Version

0.1

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2009-2012 Justine Tunney

Manual section

3

Manual group

Library Calls

Download and extract the latest version:

sudo apt-get install gcc python-imaging python-setuptools
sudo python setup.py install

Run the demo to see what's available:

python -m fabulous.demo

4-bit color. These colors and styles are standard and work almost everywhere. They are useful in helping make your program output easier to read:

from fabulous import bold, magenta, highlight_red

print bold(magenta('hello kitty'))
print highlight_red('DANGER DANGER!')

print bold('hello') + ' ' + magenta( kitty')

assert len(bold('test')) == 4

8-bit color. If you want to spice things up a bit, Fabulous supports xterm256 colors:

from fabulous import fg256, bg256
print fg256('#F0F', 'hello kitty')
print fg256('magenta', 'hello kitty')

Way cool text. This is something neat you can use when you program starts up to display its name with style:

from fabulous import text
print text.Text("Fabulous", color='#0099ff', shadow=True, scew=5)

Fabulous lets you print images, which is more fun than useful. Fabulous' unique method of printing images really shines when used with semi-transparent PNG files. When blending backgrounds, Fabulous assumes by default that your terminal has a black background. Don't worry if your image is huge, it'll be resized by default to fit your terminal:

from fabulous import utils, image
print image.Image("balls.png")

# adjust for a white background
utils.term.bgcolor = 'white'
print image.Image("balls.png")

It's scriptable too (like img2txt) :

python -m fabulous.image balls.png >balls.txt
cat balls.txt

This is very useful tool for monitoring what your Python scripts are doing. It allows you to have full verbosity without drowning out important error messages:

import time, logging
from fabulous import logs
logs.basicConfig(level='WARNING')

for n in range(20):
    logging.debug("verbose stuff you don't care about")
    time.sleep(0.1)
logging.warning("something bad happened!")
for n in range(20):
    logging.debug("verbose stuff you don't care about")
    time.sleep(0.1)

Here's how Fabulous compares to other similar libraries:

• fabulous: Licensed MIT. Focuses on delivering useful features in the simplest, most user-friendly way possible (without a repulsive name.) Written in pure-python but will attempt to auto-magically compile/link a speedup library. ~1,000 lines of code.
• libcaca: WTFPL. This is the established and respected standard for doing totally insane things with ascii art (ever wanted to watch a movie on the command line?) Weighing in at ~72k lines of C, this project is a monster. It uses an older, more complex text/dithering-based rendering method. Compared to fabulous, some images look better, some worse. I found the docs somewhat difficult to follow and couldn't find support for transparency or 256-colors.
• asciiporn: GPL. Similar to libcaca but has an interesting feature for drawing math graphs to the terminal... Needs to compile C code, requires numpy/python2.6, and I couldn't get the darn thing to work. Aprox 17k lines of code.
• pygments: BSD. Has excellent support for terminal syntax highlighting.
• termcolor: GPL. Only supports 4-bit ANSI colors.

• <http://www.burgaud.com/bring-colors-to-the-windows-console-with-python/>