0.0.4 release notes¶

Released 2026-09-10. All four packages are published at 0.0.4 on crates.io. The annotated v0.0.4 tag points to main commit 355a333. The protected release workflow passed the full source gate, package dry runs, uploads and exact-version verification in fresh consumers.

This release includes reviewed diagnostics, GIF rendering, CSV memory, wrapping and optional syntax-cache changes. The screenshots below are actual CLI output; performance results retain their original measurement conditions.

Package selection¶

Package	Published version	Changes
rs-rich	0.0.4	Ownership extension point for tables; wrapping optimization and optional syntax cache.
rs-rich-ext	0.0.4	Explicit UTF-8/UTF-16 decoding; updated core dependency.
rs-rich-art	0.0.4	GIF half-block rendering; updated core dependency.
rs-rich-cli	0.0.4	Input diagnostics, encoding and GIF selectors, and reduced CSV copies.

Every crate keeps independent SemVer. Each changed in this release, including its affected internal dependency requirements. The coordinated v0.0.4 tag selected all four; future releases can still select a single changed crate.

Install the exact released CLI:

cargo install rs-rich-cli --version '=0.0.4' --locked

To opt into repeated-source syntax reuse, add --features syntax-cache. Default installations retain the normal uncached Syntect path.

Explicit text decoding and clearer diagnostics¶

Image-input errors now lead with an actionable hint and clean extension spelling. The optional --encoding selector supports strict utf-8, utf-16, utf-16le and utf-16be decoding for files, stdin and supported URL input. Generic UTF-16 requires a BOM; endian-specific choices also support headerless text. Malformed input fails clearly. Default decoding remains compatible with upstream; it does not guess headerless encodings.

rich notes.txt --encoding utf-16
rich notes.txt --encoding utf-16le

See text encoding for BOM handling, malformed input and the distinction between default and explicit decoding.

GIF half-block rendering¶

rich --gif animation.gif --gif-mode blocks --width 40 --loop 2

Existing GIF invocations retain ASCII output. Explicit blocks use terminal color capabilities; no-color or ASCII-only destinations fall back to ASCII. Redirected stdout still emits one ASCII frame without animation controls or waiting, even with --loop 0. Image-diff mode selection remains separate.

Actual CLI GIF half-block playback, first capture

Actual CLI GIF half-block playback, later capture

These are sequential captures of actual CLI PTY output. See the capability matrix and playback limitations. Ctrl-C can leave the cursor hidden, as with existing ASCII playback. Sixel GIF output and GIF HTML/SVG export are outside this release.

Measured performance improvements¶

Measurements are from optimized Linux development builds on one host, with fixed fixtures and output comparisons. They are not cross-platform guarantees. See benchmarks for commands, raw samples and baseline details.

Workload	Before	Development result	Interpretation
CSV, 100k rows, peak RSS	49,884 KiB	27,088 KiB	About 46% lower peak memory by transferring ownership instead of duplicating cells and row containers.
Text wrapping, 1 MiB	3,998 ms	87 ms	Removes repeated work on the measured extensionless Text CLI path.
Markdown paragraph, 1 MiB	4,143 ms	113 ms	Long-paragraph wrapping improvement.
Markdown paragraph, 5 MiB	>10,000 ms timeout	531 ms	Completes within the baseline timeout.
Repetitive syntax fixture, about 199 KB	630 ms	159 ms	About 75% faster with the optional `syntax-cache` Cargo feature.
Real CLI source syntax fixture	445 ms	442 ms	No demonstrated speed improvement on this representative input.
Text-module syntax fixture	254 ms	257 ms	No measured improvement.

The extensionless Text CLI rows differ from legacy .txt cases, which select the plain Syntax renderer. Syntax timings use the off-by-default syntax-cache Cargo feature. Enable it with cargo build -p rs-rich-cli --release --features syntax-cache. Default builds retain the uncached Syntect path. The cache benefits repeated eligible lines; it does not imply a general startup or highlighting speedup. Existing syntax and theme caches remain, grammars are retained, and syntect/Pygments differences remain documented.

Actual CLI Markdown wrapping

Actual CLI syntax colors across comment boundaries

CSV memory measurements rendered by the actual CLI

CSV still retains source rows for inference and global width measurement. Decorated, aligned, paged and exported paths can retain rendered lines; this is not constant-memory processing. The measured decorated 10k-row peak RSS remains about 111 MiB. Two-pass reading and stdin spooling remain possible future work.

Release verification¶

The tagged commit passed formatting, Clippy, workspace tests, the feature matrix, declared MSRV, native Windows coverage, pinned Rich 15 goldens and release-workflow regressions. The release job then packaged and uploaded all four crates and verified each exact 0.0.4 version outside the repository. The CLI was installed with --version =0.0.4 --locked; fresh consumers compiled against exact versions of each selected library.

The release run records these results. Preparation PR #119 retains the earlier package dry run, independent review and CLI evidence. Generated version tables and CLI help match the published packages.

These versions are immutable. Do not rerun the upload path for v0.0.4. Verification-only recovery retains the tag, ancestry and full-CI gates while skipping uploads; it cannot finish a partially published release. See Branching and releases.

The 0.0.4 development plan is the completed scope record. The proposed 0.0.5 plan covers targeted goldens, differential fuzzing, library benchmarks and opt-in input sanitization. Broader API additions, bounded-memory CSV processing, new syntax engines and additional graphics protocols remain separate work.