Saving a plot

[arisolt]

Does visidata afford a way to save the current Plot view (i.e preserving current zoom level) to a text file, or copy it to the clipboard?

Note: not interested in exporting it to a graphical format (e.g PNG or SVG). Looking just to get the braille-based render out of Visidata, in order to paste it inside a text file.

Currently, I'm using the terminal emulator's feature to select displayed text and copy it, but it's not very elegant.

[midichef]

Interesting use case! Try adding this to your .visidatarc. You can copy the plot to the clipboard with gzY. Or g^O to edit a copy in an editor. Orgz" to open the screenshot in a visidata TextSheet.

## Utility class to emulate a curses screen and allow readout of drawn text via screenshot().
class ScreenLike:
    def __init__(self, w, h):
        self.w = w
        self.h = h
        self.pixels = [[' ' for _ in range(self.w)] for _ in range(self.h)]
    def getmaxyx(self):
        return self.h, self.w
    def addstr(self, y, x, ch_str, attr):
        if not (0 <= y < self.h): vd.warning(f'bad y coord in ScreenLike: y={y}')
        if not (0 <= x < self.w): vd.warning(f'bad x coord in ScreenLike: x={x}')
        self.pixels[y][x] = ch_str
        for ch in ch_str:
            self.pixels[y][x] = ch
            for i in range(1, dispwidth(ch)):
                if x+i < len(self.pixels[y]):
                    self.pixels[y][x+i] = ''
                else:
                    vd.warning(f'screen overflow in ScreenLike: x={x+i}')
            x += dispwidth(ch)
    def screenshot(self):
        return [ ''.join(self.pixels[y]) for y in range(len(self.pixels)) ]
@BaseSheet.api
def screenshot(self):
    '''Return a list of strings, one per screen row.
    Each string has as many characters as the display has columns.'''
    if not self._scr: vd.fail('cannot take text screenshot without a screen')
    h, w = self._scr.getmaxyx()
    scr_like = ScreenLike(w, h) 
    self.draw(scr_like)
    #refresh manually, in case draw(scr_like) unsets self.needsRefresh
    self.refresh()
    return scr_like.screenshot()
BaseSheet.addCommand('', 'open-screenshot', 'vd.push(TextSheet(source=screenshot()))', 'custom: open a sheet with text of drawn graph')
BaseSheet.addCommand('', 'syscopy-screenshot', 't = TextSheet(source=screenshot()); t.ensureLoaded(); t.syscopyCells(t.columns, t.rows, filetype="txt")', 'custom: copy graph text to the system clipboard')
BaseSheet.addCommand('', 'sysedit-screenshot', 't = TextSheet(source=screenshot()); t.ensureLoaded(); t.syseditCells(t.columns, t.rows, filetype="txt")', 'custom: open copy of graph text in $EDITOR')
GraphSheet.bindkey('gz"', 'open-screenshot')
GraphSheet.bindkey('gzY', 'syscopy-screenshot')
GraphSheet.bindkey('g^O', 'sysedit-screenshot')

@cool-RR possibly of interest to you as a GraphSheet user.

[arisolt]

Fantastic work @midichef !! Many thanks for this.

[midichef]

@arisolt
I just edited the code snippet to fix a bug. (writing a long string, then a shorter string to the same coordinate, would cause alignment issues). I also made the code more general. Now it can be used to take screenshots of any sheet. However, the keybindings only exist on the GraphSheet (gzY, gz", and g^O). They would conflict with existing keybindings on other kinds of sheets.

May I ask you to mark this Discussion as "Answered"? And to reopen it, if you can? The GitHub Discussions tab only shows open discussions (matching is:open), so closing this Discussion made it hard for me to find. If you lack reopen permissions, I can ask one of our admins.

[arisolt]

I think it should all be good now. thanks again!