[rbanffy]

The venerable xterm and a lot of later physical terminals (those things with CRTs) can emulate Tektronix (Tektronix, that today makes instruments, also made computer terminals with fancy storage CRTs that were kind of e-paper-like, but green - and sometimes yellow - screen) graphics. iTerm2 and some others, as pointed out, can do Sixel graphics (a format designed originally for DEC dot-matrix printers that some DEC terminals also implement).

[user-the-name]

I mean, yes, that is how sad the current state is.

[rbanffy]

VTE and, with it, almost every Linux distro, will get Sixel support soon. I volunteered to add Tektronix graphics to it too, but this is neither a dire need, nor something I have done before, so it'll take some time.

[user-the-name]

It's forty years old. Why on earth would you be adding that in 2021?

Why are we not focusing our energy on making something that is actually up to date?

[rbanffy]

Because things that existed 40 years ago are useful, already have software written for it, are compatible in sometimes unforeseen ways (a DEC dot-matrix graph can be printed as is on a Sixel-compatible terminal!) and have been battle tested for ages.

There is a reason the Unix way of bytestream-based shell and pipes is still useful and present these days to the point that That Other OS is now embedding Linux in it.

Also, these ancient terminals often had some interesting typography options that are encoded in the ANSI standard that most modern terminals don't bother (line attributes that generate wider and taller cells are one such example).

These formats may be more desirable than more modern and complete ones such as PostScript for other reasons. I wouldn't advise implementing a terminal capable of rendering PostScript graphics because it's one more way to infiltrate malware in your computer by rendering untrusted inputs (There are a lot of RCE opportunities in exploiting vulnerable decoders).