Inlay

Render Ruby graphics where you inspect them. Inlay shows Tessel images, RBGL surfaces, and chart output in terminals, IRB, and Pry.

Install

gem install inlay

Add inlay to your Gemfile. Inlay uses Tessel for images and Termvas for terminal output.

Use in IRB

Add this to ~/.irbrc:

require "inlay/irb"

Now returning an image from a prompt displays it inline and leaves a short summary as the result:

image = Tessel.read("brick.png").scale_nearest(64, 64)
image

Pry uses the same integration style:

require "inlay/pry"

Use in IRuby / Jupyter

Install IRuby 0.8 or newer, then require Inlay after the optional graphics gems you use:

require "inkplot" # optional: charts
require "inlay/iruby"

Tessel.read("brick.png")
Inkplot.line(prices, x: :date, y: :close) # when Inkplot is installed

IRuby provides PNG for images and both SVG and PNG for charts, with SVG listed first. Animations use an installed Flipbook to produce a GIF data URI; if Flipbook is unavailable, Inlay displays the first frame as PNG. These integrations are opt-in and do not load IRuby, Inkplot, or Flipbook when you only require "inlay".

Inlay uses the terminal protocol selected by Termvas: Kitty, iTerm2, Sixel, or true-color half blocks. Image limits use terminal columns and rows; pixel protocols use Termvas cell-size estimates (8 × 16 by default, configurable with TERMVAS_CELL_WIDTH and TERMVAS_CELL_HEIGHT). Piped output, TERM=dumb, INLAY=off, and NO_COLOR with half blocks show only the summary.

Use in a script

require "inlay"

image = Tessel.read("brick.png")
Inlay.show(image, width: 40)
Inlay.config.max_rows = 30

To install the short inlay(value) helper, require inlay/kernel. Explicit calls accept image paths; ordinary returned strings are never treated as paths.

Objects can implement to_inlay and return a Tessel::Image, { png: bytes }, { svg: markup, png: -> { bytes } }, or { frames: images, fps: number }. Custom object types can also be registered:

Inlay.register(MySurface) { |surface| surface.to_tessel_image }

Configuration

Inlay.config.enabled toggles terminal rendering. max_rows caps terminal height and max_pixels limits decoded and displayed input size. Small images (up to 32×32) are enlarged with nearest-neighbor scaling; larger images are reduced with alpha-aware area averaging. Set INLAY=off to disable terminal output for a process.

Development

bundle install
bundle exec rake verify

Run bundle exec rbs -I sig validate to check the published signatures. The manual terminal and notebook checklist is in docs/manual-checks.md.

License

MIT