● Covered by 1 source · 1 reportLow impact1 neutral
Creating Terminal-Viewable Websites Using ANSI Escape Codes
Key points
- Hand-wrote ANSI-marked-up index and about pages.
- Used Vim registers and Wikipedia for ANSI escape codes.
- Leveraged a custom markup language, Gemroff, for blog post generation.
- Created curl versions for an entire blog, not just a few pages.
Inspiration and Concept
The author created a terminal-viewable version of their website, accessible via `curl nytpu.com`. This concept was inspired by similar projects from trinkey and strongsand, though their curl versions are no longer functional. The author decided to document their process due to inquiries from other users.
Generating ANSI-Marked-Up Content
The core of the project involved generating ANSI-marked-up files. The author hand-wrote the index and about pages, using a Vim register for the `ESC[` escape code and referencing Wikipedia for specific graphics codes. This manual approach was chosen for its expediency, differing from others who might use libraries like ratatui for on-the-fly generation.
Scaling for an Entire Blog
A notable aspect of this implementation is the availability of curl versions for the author's entire blog, not just a few pages. This was made possible by a pre-existing feature in their custom markup language, Gemroff, which already supported outputting ANSI-marked-up plaintext. This feature, originally for previewing drafts, was easily integrated into their static site generator to produce curl-compatible content. Manual wrapper templates were created for blog posts and the index page.
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Primary sources
GitHub ratatui/ratatuiReporting from
This article details the process of creating terminal-viewable websites using ANSI escape codes, inspired by other developers. The author explains how they hand-wrote ANSI-marked-up files and leveraged a custom markup language to generate curl versions of their entire blog.