@quitsmx/show-text

Displays multiline text in the console, with icon and word wrap.

Make your messages more visible and offer a less crude alternative to a simple "throw".

Requirements

Node.js 18.18.0 or above.

Should work with Bun 1.2.23 and Deno 2.5.2, although I don't use them.

Does not work in browsers.

Install

With your favorite package manager, for example:

pnpm add @quitsmx/show-text

API

There are 4 functions, all of which accept one or more blocks of text:

Function	Icon	Use
showText	✔️	console.log
showInfoText	💬	console.info
showWarnText	⚠️	console.warn
showErrorText	❌	console.error

The received text is normalized by joining it into a single string and separating it back into lines, tabs are converted to spaces and other control characters and surrounding spaces are removed.

Fixed margins are 4 columns on the left and 1 on the right. The minimum supported width is 40 columns, leaving 35 usable. The maximum is 240, and the default is 80 if the output provides no information.

On lines where the text overflows, line wrapping is performed without attempting to break large words, so unwanted word breaking sometimes occurs.

Smarter line wrapping and consideration of non-standard width characters will be attempted in a future release.

Indentation

Basic indentation is supported through the <#D1,D2> statement, where D1 is the primary indentation (of the first line) and D2 is the secondary indentation (of wrapped lines) relative to the primary indentation.

While D1 is additive (or subtractive with negative numbers), D2 overwrites the secondary indent value.

The default value for D1 is 0 and D2 is undefined, which preserves the primary and secondary indentation, respectively.

The shortcut "<#->", resets both indentations to 0.

The limits of the main indentation are 0 to 40% of the usable area of ​​the output, which is the total width minus 5 columns of margins. Any indentation outside that range is adjusted silently.

Secondary indentation is limited so that a minimum of 20 characters can be displayed at a maximum of the usable width of the output.

For the statement to take effect, it must be unique on its own line.

Examples 1

This example shows basic usage in an 80-column console...

import { showErrorText, showInfoText, showText, showWarnText } from '@quitsmx/show-text'

try {
  showText('This is a normal message.', 'END')
  showInfoText('This is a info text.\n END')
  showWarnText('This is a warning.')
  throw new Error('This is an error message.')
} catch (error) {
  showErrorText(error)
  process.exitCode = 1
}

Output:

Example 2

This example shows indentation control in a 72-columns console.

import { showInfoText } from '@quitsmx/show-text'

showInfoText(
  'Indent at 72 columns',
  '<#2,4>',
  'Indent 2,4 - En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme…',
  '<#2,-2>',
  'Indent 2,-2 - En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme…',
  '<#-2>',
  'Indent -2 - En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme…',
  '<#,6>',
  'Indent ,6 - En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme…',
  '<#->',
  'Reset indent - En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme…',
)

Output:

License

The MIT License © 2025-Present by QuITS