --format flag. This is a new implementation written from the
  ground up to maximize throughput.

* Added the --glyph-file option, which loads glyph-symbol mappings from
  any file format supported by FreeType (TTF, PCF, etc). This allows for
  custom font support and improved symbol selection.

* Added the --speed option specifying animation speed. It accepts a
  unitless multiplier, a specific number of frames per second, or "max"
  for maximum throughput.

* There are now two ways to assign colors to symbol cells. Formerly,
  this was done based on the average color of the covered area. The new
  default is to use the median color, which produces sharper edges,
  but is slightly more prone to high-frequency noise. The new option
  --color-extractor selects the method to employ.

* When displaying multiple files, the default delay between files has
  been changed from three seconds to zero. Animations will still play
  through once. This can be overridden on the chafa command line with -d
  or --duration.

* Minor tweaks to built-in symbols.

* Performance improvements:
  - Halved pixel storage requirements from 64 bits to 32 bits, resulting
    in significant memory savings.
  - Now builds with -ffast-math, yielding a big speedup for DIN99d.

1.2.2 (2020-03-02)
------------------

This minor release fixes a bug causing builds linking with libchafa to
fail.

* Bug fixes:
  github#34  Cannot compile example (found by Petr Bílek).

1.2.1 (2019-08-15)
------------------

This minor release fixes a few bugs and improves terminal detection.

* Detect kitty and mlterm virtual terminals and apply optimal defaults
  accordingly.

* Make Automake build more strict and fix a few compatibility nits.

* Bug fixes:
  github#30  Failed to build on hurd-i386 (found by Mo Zhou).
  [unfiled]  Crash on certain broken GIFs.

1.2.0 (2019-08-04)
------------------

This is a feature and performance release.

* Added --dither, --dither-grain and --dither-intensity options. These
  allow for sub-cell dithering in quantized modes (none, 2, 16, 240
  and 256). Especially beneficial when used with -p off.

* Added API for ordered and diffusion-based dithering in quantization.

* Added API support for multiple 8bpc pixel modes: RGB, BGR, RGBA, BGRA,
  ARGB, ABGR with either premultiplied or unassociated alpha channels.

* Smooth scaling is now done internally, meaning libchafa consumers no
  longer need to prescale images.

* Implemented a machine learning tool that can generate custom fonts
  for efficient image reproduction from a provided dataset. This is
  left uninstalled since it's still experimental (Mo Zhou).

* Throughput improvements:
  - GIF animations now start playing instantly.
  - GIF CPU overhead reduced by 75%, peak memory use down 95%-99% (!).
  - XWD common case CPU overhead down 60-70%, peak memory down 70%.
  - Additional halving of CPU overhead in 240- and 256-color modes.
  - Streamlined pixel pipeline for better parallelization.

* Installation instructions:
  - New: Guix (Guy Fleury Iteriteka).
  - New: openSUSE (Michael Vetter).

* Bug fixes:
  [unfiled]  Certain SVGs had transparency replaced with a white
             background (nemo).
  [unfiled]  -lm dependency belongs in libchafa, not frontend.

1.0.1 (2018-12-18)
------------------

* Bug fixes:
  [unfiled]  Bad geometry calculation when specifying one dimension
             and omitting the other.

1.0.0 (2018-12-16)
------------------

This release adds features, greatly improves performance and fixes
several bugs. Programs written for the command line and libchafa
interfaces in this release will be supported by future versions in
the 1.y.z series without the need for modification or recompilation.

* Added ability to specify "fill" symbols to use as halftone for better
  color approximation. This can be used to augment the regular symbol
  selection or to replace it (with --symbols none) for a different,
  purely intensity-based effect.

* Improved preprocessing in 2-color and 16-color modes. This is optional
  (default: on) and consists of a contrast boost and, for the 16-color
  mode, an additional saturation boost. The new implementation lives in
  libchafa and does not rely on ImageMagick. It is multithreaded, and due
  to its specialized nature, much faster.

* Added --watch option to continuously monitor a file.

* Added more symbols:
  - Most of the ASCII range.
  - Braille range (github#2, thanks to Adam Borowski).
  - Miscellaneous math and scanline symbols.
  - More geometric symbols (black circle, triangles) (Mo Zhou).

* Throughput improvements:
  - Fast symbol candidate set reduction by median cut.
  - Parallel processing with threads.
  - Prescaling using bilinear interpolation instead of lanczos.

* Installation instructions:
  - New: Arch (github#12, Felix Yan).
  - New: Debian testing/unstable (github#9, Mo Zhou).
  - New: Fedora (github#14, Ricardo Arguello).
  - Mention missing dependency for Debian (github#13, @medusacle).

* Bug fixes:
  github#1   -c none produces pointless \e[0m after every line (found by
             Adam Borowski).
  github#3   Compile error (found by Lajos Papp).
  github#4   AM_PROG_LIBTOOL is obsolete, replace it with LT_INIT
             (Robert-André Mauchin).
  github#5   Port chafa to i386 architecture (Mo Zhou).
  github#7   Chafa should not return an error when being asked for
             --version (Mo Zhou).
  github#10  Fix detection of MagickWand methods (Felix Yan).
  github#11  ImageMagick 7 support (found by Felix Yan).
  github#21  chafa.c:547: pointless assignment (found by @dcb314).

0.9.0 (2018-04-24)
------------------

Initial release.