sio / asciinema-commentary-cards

Record asciicast with commentary cards

Record asciicast with commentary cards

The Makefile in this repo helps to record an asciicast while displaying prerecorded commentary cards. This saves time and embarassment of typos while trying to explain what's going on in the recorded terminal.

Usage

1. Create commentary cards

   Write plain text files and put them into cards/ directory. Lexical filename order will define the sequence in which these cards will be shown. Do not use spaces in your filenames, it's GNU Make after all!

2. make prepare

   This recipe will create a new Tmux session with two panes: one for cards and the other for your screencast. Read usage instructions on the first card and prepare screencast environment (cd to correct directory, launch a program if you need, etc). When you're ready, detach from Tmux session (Ctrl+]).

3. make record

   Start recording within Tmux session we've just set up. Use Ctrl+Space to change to the next card, Ctrl+] to detach from Tmux and stop recording.

4. make play

   View the screencast you just recorded.

5. make destroy

   End Tmux session that was created for the screencast

Demo

Full user experience:

This is the screencast that was created in demo session.

Configuration

Some environment variables may be used to fine tune the process:

• OUTPUT - Path to save the asciicast file to. Default value is based on Unix timestamp: "rec-$(date +%s).asciicast"
• ASCIINEMA - Path to asciinema executable. Default: "asciinema"
• CARD_PANE_HEIGHT - Height of cards pane. Default value is calculated to fit all lines from your largest card
• REC_IDLE_LIMIT - Limit recorded terminal inactivity to this number of seconds

Support and contributing

If you need help with using this Makefile or including it into your project, please create an issue. Issues are also the primary venue for reporting bugs and posting feature requests. General discussion related to this project is also acceptable and very welcome!

In case you wish to contribute code or documentation, feel free to open a pull request. That would certainly make my day!

I'm open to dialog and I promise to behave responsibly and treat all contributors with respect. Please try to do the same, and treat others the way you want to be treated.

If for some reason you'd rather not use the issue tracker, contacting me via email is OK too. Please use a descriptive subject line to enhance visibility of your message. Also please keep in mind that public discussion channels are preferable because that way many other people may benefit from reading past conversations. My email is visible under the GitHub profile and in the commit log.

License and copyright

Copyright 2020 Vitaly Potyarkin

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.