0.10.0 (ColorShift)
Release 0.10.0
ColorShift, Canvas, Better Compatibililty, and more Customization
This release comes with a shiny new effect ColorShift, increased customization for Waves and Wipe as well as renaming the VerticalSlice effect to Slice with added slice directions.
Engine changes includes renaming the OutputArea class to Canvas and building out the
Color class from what was previously a TypeAlias. In addition, to increase compatibility with
older version of Python (back to 3.8), a few minor changes were implemented including using annotations and removing the
occasional use of modern syntax where unnecessary. Additionally, input can be passed to TTE using the new -i argument.
Finally, a few new pages were added to the docs. Check out the Cookbook for interesting examples using the TTE library and the ChangeBlog (you're already here) for a more friendly breakdown of each release.
ColorShift
The new ColorShift effect is largely in response to a Feature Request
issue involving looping effects and the desire for a
simple RGB gradient effect. TTE supports Gradients with an arbitrary number of stops and
steps. This means you can create gradients that transition through as many colors as you want, with as many steps
between colors. Fewer steps results in a more abrupt transition. As a part of the 0.10.0 update, I've added the loop
argument which causes the final color stop to blend back to the first. Here's an example:
Not Looped
from terminaltexteffects.utils.graphics import Color, Gradient
g = Gradient(Color("ff0000"), Color("00ff00"), Color("0000ff"), steps=10, loop=False)
print(g)
Looped
from terminaltexteffects.utils.graphics import Color, Gradient
g = Gradient(Color("ff0000"), Color("00ff00"), Color("0000ff"), steps=10, loop=True)
print(g)
Notice how the looped Gradient transitions from blue, the final color stop, back to red, the first color stop. That allows the smooth looped gradient animations seen in the ColorShift effect.
Travelling
ColorShift supports standing Gradients and travelling Gradients in the following directions:
- vertical
- horizontal
- diagonal
- radial
The travel direction can be reversed (think, center -> outside and outside -> center) using the
--reverse-travel-direction argument.
Never-Ending Effects
ColorShift marks the first effect in the TTE library to support infinite looping. This
feature is set by setting the
ColorShiftConfig cycles
attribute to 0. This will only work when using the effect in your code. The command line argument validator for
cycles will not allow values below 1. This may change in the future, however at this time I'm not sold on having
effects that have to be killed when run as an application.
ColorShiftConfig
skip-final-gradient will cause the effect to end when the last gradient cycle concludes. Otherwise, the
final_gradient_* configuration will be used to transition to a final state.
OutputArea is now Canvas
On the slow but steady journey to documenting the engine from the perspective of writing effects, I realized
OutputArea is not a particularly good class name to describe the area of the terminal in which the effect is being
drawn. In addition, setting the terminal dimensions in the TerminalConfig was not
intuitive when you imagine the terminal dimensions are referring to your actual terminal device. To remedy this,
OutputArea was renamed Canvas and the
TerminalConfig.terminal_height/TerminalConfig.terminal_width are now
TerminalConfig.canvas_height/TerminalConfig.canvas_width.
So what is the Canvas? It's the space in the terminal where the effect is actually being
rendered. When set automatically, it is determined by the bounding box that contains all of your text when it is passed to TTE. So if your
input text is 5 lines high and 30 characters wide, the Canvas is 5x30. This is independent of your terminal device
dimensions. Of course, if your text extends beyond the terminal device dimensions, it may be wrapped (if
TerminalConfig.wrap_text is True) which will result in different Canvas dimensions.
0.10.0 Demos
Speaking of ColorShift, check it out.
Here's one of the new directions for Waves, center_to_outside.
Here's Wipe showing one of the new wipe directions, outside_to_center.
