support for Kitty Text Sizing Protocol

[dagbdagb]

Curious if support for Kitty Text Sizing Protocol a) has been considered for inclusion and b) is possible to fit into rich in any shape or way without having to rebuild a ton of stuff.

TSP

[TomJGooding]

I'm not a maintainer, but having played around with the kitty text sizing protocol a bit, I don't think Rich could support it without a huge amount of work.

Are there any terminals besides kitty that support this protocol?

[dagbdagb]

I'm not a maintainer, but having played around with the kitty text sizing protocol a bit, I don't think Rich could support it without a huge amount of work.

Are there any terminals besides kitty that support this protocol?

Foot supports the width part of the proto.
Ghostty appears to be looking into it.

[willmcgugan]

Feels premature if few terminals support it, and few apps make use of it.

I suspect an extension rather than an update to the core library would be prudent.

[dagbdagb]

Thank you for chiming in.

Feels premature if few terminals support it, and few apps make use of it.

I suspect an extension rather than an update to the core library would be prudent.

Clearly depends on which terminals support it, and the added "value" of the feature. TUI/CLI apps typically want to employ rich/ratatui/blessed/ncurses etc. to make nice looking apps. A typical chicken and egg situation. :-)

• The ability to render markdown, html, man-pages and more in the terminal with properly sized headers (and footers) does a lot for readability (IMHO).
• Having 2-3 "major" terminals supporting it weighs more than 6 "niche" ones. We're clearly not there yet, though.
• Having the protocol originate with Kitty / Kovid Goyal at least suggests that it has been thought through properly. (Yeah, I am a fan. :-)

Still, I recognize that supporting this feature can be a major undertaking for a lot of libraries and terminals where there is an underlying assumption that 1 cell == 1 character.