durdraw

Durdraw is a terminal-based ASCII, Unicode and ANSI art editor that runs in UTF-8 terminals on Unix-like systems. The tool supports frame-based animation, allowing users to create animated ASCII art sequences with configurable frame delays and playback controls. It includes a comprehensive character palette accessible through F1-F10 keys, color picker functionality, and support for both 256 and 16 color modes.

The editor handles multiple file formats including .dur (native format), .ANS (ANSI), and .ASC (ASCII) files, with the ability to view DOS ANSI art and convert between CP437 and Unicode character encodings. It provides HTML and mIRC color output options, and can export to PNG and animated GIF formats when ansilove is installed. The interface includes mouse support, selection tools, and standard editing operations like copy/paste and multi-level undo/redo.

Durdraw is designed for digital artists, retro computing enthusiasts, and anyone working with text-based art formats. It draws inspiration from classic DOS-era ANSI editors like TheDraw and Pablodraw while providing modern Unix integration. The tool includes a playback mode for viewing ANSI art collections and artpacks, making it useful for both creation and consumption of text-based artwork.

Installation

# via Git + pip
git clone https://github.com/cmang/durdraw.git && cd durdraw && python3 -m pip install --upgrade .

# via pip (direct)
python3 -m pip install 'git+https://github.com/cmang/durdraw'