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Writing Documentation

To avoid using screenshots, which have variable quality and aren't screen reader friendly, most of the Bus Pirate terminal output is shown as actual text inside a React component tag. This page describes how to capture, convert and export terminal output for use in this documentation.

Disable the Bus Pirate toolbar​

Disable the Bus Pirate toolbar

The screen redraw activity form the Bus Pirate toolbar will make a mess in the output. Open Tera Term and disable the toolbar before logging.

  • From the Bus Pirate command prompt choose c for the configuration menu.
  • Choose ANSI toolbar mode and Disable.

Capture Terminal Output​

Teraterm log menu

  • In Tera Term select File>Log....

Teraterm log configuration

  • Under options select Binary and Append.
  • Unselect Plain text if it is not automatically disabled.
  • Click Save, then perform the Bus Pirate tasks you want to record.

Convert VT100 to HTML​

Install ansi-to-html.

npx ansi-to-html teraterm.log > test.html

Convert the Tera Term .log file to html from an OS command prompt using this command.

Convert HTML tags for use in docs​

Clean.html browser cleanup tool

The final conversion step simply replaces the ansi-to-html color codes with our custom Bus Pirate terminal html color classes, and does a few other escape things to make the output play well with Docusaurus.

  • Open clean.html in a web browser.
  • Open the log output (test.html) in a text editor.
  • Paste the contents of test.html into the box in the web browser.
  • Click Run Script.

Copy the processed output from the browser box. It's ready to add to the documentation.

Paste the output in docs​

Bus Pirate [/dev/ttyS0]
LED-()> m

Mode selection
1. HiZ
2. UART
3. I2C
4. SPI
5. LED
6. DUMMY1
x. Exit
Mode > 1
Mode: HiZ
HiZ>

Paste the output into a markdown file, the extension must be .mdx. 

import BrowserWindow from '@site/src/components/BrowserWindow';

Import the BrowserWindow component using this code on the first line below the front mater.

Wrap the terminal output in <BrowserWindow> </BrowserWindow> tags.

danger

The <BrowserWindow> React component only works in pages with .mdx extension.

Resources​

Files​

Community​