Tatsh NFO Viewer is a small desktop application for viewing NFO files: the ASCII and "ANSI art" text files that are traditionally distributed alongside scene releases, demos, and old software. These files are encoded in IBM code page 437, so they look like garbage in an ordinary text editor that assumes UTF-8 or Latin-1. Tatsh NFO Viewer decodes them correctly and renders them in a faithful fixed-width font, so the box-drawing characters, blocks, and shaded borders line up the way they were meant to.

Features

Correct IBM code page 437 (CP437) to Unicode decoding.
A bundled fixed-width CP437 font (unscii) so block and box-drawing characters connect cleanly, with reduced line spacing for unbroken vertical lines.
Open a file from the toolbar or by passing it on the command line; it can be set as the handler for .nfo files.
Automatic window sizing that fits the width of the art on load, without a horizontal scrollbar.
Adjustable on-screen text size (increase, decrease, and reset) without changing the saved settings.
Optional word wrapping for files that contain long lines of prose.
A choice of font in the settings: the bundled CP437 font or any monospaced family installed on your system.
Copy the displayed text to the clipboard.
Remembers its window size and position between sessions.

It runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Usage

Open Tatsh NFO Viewer and choose a file with the Open button, or pass a file on the command line:

tnfoview release.nfo

On Linux it can be set as the default application for NFO files through your desktop environment's file associations; on macOS the application bundle registers itself as a handler for .nfo files; and on Windows the installer registers it as an option for opening them.

Building from source

Requirements:

CMake 3.25 or later
A C++23 compiler
Qt 6 with the Widgets module

After cloning the repository:

cmake -B build

cmake --build build

The viewer is then at build/src/tnfoview.

To build and run the tests, configure with -DBUILD_TESTS=ON and run them with ctest; add -DCOVERAGE=ON for coverage information (GCC and Clang only). To build the documentation, configure with -DBUILD_DOCS=ON.