Support font ligatures

[Tyriar]

Support being removed in https://github.com/sourcelair/xterm.js/pull/938

It's certainly still possible, the renderer needs to know which characters to join though.

[Tyriar]

👍 I might be overthinking with the bundler concern as you mention there are workarounds. I expect we would deprecate/phase out the Electron option once font access turns on in Electron anyway.

[UziTech]

@Tyriar can we get a release of the ligatures addon with the update in font-finder soon?

[Tyriar]

@UziTech xterm-addon-ligatures@0.4.0-beta.9 should have that, I've created a reminder to bump the version for 4.10 https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/issues/3220

[LabhanshAgrawal]

I've opened a pr princjef/font-ligatures#22 as the first step in getting this done

[LabhanshAgrawal]

The pr's open for quite some time now, what to do?

[Tyriar]

I reached out to @princjef on Teams.

[LabhanshAgrawal]

I have opened a pr with the discussed idea. Do check it out and test. #3264

[LabhanshAgrawal]

As #3264 is merged now, what's the next step?

[Tyriar]

@LabhanshAgrawal just implemented character joiner support in the dom renderer with https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/pull/3285, webgl still needs to happen which shouldn't be too difficult as well https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/issues/3094. Pulling out the xterm.js only bits from https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/34103:

• [x] DOM renderer support
• [x] WebGL renderer support
• [x] Hook up ligatures in demo
• [ ] Set up some puppeteer tests that verify on all renderers (dom, canvas, webgl) that ligatures are working
  • This might be difficult with the permissions 🤔
• [ ] Slim down the dependencies - I need to do a once over to see the state here
• [x] Leverage font access API

[LabhanshAgrawal]

I can take a look at webgl if needed, but it will take some time as I'm not familiar with it at all right now.

[Tyriar]

@LabhanshAgrawal I'm on it atm 🙂

[LabhanshAgrawal]

That's great then 😊👍

[LabhanshAgrawal]

Oh, it's already done. it's going to be hard waiting for the release now.

[jukrb0x]

Oh, it's already done. it's going to be hard waiting for the release now.

Please close this ticket when releases, I would be happy to try it immediately as it releases. :)

[Tyriar]

@jukrb0x the webgl ligature support is done, I was going to keep this open until it's done in VS Code to do the remaining mostly clean up items:

• [ ] Set up some puppeteer tests that verify on all renderers (dom, canvas, webgl) that ligatures are working
• [ ] Slim down the dependencies - I need to do a once over to see the state here
• [ ] Review/action https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/labels/area%2Faddon%2Fligatures

[NewtonChutney]

Oh, it's already done. it's going to be hard waiting for the release now.

@jukrb0x the webgl ligature support is done, I was going to keep this open until it's done in VS Code to do the remaining mostly clean up items:

• [ ] Set up some puppeteer tests that verify on all renderers (dom, canvas, webgl) that ligatures are working
• [ ] Slim down the dependencies - I need to do a once over to see the state here
• [ ] Review/action https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/labels/area%2Faddon%2Fligatures

Knock knock 😶👀 Was ligature support finally added? 🥲

[Tyriar]

@NewtonChutney latest update for vscode: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/34103#issuecomment-1331018529

[jerch]

@Tyriar Not sure if this is related - tried to run gh CI with node 16|18 and it failed with some weird output error for the ligature addon, whilte it works with node 14.

(Link to the action:https://github.com/jerch/xterm-addon-image/actions/runs/5222277777/jobs/9427553798)

[Tyriar]

@jerch passes fine on main, it's on Azure DevOps but also node 18 🤷

[jerch]

@jerch passes fine on main, it's on Azure DevOps but also node 18 shrug

Hmm weird, it also worked locally with node 16 (have not tested node 18 here).