Asciinema is a lightweight, text-based tool for recording and sharing terminal sessions in full fidelity.
Asciinema offers various features like changing playback speed, theming, and exporting sessions.
The project aims to remain free and open-source, with plans to add audio support and live streaming functionality.
Deep dives
The History and Inception of StatSig
StatSig was founded by Vijay Raji, who previously worked at Facebook for 10 years. He was inspired by the engineering culture at Facebook and wanted to bring the same tools and practices to other companies. This led him to create StatSig, a unified platform for feature flags, experimentation, and analytics. The goal of StatSig is to help companies ship new features faster, make data-informed decisions, and improve their products.
The Creation of Askinema
Askinema, created by Marc Inkelick, is a tool that allows users to record and play back their terminal sessions. The idea for Askinema came when Marc discovered the script command, which records terminal output, and he wanted a way to share his recordings with others. He developed a prototype using jQuery and eventually built a full-featured player using Rust. Askinema captures the byte stream of terminal output, rather than recording a video, resulting in small ASCII cast files. The player then emulates the terminal and animates the output, offering a text-based, scalable, and interactive recording experience.
Features and Possibilities of Askinema
Askinema offers a range of features and possibilities. Users can record their terminal sessions in real-time, export them locally or upload them to Askinema.org. The player supports changing playback speed for a more pleasant viewing experience, and users can limit idle time to remove pauses, making the recordings smoother. Askinema recordings are themeable, allowing users to customize the appearance of their terminal sessions. The tool also has an active open-source community, and Marc is constantly working on new features and improvements. Future plans include adding audio support and a transcript view for better accessibility and usability.
The Importance of Maintaining a Pure Free and Open Source Project
The podcast episode discusses the importance of maintaining a pure free and open source project. The speaker shares their belief that the project should be supported by the community while remaining free and open source. They mention setting up a GitHub sponsors program and offering consulting services to make the project sustainable. They express satisfaction with the initial response from sponsors but acknowledge the need for more support to cover living and operating costs.
Exploring Potential Enhancements to Askcinema
The podcast episode explores potential enhancements to Askcinema, a tool for recording and sharing text-based terminal sessions. The speaker discusses the possibility of adding audio support to the recordings and mentions that some users already record audio separately and use the Askcinema player's API to control it. They also mention the idea of adding subtitles or a script feature for better narration. Additionally, the speaker shares upcoming plans for a live streaming feature and mentions the desire to implement a full-text search on the Askcinema website.
This week we’re joined by Marcin Kulik to talk about his project asciinema. You’ve likely seen this out there in the wild — asciinema lets you record and share your terminal sessions in full fidelity. Forget screen recording apps that offer blurry video. asciinema provides a lightweight, text-based approach to terminal recording with lots of possibilities. Marcin shares the backstory on this project, where he’d like to take it, who’s supporting him along the way, and we even included 11 minutes of bonus content for Changelog ++ subscribers.
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