Turning VSCode Into an Art Program (sorta)

If you just want to try out the plugin, go to

Even today, they're still in extensive use, most commonly for command line programs such as btop, tmux, tig and various others. Take a look at btop:

Despite their significance, there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to actually draw with these characters. The only example of this I could find was , which is surprising. The demo itself is actually fine as-is for getting quick diagrams and such done, but it still has its fair share of menial quirks.

With wasted time and life out of the way, the rest of the extension simply slotted into place, allowing me to publish v0.0.1 of the extension on November 10th. The only existing footage of the extension then was the animated title, which itself is sped up.

It was in the middle of implementing v1.0.0 that the motivation had worn off and I procrastinated working on it because I had some issue implementing procedural drawing. There was a sense of dread as well, which wasn't fun. Anywho, I eventually succumbed and finished with that I worked out a better solution to my problem and released v1.0.0.

Quick anecdote: Somewhere whilst adding transformations for v1.0.0, I realized that I could use the extension itself to build the lookup table. That was quite fulfilling!

Okay... What About the Extension Itself?

The extension is mainly hotkey-based, you don't often use your mouse for much. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Insert toggles between drawing and typing, and your keyboard changes functionality when drawing.

N, B, K and Delete all switch between the different line styles, those being Normal, Bold, Double and Erase respectively. The arrow keys allow you to actually draw lines, and by holding Shift and or Alt, you can draw in-place and or paint over lines.

That's about as much as you would really need, but I also allowed support for multi-cursor editing, and pressing P with Shift, Alt or Ctrl to paint entire lines in one click.

I have more features and gestures planned for the extension, namely more QoL and additional ways to draw shapes.

Your Turn

Download or install at .

wow! first blogpost! cool! hello dev.to community

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