ascii-chat is a production-grade terminal-based video conferencing application that converts live video and audio streams into real-time ASCII art rendered in the terminal. It operates in multiple modes: server (multi-client host), client (connect to server), mirror (local preview), discovery (peer-to-peer session participant), and discovery-service (session registry and NAT traversal relay). The system uses a custom binary protocol (ACIP) over TCP/WebSocket/WebRTC, with end-to-end encryption (Ed25519 + X25519 + XSalsa20-Poly1305) and support for SSH/GPG key authentication. A companion web client compiled via WebAssembly mirrors functionality in the browser. The codebase includes a standalone reusable C library (libasciichat) with a comprehensive platform abstraction layer (POSIX/Windows/WASM), a declarative options registry that auto-generates man pages and shell completions, SIMD-accelerated ASCII rendering (AVX2, NEON, SVE, SSE2), lock-free data structures, and a sophisticated logging system with crash-safe mmap output. The architecture is modular and cross-platform, with extensive unit, integration, and E2E test coverage across Linux, macOS, Windows, and WebAssembly targets.
Astroterm is a terminal-based star map application written in C. It renders the real-time positions of stars, planets, the Moon, and constellation figures using ASCII or Unicode characters. The system computes celestial positions from the Yale Bright Star Catalog, Keplerian orbital elements, and user-specified date/time and location (latitude/longitude or city name). It projects the visible sky onto the terminal via a stereographic projection and uses ncurses for display and input. The build system is Meson with Ninja, supporting Linux, macOS, and Windows. The codebase is well-structured into separate modules for astronomy calculations (astro.c), coordinate transforms (coord.c), terminal rendering (drawing.c, term.c), and data parsing (parse_BSC5.c, city.c). It includes comprehensive unit tests using Unity and CI via GitHub Actions. The application is highly configurable through command-line arguments and demonstrates strong craftsmanship in astronomical computations and terminal graphics.
milli.nvim is a Neovim plugin for animated ASCII splash screens. It provides both pre-rendered splash animations (like fire, blackhole, skeleton) and live procedural shaders (plasma, rain, doomfire, starfield) all implemented in pure Lua using Neovim’s extmarks for coloring. The plugin integrates seamlessly with popular dashboard plugins (dashboard-nvim, alpha-nvim, snacks.nvim, mini.starter) via autocmds and preset functions. It also includes a community registry for sharing splash data, with a sandboxed loading mechanism to prevent arbitrary code execution. The codebase demonstrates careful engineering: anchor-based positioning to handle variable terminal sizes, color-run optimisation to stay within Neovim’s highlight-group limit (E849), and deterministic pseudorandom number generation in shaders to avoid corrupting math.random. The external CLI tool (npm package `milli`) allows users to generate their own splashes from images or GIFs, and the data format is simple and portable. Overall, it is a well-crafted, feature-rich plugin with clear architecture and several reusable patterns.
TuiCss is a CSS framework and JavaScript library that enables developers to build retro-style text-based user interfaces (TUI) for the web, mimicking the aesthetic of MS-DOS applications and Turbo Vision. It provides a comprehensive set of SCSS components including windows, panels, buttons, forms, tables, charts, modals, progress bars, and a responsive grid system, all styled with high-contrast colors and monospace fonts. The accompanying vanilla JavaScript adds interactivity for tabs, collapsible side navigation, modal dialogs, and live clock displays. The codebase is well-organized with modular SCSS files, a build pipeline using Gulp, and a clean separation of concerns. While the library has no automated tests, its examples demonstrate functional correctness, and the component structure supports straightforward reuse or theming via SCSS variables. The project is published on npm and has a small but active community with a healthy issue tracker.
ASCII Art Paint is a fully client-side web application for creating and editing ASCII art. It runs entirely in the browser with no backend or dependencies. The application provides a canvas grid of cells (each holding a character), a palette of symbols, drawing tools (pencil, eraser, fill, pipette, selection), undo/redo, and drag-and-drop file loading. It also includes image-to-ASCII conversion (including Braille mode), custom font loading, and a built-in text editor. The UI supports dark/light themes and canvas zoom. The application is implemented as a single HTML file with embedded CSS and JavaScript, making it portable and easy to host. While the code is monolithic and lacks formal tests, it demonstrates competent use of native browser APIs for a niche creative tool.
modbus4j is a Java library implementing the Modbus protocol (ASCII, RTU, TCP, UDP) for industrial automation. It provides both master (client) and slave (server) functionality, supporting standard function codes (read/write coils, discrete inputs, holding/input registers, mask write) and a wide range of data types including BCD, floats, and custom swapped variants. The architecture is modular with separate transport layers, a generic messaging framework (MessageControl, WaitingRoom, Transport), and locator-based high-level access. The library includes a process image simulation for slave devices and batch read capabilities. It was originally developed for Mango Automation and has a parallel Java 1.4 backport (src_cdc) that indicates aging. The codebase shows good separation of concerns and reusable patterns but suffers from technical drift (RXTX dependency, manual byte manipulation, outdated build tools) and lack of modern testing infrastructure.