Awesome

Ah a language to code by while listening to Pink Floyd - a guy from Reddit

This looks like it belongs on the list of those things I totally want to do if I ever become immortal - another guy from Reddit

Pikt is a pixel-based, dynamically typed, Turing complete esoteric programming language able to generate fast and lightweight programs out of aesthetically pleasant image sources.
Indeed, Pikt's most interesting feature is flexibility: every keyword, statement, function and operator is linked to one - or more - color, easily customizable via color schemes.

Pikt compiles executables via the Kotlin compiler, therefore compilation for both JVM and native* targets is available, along with runtime interpretation.

Want to create your first Pikt program? Check out the wiki!

These examples take advantage of custom color schemes.
Click on the examples for a breakdown/explanation.

How does Pikt work?

Table of contents

• Properties
• Settings arguments
• Command arguments
• Building
• Roadmap

Properties

The following properties define parameters needed by Pikt to run.
Syntax: java -Dproperty=value -jar pikt.jar -arguments.

• -Dsource source image file;

• -Doutput output name without extension. Defaults to the value of source if not specified;

• -Dcolors path to the .properties color scheme without extension.
  Default values will be used if not specified (not recommended);

• -Dtargets compilation targets divided by a comma. Only jvm is supported, while windows, osx and linux compilation is currently disabled.

• -Dlib path to JAR libraries, including the bundled stdlib.jar file, divided by a comma. If not specified, points by default to ./libraries/stdlib.jar;

• -Djvmcompiler path to the Kotlin/JVM (kotlinc) executable compiler. Required if target contains jvm or if -interpret is used;

• -Dproject optional path to a project info YAML configuration.

• -Dtask optional task name (defined within a project info configuration) to be executed.

Settings arguments

The following arguments enable settings that affect Pikt's behavior.

• --interpret runs the generated code via the JVM compiler;

• --printoutput displays the generated Kotlin code;

• --nocompile prevents the generation of any executable file;

• --pixelinfo adds information about pixel coordinates to the output code as comments;

• --imgoutput=path sets the output file for image-generating commands (see below). If not specified, defaults to the source image path followed by a suffix;

• --chainoutput enables output chaining for image-generating commands: the output of a command becomes the input for the next one. It requires -imgoutput to be set.

• --pl[=type] sets the active pixel logger type. A pixel logger is responsible for printing pixels on screen, for example in case of compile-time errors.
  Available types: none, 16, 256, rgb, box.
  If type is not specified, 256 is used.

  <details> <summary><i>Click to see more...</i></summary>

  • none: pixel logging is disabled (default).

    <img src="https://i.imgur.com/BsyRsgG.png" alt="none" width="500">

  • 16: each pixel is a square whose color is approximated to the closest ANSI 16 color.

    <img src="https://i.imgur.com/tEgfqYv.png" alt="16" width="500">

  • 256: each pixel is a square whose color is approximated to the closest ANSI 8-bit (256) color.

    <img src="https://i.imgur.com/aOhlIgF.png" alt="256" width="500">

  • rgb: each pixel is a square with its RGB color. Not all terminals support this.

    <img src="https://i.imgur.com/VrhgJxG.png" alt="rgb" width="500">

  • box: each pixel is an ASCII box with its hex code inside.

    <img src="https://i.imgur.com/veraYFA.png" alt="box" width="500">
  </details>

Command arguments

The following arguments execute tasks and exit when completed.
These are handy shortcuts that replace several manual actions, such as image transformations, while being unrelated to code generation and compilation.

• downloadcompiler=type[,version] downloads the zipped Kotlin compiler for the given platform (jvm, windows, macos, linux).
  version defaults to 1.9.21.

• createscheme creates a new color scheme with default values.
  It automatically appends library colors too, e.g. the stdlib scheme, loaded from -Dlib;

• exportscheme generates a useful color palette image out of the given color scheme;

• recolorize[=method] creates a copy of the source image (that relies on the default scheme) and adapts it to a custom scheme (specified by -Dcolors).
  method defines the way properties with more than one color are handled; it can be either first (default), last or random;

• standardize creates a copy of the source image (that relies on a custom scheme) and adapts it to the default scheme;

• compact[=size] creates a compacted copy of the source image with no whitespaces between pixels.
  If size is not specified, it will try to create a square-ish image.
  size can be defined via w?h?, where both wand h are optional (in case one is missing, it will be calculated the same way as before) (e.g. w10h5, w10, h5);

• decompact creates a decompacted copy of the source image with one statement per line;

• standardecompact runs standardize + decompact;

• colorswap=<swaps> swaps colors from the source image.
  swaps is defined as from1:to1,from2:to2,... where from and to are hexadecimal colors;

• mask=path creates a masked copy of the source image, loading the mask image from path;

• strconvert[=string] converts a string into a sequence of RGB (grayscale) values supported by Pikt and prints them out.
  If string is not specified, input is read from stdin.
  See Hello world! for further information.
  For instance, strconvert="Hello Pikt!" prints:

  RGB:  72  101  108  108  111  32  80  105  107  116  33  
        H   e    l    l    o        P   i    k    t    !   
  

• welcome runs createscheme, exportscheme (both on colors), downloadcompiler=jvm and creates a ready-to-use Hello World source. Its output is already zipped in the downloadable archive;

• help shows these commands.

More in-depth information about image transformation commands can be found here.

Building

The downloadable archive is already built off the latest GitHub commit. If you wish to build it yourself from source simply run mvn clean install.

Tip: setting your run configuration to execute mvn clean install -pl stdlib -am compiles the standard library before launching Pikt, in case you need to make frequent updates to it.
If you are using IntelliJ IDEA consider importing configuration templates from the runConfigurations folder.

Roadmap

Code

• Variables
• Constants
• Function calls (both as part of expressions and standalone)
• Function definition
• If / else / if else
• Lambdas (code blocks)
• Operators (equality, logical and arithmetic)
• Loops
  • For-each
  • Indexed for (for-each + range function)
  • While
• Try/catch
• Structs
• Standard library (work in progress, see CONTRIBUTING for contribution guidelines)
• External libraries support (following certain standards, wiki in progress)

Generation

• Compilation (JVM and Native*)
• Interpretation (JVM)
• Error handling
• Runtime information

* Native support is limited due to the lack of Kotlin/Native libraries and is being temporarily discontinued. Bringing it back is planned in the long term.