A Linux terminal recorder written in Python which renders your command line sessions as standalone SVG animations.
More examples of recordings here
I really like the clean look of SVG animations and I also wanted to see how this solution would hold out against other attempts at terminal recording such as asciinema.
termtosvg is compatible with Python >= 3.5 and can be installed with pip:
pip install termtosvg
Start recording with:
$ termtosvg
Recording started, enter "exit" command or Control-D to end
You are now in a subshell where you can type your commands as usual. Once you are done, exit the shell to end the recording:
$ exit
Recording ended, file is /tmp/termtosvg_exp5nsr4.svg
Finally, use your favorite web browser to play the animation:
$ firefox /tmp/termtosvg_exp5nsr4.svg
Rendering the SVG animation while recording might sometimes slow the commands being executed a bit because of the CPU usage, so it is possible to proceed in two steps:
- Record the terminal session to disk in asciicast v2 format
- Render the SVG animation using the recording on disk
The usage of these two commands is detailed below.
$ termtosvg record --help
usage: termtosvg record [output_file] [--verbose] [--help]
record the session to a file in asciicast v2 format
positional arguments:
output_file optional filename for the recording; if missing, a random
filename will be automatically generated
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-v, --verbose increase log messages verbosity
$ termtosvg render --help
usage: termtosvg render input_file [output_file] [--theme THEME] [--verbose] [--help]
render an asciicast recording as an SVG animation
positional arguments:
input_file recording of the terminal session in asciicast v2 format
output_file optional filename for the SVG animation; if missing, a random
filename will be automatically generated
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--theme THEME color theme used to render the terminal session (circus,
classic-dark, classic-light, dracula, isotope, marrakesh,
material, monokai, solarized-dark, solarized-light, zenburn)
-v, --verbose increase log messages verbosity
If you wish to record a terminal session using a specific color theme, say monokai for example, enter the following command:
termtosvg --theme monokai
Available themes can be listed with termtosvg --help
...
--theme THEME color theme used to render the terminal session (circus,
classic-dark, classic-light, dracula, isotope, marrakesh,
material, monokai, solarized-dark, solarized-light, zenburn)
...
If termtosvg is called without the --theme option, it will try gathering
color information from the Xserver running on your machine.
To tell the Xserver about the color theme you wish to use for termtosvg, you have to declare the foreground, background and default 16 colors in your ~/.Xresources file. Here is an example based on monokai from the base16 project:
termtosvg.foreground: #f8f8f2
termtosvg.background: #272822
termtosvg.color0: #272822
termtosvg.color1: #f92672
termtosvg.color2: #a6e22e
termtosvg.color3: #f4bf75
termtosvg.color4: #66d9ef
termtosvg.color5: #ae81ff
termtosvg.color6: #a1efe4
termtosvg.color7: #f8f8f2
termtosvg.color8: #75715e
termtosvg.color9: #fd971f
termtosvg.color10: #383830
termtosvg.color11: #49483e
termtosvg.color12: #a59f85
termtosvg.color13: #f5f4f1
termtosvg.color14: #cc6633
termtosvg.color15: #f9f8f5
Once you have added this information to your ~/.Xresources file, load it with xrdb or restart the Xserver on your machine. You should now be able to record terminal sessions with those custom colors.
termtosvg uses:
- pyte to render the terminal screen
- svgwrite to create SVG animations
- python-xlib to query the X server for color configuration and to parse Xresources data
- base16-xresources for default color themes
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