OUR EXPERT
Shashank Sharma
is a trial lawyer in Delhi and an avid Arch user. He’s been writing about open source software for 20 years and lawyering for over 10.
A s much as one enjoys the company of a spirited and lively nephew, keeping them entertained while on the computer, without turning to Peppa Pig, is a challenge. You can’t leave them to their own devices for fear of bricking your system, or worse still, deleting or moving files and directories through some aggressive mouse and keyboard manoeuvres. Teaching them to type will only take you so far. Thankfully, drawing is a far more entertaining and enthralling activity. Even better to do it from the comfort of the console. While it might sound novel, you’ll probably be surprised to learn that there are several text-based drawing tools on offer.
The main focus of this tutorial is Termpaint, a nifty tool that offers a number of symbols that can be used to draw on the canvas. You can also press any key on the keyboard and draw with that instead, if you prefer. You can also set the colour for drawing different elements using an RGB gradient control. The oldest project on our list is DrawIt, which is distributed as a plugin for the Vim text editor. It can be used to quickly draw shapes such as lines, boxes and ellipses. Finally, the Draw utility can be used to quickly put together colourful boxes, and add text inside them.
Paint your masterpiece
Released under the MIT licence and written in Go, Termpaint stands out from other drawing tools because of the symbols it offers that can be used to draw. With some creativity and a lot of practice, you can create beautiful artwork with Termpaint.