Here is what a Sixel is...
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Nowadays, if you say the word "terminal" — what most people think of is something similar to what is shown in the screen-shot.
I.e., an application you open up on Linux, Mac, or Windows that gives you a command-line interface (CLI).
However, that (in the screen-shot) is NOT actually a terminal!
That (in the screen-host) is an terminal EMULATOR.
I.e., it is emulating a real terminal.
But what is a real terminal.
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These in the attached images is what real terminals looked like
These look like computers but are NOT computers
Very roughly you can think of them as keyboard + screen combinations
They are a type input-output device that plugged into a computer. And, typically many of these terminals would plug into the same computer
These come from a era where computers were very expensive, so people shared them through terminals
(I am barely old enough to have used real terminals)
So what about Sixels …
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The vast majority of early (real) terminals were text based. And, very simple text. The richness of Unicode didn't exist yet.
Terminals inherited this from teletype machines. ("teletype" is short for "teletypewriter")
(My father used teletype machines.)
You can see what a teletype was like here:
https://youtu.be/Q0ZcIFMdhxo
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BTW, the reason even today outputting on a computer is called "printing" is because of teletypes!
Teletypes outputted onto paper. So, outputting back then was actually printing!
And, even though we use screens now (rather than paper) to output, we still call it "printing" because of that.
Also...
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