[icat-mini.sh] option to disable GIF animations

[Ignatius18652]

Hello. I use this program in my file manager (lf), since unfortunately no other terminal image viewer works in lf and kitten icat breaks the screen, so I basically have to use icat-mini.

overall the speed is ok for images, but GIFs are VERY SLOW. Can you please provide the option to turn off animations for GIFs and to just show the first frame? I already did this in my config but it would be great to make it universal and also to provide an option.

[sergei-grechanik]

Created a PR, please take a look: #15

[Ignatius18652]

I tried it. it works thanks. would it make it faster if I set the options directly in the .sh file instead of outside of it? and what's faster between direct and file?

[sergei-grechanik]

File transmission is usually faster than direct transmission. If it's still slow, likely ImageMagick's convert is the culprit.

…

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[Ignatius18652]

true. I would recommend optimizing how magick is used so it could be used less often. I'm curious what this line does:

#####################################################################

Detect imagemagick

#####################################################################

If there is the 'magick' command, use it instead of separate 'convert' and

'identify' commands.

if command -v magick > /dev/null; then
identify="magick identify"
convert="magick"
else
identify="identify"
convert="convert"
fi

All new versions of imagemagick have the magick command. it seems redundant. better to add "magick" to the other commands directly. maybe it would make it faster.

[sergei-grechanik]

All new versions of imagemagick have the magick command. it seems redundant

Ubuntu 24.04 comes with the older ImageMagick 6 and doesn't have this command

I did some measurements. On my machine, magick command detection takes around 5ms, so it's not really an issue.
The most time consuming phases for uploading a simple png are:

• tmux detection: ~200 ms (if inside tmux)
• getting the cell size in pixels: ~100 ms
• placeholder printing: ~40 ms
• computing the number of rows/columns (includes calling identify): ~30 ms
• calling identify to get the format: ~20 ms

The script calls identify twice: first to get the image dimensions, and then to get the image format and the number of frames. These should be combined into a single call, which will reduce the total time by 20 ms.

If an image is not a simple png and needs conversion, it will likely be the longest phase (600 ms for one of the images).
Also, identify takes longer for larger images, unfortunately.

Now, two things look very fishy:

• tmux detection when inside tmux involves getting the pane pty by calling tmux display-message -t "$TMUX_PANE" -p "#{pane_tty}" - apparently, it takes a lot of time. Maybe I should stop doing it by default, I need to think.
• Getting the cell size in pixels involves running a python script. This is very annoying, but I couldn't find an easier way to call ioctl from the shell.

@Ignatius18652 Do you use tmux btw?

[Ignatius18652]

The script calls identify twice: first to get the image dimensions, and then to get the image format and the number of frames. These should be combined into a single call, which will reduce the total time by 20 ms.

That would be great. is sounds small, but if you're viewing and scrolling through so many images, it adds up.
I think you should get the number of frames only for gifs, if that helps save time for jpgs and other formats. is it also possible to cut out bc?

If an image is not a simple png and needs conversion, it will likely be the longest phase (600 ms for one of the images).
Also, identify takes longer for larger images, unfortunately.

only pngs? aren't jpegs, webp, and gifs also supported by kitty graphics and thus skip conversion? that's most of the popular formats.
Do you know what makes kitten icat faster than this?

and I don't use tmux.

[sergei-grechanik]

Do you know what makes kitten icat faster than this?

Well, it's written in go. It also uses something faster than imagemagick, see kitten icat --engine - you can actually try setting the engine to magick and see that it's much slower that way.

only pngs? aren't jpegs, webp, and gifs also supported by kitty graphics and thus skip conversion?

The kitty graphics protocol only officially supports PNG and raw 24/32 bit data. st-graphics supports whatever imlib2 can open, but you would need to guess this from the terminal name, which is brittle.

[sergei-grechanik]

PR to call identify once: #16

[Ignatius18652]

PR to call identify once: #16

I tried it and it seemed to be noticeably faster, or maybe it's placebo. was if faster for you?

[sergei-grechanik]

It was, the bigger the file the bigger the speedup (1700 ms -> 900 ms for one of the files).

[Ignatius18652]

great. merge it then. is it also possible to remove bc? how much does it affect performance? and will it be faster if you convert an unsupported format to jpeg?

[sergei-grechanik]

Each call to bc is ~2 ms, not worth it. Converting to jpeg is often faster, to my surprise, but it can't be the default because it discards the alpha channel.
I added the --formats option to specify the supported formats, and the first one will be used for conversion, so you can pass --formats jpeg,png to convert unsupported formats to jpeg.