Little Qt-console program that shows CP437-ANSI files in your console.

I happened to get my hands on a collection of old text files containing ANSI graphics and CP437 characters, used in the 80s-90s for graphics on terminals and BBSes.

To view them on my linux system I typed:

    cat <file>

but the result was something like this:

I have investigated the problem and realized that it was possible to make a simple converter to transform these files into a format that was interpretable by my console's bash. And so showansi was born.

Whith showansi you can convert old ANSI-CP437 files to Unicode chars and shows it in your bash console.

This is the same file converted by showansi:

Note that if the ANSI-CP437 file is animated, the animations are not lost and the bash console is able to display them correctly.

To compile and run showansi you need to have Qt libraries >= version 6 installed.

Please go in program directory and type this in your bash console:

    qmake6
    make

Note: on some system, qmake6 is simply qmake.

To install showansi in the system, type:

    sudo cp showansi /usr/bin

Please go in program directory and type this in your bash console:

    ./showansi test1.ans

or

    ./showansi test2.ans

Enjoy!