!@thi.ng/text-format

!npm downloads

> [!NOTE]
> This is one of 214 standalone projects, maintained as part
> of the @thi.ng/umbrella monorepo
> and anti-framework.
>
> 🚀 Please help me to work full-time on these projects by sponsoring me on
> GitHub. Thank you! ❤️

- About
- Format identifiers
- Colors
- Stylistic variations
- Combined formats
- Compatibility
- String conversion format presets
- 256 color ANSI format
- 16bit color ANSI & HTML formats
- Ad-hoc formatting of strings
- Status
- Support packages
- Related packages
- Installation
- Dependencies
- Usage examples
- API
- Authors
- License

About

Customizable color text formatting with presets for ANSI & HTML.

This package provides a number of color and other styling format constants, as
well as formatting functions to interpret and apply these abstract format
identifiers for different output formats.

$3

The format constants provided by this package are _primarily_ (not exclusively)
aimed at being used with the
@thi.ng/text-canvas
package. The text canvas stores all characters in a Uint32Array with the lower
16 bits used for the UTF-16 code and the upper 16 bits for abitrary
formatting data.

The format
IDs
provided here are tailored for some of the included ANSI & HTML formatters, but
users are free to choose use any other interpretation (but then will also need
to implement a custom string formatter impl).

#### Colors

These color IDs MUST be prefixed with either FG_ (foreground) or BG_
(background):

- BLACK
- RED
- GREEN
- YELLOW
- BLUE
- MAGENTA
- CYAN
- GRAY
- WHITE
- LIGHT_GRAY
- LIGHT_RED
- LIGHT_GREEN
- LIGHT_YELLOW
- LIGHT_BLUE
- LIGHT_MAGENTA
- LIGHT_CYAN

#### Stylistic variations

- BOLD
- DIM
- UNDERLINE

#### Combined formats

Format IDs can be combined via the binary OR operator, e.g.:

FG_BLACK | BG_LIGHT_CYAN | BOLD | UNDERLINE

#### Compatibility

These above listed built-in format IDs are only compatible with these bundled
formatters (described below):

- FMT_ANSI16
- FMT_HTML_INLINE_CSS
- FMT_HTML_TACHYONS

$3

String formatting is completely customizable via the StringFormat
interface.
Currently the following presets are supplied:

- FMT_ANSI16 - translate built-in format IDs to 4-bit ANSI escape sequences
- FMT_ANSI256 - uses all 16 format bits for fg & bg colors (ANSI esc sequences)
- FMT_ANSI565 - uses all 16 format bits for RGB565 fg colors (ANSI esc sequences)
- FMT_ANSI_RAW - verbatim use of format IDs to ANSI sequences
- FMT_HTML_INLINE_CSS - HTML elements with inline CSS
- FMT_HTML_TACHYONS - HTML elements with Tachyons
CSS class names
- FMT_HTML565 - HTML elements with RGB565 color coding
- FMT_NONE - dummy formatter outputting plain text only (all format
information discarded, e.g. for NO_COLOR support)

#### 256 color ANSI format

If targeting this output format, all 16 bits available for formatting
information are used to encode 2x 8bit foreground/background colors. Therefore,
none of the above mentioned preset color names and/or any additional formatting
flags (e.g. bold, underline etc.) cannot be used. Instead, use the
format256()
function to create a format ID based on given FG, BG colors.

!ANSI256 color pallette

Source: Wikipedia

#### 16bit color ANSI & HTML formats

Similar to the above custom ANSI format, here all available 16 bits are used to
store color information, but here in the standard RGB565
format (5bits red, 6bits green, 5bits
blue). This too means, only _either_ the text or background color⁽¹⁾
can be controlled and no other formatting flags (bold, underline etc.) are
available.

⁽¹⁾ In the ANSI version it's always only the text color.

These formats are primarily intended for image display, see the
@thi.ng/text-canvas
readme
for usage examples...

$3

String formatters can also be used in an ad-hoc manner, without requiring any of
the other text canvas functionality.

``ts
import { defFormat, FMT_HTML_INLINE_CSS, FG_LIGHT_RED, BG_GRAY } from "@thi.ng/text-format";

// create & use a HTML formatter
defFormat(FMT_HTML_INLINE_CSS, FG_LIGHT_RED | BG_GRAY)("hello")
// "hello"
`

`ts
import { defFormat, FMT_ANSI16, FG_LIGHT_RED, BG_GRAY } from "@thi.ng/text-format";

// create & use an ANSI formatter
defFormat(FMT_ANSI16, FG_LIGHT_RED | BG_GRAY)("hello")
// "\x1B91;100mhello\x1B[0m"
`

`ts
import { defAnsi16, FG_LIGHT_RED, BG_GRAY } from "@thi.ng/text-format";

// ANSI syntax sugar (same result as above)
defAnsi16(FG_LIGHT_RED | BG_GRAY)("hello")
// "\x1B[91;100mhello\x1B[0m"
`

Furthermore,
[defFormatPresets()
can be used to create formatting functions for all 16 preset foreground color
IDs for a given string format strategy:

`ts
import { defFormatPresets, FMT_ANSI16, FMT_HTML_TACHYONS } from "@thi.ng/text-format";

// since v1.3.0 also available as PRESET_ANSI16
const ansi = defFormatPresets(FMT_ANSI16);

${ansi.green("hello")} ${ansi.lightRed("world")}!;
// '\x1B32mhello\x1B[0m \x1B[91mworld\x1B[0m!'

const html = defFormatPresets(FMT_HTML_TACHYONS);

${html.green("hello")} ${html.lightRed("world")}!;
// 'hello world!'
`

Status

STABLE - used in production

[Search or submit any issues for this package

Support packages

- @thi.ng/text-format-image - Bitmap image formatting for CLI/Terminal

Related packages

- @thi.ng/text-canvas - Text based canvas, drawing, plotting, tables with arbitrary formatting (incl. ANSI/HTML)

Installation

`bash
yarn add @thi.ng/text-format
`

ESM import:

`ts
import * as tf from "@thi.ng/text-format";
`

Browser ESM import:

`html

`

JSDelivr documentation

For Node.js REPL:

`js
const tf = await import("@thi.ng/text-format");
`

Package sizes (brotli'd, pre-treeshake): ESM: 1.87 KB

Dependencies

- @thi.ng/api
- @thi.ng/hex
- @thi.ng/memoize

Note: @thi.ng/api is in _most_ cases a type-only import (not used at runtime)

Usage examples

Three projects in this repo's
/examples
directory are using this package:

| Screenshot | Description | Live demo | Source |
|:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|:------------------------------------------------------------------|:--------------------------------------------------------|:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| | ASCII art raymarching with thi.ng/shader-ast & thi.ng/text-canvas | Demo | Source |
| | 3D wireframe textmode demo | Demo | Source |
| | Textmode image warping w/ 16bit color output | Demo | Source |

API

Generated API docs

TODO

Authors

- Karsten Schmidt

If this project contributes to an academic publication, please cite it as:

`bibtex
@misc{thing-text-format,
title = "@thi.ng/text-format",
author = "Karsten Schmidt",
note = "https://thi.ng/text-format",
year = 2020
}
``

License

© 2020 - 2026 Karsten Schmidt // Apache License 2.0