MapSCII - The Whole World In Your Console.
A node.js based Vector Tile to Braille and ASCII renderer for xterm-compatible terminals.
Try it out!
$ telnet mapscii.me
If you're on Windows, use the open source telnet client PuTTY to connect.
Features
- Use your mouse to drag and zoom in and out!
- Discover Point-of-Interests around any given location
- Highly customizable layer styling with Mapbox Styles support
- Connect to any public or private vector tile server
- Or just use the supplied and optimized OSM2VectorTiles based one
- Work offline and discover local VectorTile/MBTiles
- Compatible with most Linux and OSX terminals
- Highly optimizied algorithms for a smooth experience
- 100% pure Coffee-/JavaScript!
😎
How to install it locally
If you haven't already got Node.js >= version 4.5, then go get it.
npm install -g mapscii
If you're on OSX, or get an error about file permissions, you may need to do sudo npm install -g mapscii
Running
This is pretty simple too.
mapscii
Keyboard shortcuts
- Arrows up, down, left, right to scroll around
- Press a or z to zoom in and out
- Press q to quit
Mouse control
If your terminal supports mouse events you can drag the map and use your scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
Behind the scenes
Libraries
Mastering the console
x256
for converting RGB values to closest xterm-256 color codeterm-mouse
for mouse handlingkeypress
for input handlingstring-width
to determine visual string lengths
Discovering the map data
vector-tile
for VectorTile parsingpbf
for Protobuf decodingmbtiles
for MBTiles parsing
Juggling the vectors and numbers
earcut
for polygon triangulationrbush
for 2D spatial indexing of geo and label databreseham
for line point calculationssimplify-js
for polyline simplifications
Handling the flow
bluebird
for all the asynchronous Promise magicnode-fetch
for HTTP requestsuserhome
to determine where to persist downloaded tiles
TODOs
-
MapSCII
-
GeoJSON support via geojson-vt
-
CLI support
- startup parameters
- TileSource
- Style
- center position
- zoom
- demo mode?
- startup parameters
-
mouse control
- hover POIs/labels
- hover maybe even polygons/-lines?
- zoom into mouse pos
-
-
Styler
- respect zoom based style ranges
-
Renderer
-
TileSource
- implement single vector-tile handling
Special thanks
- lukasmartinelli & manuelroth for all their work on OSM2VectorTiles (global vector tiles from OSM Planet)
- mourner for all his work on mindblowing GIS algorithms (like the used earcut, rbush, simplify-js, ..)
Licenses
Map data
The Open Data Commons Open Database License (oDbl)
OpenStreetMap is open data, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF).
You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt our data, as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors. If you alter or build upon our data, you may distribute the result only under the same licence. The full legal code explains your rights and responsibilities.
The cartography in our map tiles, and our documentation, are licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (CC BY-SA).
MapSCII
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Michael Straßburger
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.