braillegraph 0.6

A library for creating graphs using Unicode braille characters

A library for creating graphs using Unicode braille characters

Someone on reddit posted a screenshot of their xmobar setup, which used braille characters to show the loads of their four processor cores, as well as several other metrics. I was impressed that you could fit so much data into a single line. I immediately set out to implement braille bar graphs for myself.

The characters this script outputs are in the Unicode Braille Patterns section, code points 0x2800 through 0x28FF. Not all fonts support these characters, so if you can’t see the examples below check your font settings.

Installation

This package is hosted on PyPI, so installation should be as simple as

% pip install braillegraph

Note that this package requires at least Python 3.3, so if your default Python installation is still Python 2, make sure you use pip3.

If you want to install from this repository, download it and run

% python setup.py install

Again, use python3 if necessary.

Usage

There are two ways to use this package: imported in Python code, or as a command line script.

To use the package in Python, import it and use the vertical_graph and horizontal_graph functions.

>>> from braillegraph import vertical_graph, horizontal_graph
>>> vertical_graph([3, 1, 4, 1])
'⡯⠥'
>>> vertical_graph([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])
'⣷⣄\n⠛⠛⠓'
>>> print(vertical_graph([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]))
⣷⣄
⠛⠛⠓
>>> horizontal_graph([3, 1, 4, 1])
'⣆⣇'
>>> horizontal_graph([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])
'⠀⠀⣠\n⣠⣾⣿'
>>> print(horizontal_graph([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]))
⠀⠀⣠
⣠⣾⣿

Alternately, the arguments can be passed directly:

>>> vertical_graph(3, 1, 4, 1)
'⡯⠥'
>>> horizontal_graph(3, 1, 4, 1)
'⣆⣇'

To use the package as a script, run it as

% python -m braillegraph vertical 3 1 4 1 5 9 2 6
⡯⠥
⣿⣛⣓⠒⠂
% python -m braillegraph horizontal 3 1 4 1 5 9 2 6
⠀⠀⢀
⠀⠀⣸⢠
⣆⣇⣿⣼

For a description of the arguments and flags, run

% python -m braillegraph --help

License

The code is licensed under the BSD 2-clause license. Please feel free to fork it, mess around with it, or submit issues and pull requests.