Upstream effect and engine
TerminalTextEffects by ChrisBuilds supplies the effect design. ttfx ports it to Rust under the MIT license.Read the original source
Small useful tools
Terminal text effects
Bring terminal animations to a Rust executable for shell pipelines.
Recorded result
Explore the exampleWhy I’m interested
Terminal animation fits naturally into a shell pipeline: give it text and get an effect without a larger application around it. I want a Rust port to keep the timing and character of the original effects while making startup and frame throughput easy to measure. Those measurements tell us what the port gains and where it gets slower.
Progress
The native Rust binary produced 30 print-effect frames with a fixed seed. Four stages appear below. Earlier performance work recorded a regression, so the next comparison measures the same effect in Rust and the original engine.
Follow the print effect frame by frame
Select four stages from the native Rust port and watch the text take shape.
A native ttfx print-effect frame
Text appears across a 24 × 3 canvas as the effect advances. These four stages come from the same native run with seed zero.
- Selected frame
- 0
- Captured frames
- 30
Input
MAKE SMALL THINGS
seed: 0
canvas: 24 × 3
effect: printResult
█ A native ttfx print-effect frame
Text appears across a 24 × 3 canvas as the effect advances. These four stages come from the same native run with seed zero.
- Selected frame
- 10
- Captured frames
- 30
Input
MAKE SMALL THINGS
seed: 0
canvas: 24 × 3
effect: printResult
▒
▓
▓▓████████████ A native ttfx print-effect frame
Text appears across a 24 × 3 canvas as the effect advances. These four stages come from the same native run with seed zero.
- Selected frame
- 20
- Captured frames
- 30
Input
MAKE SMALL THINGS
seed: 0
canvas: 24 × 3
effect: printResult
MAKE░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▓ A native ttfx print-effect frame
Text appears across a 24 × 3 canvas as the effect advances. These four stages come from the same native run with seed zero.
- Selected frame
- 29
- Captured frames
- 30
Input
MAKE SMALL THINGS
seed: 0
canvas: 24 × 3
effect: printResult
MAKE SMALL THINGS ttfx produced 30 frames in this recorded run. The page displays four of them. The next benchmark measures startup and frame throughput against TerminalTextEffects by ChrisBuilds.
Sources and reference notes
What comes next
Reproduce the performance regression with the same input in both engines. Measure startup time and frame throughput.
Implementation and credits
How does a terminal effect build its output frame by frame?
Four recorded stages come from 30 native ttfx frames with fixed text, seed zero, and a 24 × 3 canvas.
Select four frames from the same print effect and follow the text as it appears.
The native Rust binary produces the frames. Rust exports the view and HTML controls select each stage.
ttfx ports TerminalTextEffects by ChrisBuilds under the upstream MIT license.