Termal is a terminal-based viewer for multiple sequence alignments, designed for fast, keyboard-driven navigation in local and remote (SSH/HPC) environments.
It requires no installer, has no runtime dependencies, and runs directly in a terminal.
termal-export is a companion program that generates publication-ready SVG figures from multiple sequence alignments. It supports row/column filtering and multiple color schemes. For help, do:
termal-export --helpDownload a prebuilt binary from the GitHub Releases page: https://github.com/sib-swiss/termal/releases
Unpack the archive and run the binary directly. The archive also contains a
manual (termal-manual.md and termal-manual.pdf), as well as examples of
custom colormaps and ordering files and assorted sample alignments.
termal data/example-1.msa
termal -f stockholm data/PF00244.26.sto
termal -o data/OX_OFA-pg2.order data/OX_OFA-pg2.msa
termal -c data/colormaps/gecos_default.json data/example-1.msamacOS users may need to remove the quarantine flag:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./termal
Install the TUI viewer:
cargo install termal-msaInstall the figure generator:
cargo install termal-exportBoth are standalone binaries. termal-export can be used independently of termal-msa.
This is a Rust workspace with three crates:
termal-alignment— Core library for alignment parsing and metrics (zero external dependencies). Published to crates.io; used by both tools.termal-msa— Interactive terminal viewer. Published to crates.io astermal-msa.termal-export— SVG figure generator for publication. Published to crates.io astermal-export.
Both binaries depend on termal-alignment for alignment I/O and metric computation.