The Python programming language has thousands of wonderful third-party packages available on the Python Package Index. One of those packages is TerminalTextEffects (TTE), a terminal visual effects engine.
Here are the features that TerminalTextEffects provides, according to their documentation:
- Xterm 256 / RGB hex color support
- Complex character movement via Paths, Waypoints, and motion easing, with support for quadratic/cubic bezier curves.
- Complex animations via Scenes with symbol/color changes, layers, easing, and Path synced progression.
- Variable stop/step color gradient generation.
- Path/Scene state event handling changes with custom callback support and many pre-defined actions.
- Effect customization exposed through a typed effect configuration dataclass that is automatically handled as CLI arguments.
- Runs inline, preserving terminal state and workflow.
Note: This package may be somewhat slow in Windows Terminal, but it should work fine in other terminals.
Let’s spend a few moments learning how to use this neat package
Installation
The first step to using any new package is to install it. You can use pip or pipx to install TerminalTextEffects. Here is the typical command you would run in your terminal:
python -m pip install terminaltexteffects
Now that you have TerminalTextEffects installed, you can start using it!
Usage
Let’s look at how you can use TerminalTextEffects to make your text look neat in the terminal. Open up your favorite Python IDE and create a new file file with the following contents:
from terminaltexteffects.effects.effect_slide import Slide
text = ("PYTHON" * 10 + "\n") * 10
effect = Slide(text)
effect.effect_config.merge = True
with effect.terminal_output() as terminal:
for frame in effect:
terminal.print(frame)
This code will cause the string, “Python” to appear one hundred times with ten strings concatenated and ten rows. You use a Slide effect to make the text slide into view. TerminalTextEffects will also style the text too.
When you run this code, you should see something like the following:
TerminalTextEffects has many different built-in effects that you can use as well. For example, you can use Beams to make the output even more interesting. For this example, you will use the Zen of Python text along with the Beams effects:
from terminaltexteffects.effects.effect_beams import Beams
TEXT = """
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
"""
effect = Beams(TEXT)
with effect.terminal_output() as terminal:
for frame in effect:
terminal.print(frame)
Now try running this code. You should see something like this:
That looks pretty neat! You can see a whole bunch of other effects you can apply on the package’s Showroom page.
Wrapping Up
TerminalTextEffects provides lots of neat ways to jazz up your text-based user interfaces with Python. According to the documentation, you should be able to use TerminalTextEffects in other TUI libraries, such as Textual or Asciimatics, although it doesn’t specifically state how to do that. Even if you do not do that, you could use TerminalTextEffects with the Rich package to create a really interesting application in your terminal.
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