This release adds features, greatly improves performance and fixes several bugs. Programs written for the command line and libchafa interfaces in this release will be supported by future versions in the 1.y.z series without the need for modification or recompilation.
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Added ability to specify "fill" symbols to use as halftone for better color approximation. This can be used to augment the regular symbol selection or to replace it (with --symbols none) for a different, purely intensity-based effect.
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Improved preprocessing in 2-color and 16-color modes. This is optional (default: on) and consists of a contrast boost and, for the 16-color mode, an additional saturation boost. The new implementation lives in libchafa and does not rely on ImageMagick. It is multithreaded, and due to its specialized nature, much faster.
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Added --watch option to continuously monitor a file.
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Added more symbols:
- Most of the ASCII range.
- Braille range (#2, thanks to @kilobyte).
- Miscellaneous math and scanline symbols.
- More geometric symbols (black circle, triangles) (@cdluminate).
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Throughput improvements:
- Fast symbol candidate set reduction by median cut.
- Parallel processing with threads.
- Prescaling using bilinear interpolation instead of lanczos.
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Installation instructions:
- New: Arch (#12, @felixonmars).
- New: Debian testing/unstable (#9, @cdluminate).
- New: Fedora (#14, @rarguello).
- Mention missing dependency for Debian (#13, @medusacle).
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Bug fixes:
- #1 - -c none produces pointless \e[0m after every line (found by @kilobyte).
- #3 - Compile error (found by @lalyos).
- #4 - AM_PROG_LIBTOOL is obsolete, replace it with LT_INIT (@eclipseo).
- #5 - Port chafa to i386 architecture (@cdluminate).
- #7 - Chafa should not return an error when being asked for --version (@cdluminate).
- #10 - Fix detection of MagickWand methods (@felixonmars).
- #11 - ImageMagick 7 support (found by @felixonmars).
- #21 - chafa.c:547: pointless assignment (found by @dcb314).