Consider accepting iTerm’s link format about terminal-to-html HOT 12 CLOSED

@mipearson I don’t suppose you know where the chosen 1339 escape code was from? I don’t seem to be able to establish provenance other than your adding it in #30!

from terminal-to-html.

Yeah, I reckon we should totally just support the iterm2 one @ticky

from terminal-to-html.

FWIW this is now supported by many more terminal emulators and tools, including ls in coreutils, gcc, and so on: https://gist.github.com/egmontkob/eb114294efbcd5adb1944c9f3cb5feda

from terminal-to-html.

I realised because terminal-to-html doesn't handle ST as a terminator, like a conforming terminal should, it is possible to make output that results in the same thing on iTerm2 and this. That's probably confusing to say; so best illustrated by this code:

func crazyURL(url string) string {
        // This generates a very particular set of escape sequences:
        //   OSC8 + ST (terminal-to-html doesn't see this terminator) + URL
        //   OSC8 + BEL (empty URL - terminates OSC8, "xterm" terminator)
        //   OSC1339 (custom buildkite URL)
	return fmt.Sprintf("\x1B]8;;%s\x1B\\%s\x1B]8;;\x07\x1B]1339;url=%s\x07",
            url, url, url)
}

That will result in a single URL being visible and it will be a link in both iTerm2 and terminal-to-html (and correctly degrades to just the plain text version in terminals not supporting OSC8/OSC1339).

from terminal-to-html.

I .. might have picked it out of thin air? I can't remember if iterm supported links at the time, it might have been a code I chose as it wasn't used elsewhere.

from terminal-to-html.

That’s fair - image_code + 1 totes sounds reasonable too! 😃

from terminal-to-html.

iTerm's image format is different too: https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-images.html

from terminal-to-html.

What's the reasoning behind requiring the escape sequence for links? Would it not be generally helpful to just linkify anything starting with http:// or https://? It seems like a bad user experience to have to muck about with escape codes to generate links in build output.

from terminal-to-html.

Talking as one of the original authors of this, but I don't work for buildkite, and their views may differ:

It would have been hard to code with the way that terminal parses input (poorly, but quickly).

There's also gotchas that you need to deal with when auto-linking anything that starts with https:// - eg what to do about periods or quotes at the end. I've a vague memory that there might be security concerns as well.

(worth noting also that iterm2 used to auto-link, but then stopped when it turned into a security nightmare as it would try to resolve the domain to work out whether something was a "link" or not, meaning that sometimes people's things that looked like links but were actually security credentials would be transmitted in the clear to a DNS server)

from terminal-to-html.

The link escape sequence is to turn any text into a link, much like on the web, without needing to show the full URL in the output

from terminal-to-html.

Any update? Just found out I can't make output which works with this library and in an OSC8 supporting terminal.

from terminal-to-html.

Hey @dgl, this is to let you know I'm going to break your awesome hack in the next release (with #159). But I think I've figured out how to add OSC 8 support, so hopefully you won't be waiting too long for that!

from terminal-to-html.