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I'm really waiting for the TUI web browser. That would let me live completely in the terminal. Is anyone working on this? With the speed terminals are and sup

I'm really waiting for the TUI web browser. That would let me live completely in the terminal. Is anyone working on this? With the speed terminals are and support for graphics through things like sixel and shaders I'd love to have a browser even if I couldn't do videos. Even if it was like viewing most pages in reader mode. I'm not sure some big companies would be happy about that though since it likely would mean you could do things like ad blocking more easily. But maybe you could get them on board if you pitched it as a browser for LLMs. Something something it's a native interface for them. ;) I know there's some browsers but things like W3M, Lynx, or *links* are... rough... definitely not of the quality we're seeing elsewhere in the current TUI revolution.

fruitworks 1y ago
the cursive tui library does some html rendering https://sr.ht/~ireas/cursive-markup-rs/ https://sr.ht/~ireas/cursive-markup-rs/ the whole cursive library strikes me as very html-like in layout
awesomeusername 1y ago
Browsh [0] - it runs firefox headless, and renders everything to ascii in the terminal It's glorious [0] https://www.brow.sh/ https://www.brow.sh/
be_erik 1y ago
I use this one pretty often. It’s great. https://chawan.net/ https://chawan.net/
- godelski 1y ago
  This actually looks pretty reasonable. Thanks! I'll definitely be giving it a try
  - moderation 1y ago
    Chawan is great. Very customizable. Regular updates. Fast. The chaman utility replacing man is also good
littlestymaar 1y ago
> I'm really waiting for the TUI web browser. That would let me live completely in the terminal. You can already do this, since the 90s: Lynx[1] and w3m[2] have both existed for more than three decades at this point. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3m https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3m
- jasonjayr 1y ago
  ELinks is the TUI browser I've used since .... forever. https://github.com/rkd77/elinks https://github.com/rkd77/elinks
  - xvilka 1y ago
    Something like ELinks could be created by writing a simple TUI on top of the Servo engine. Then it would be able to handle even complex Web pages full of JavaScript which is a huge chunk of the modern Internet.
- godelski 1y ago
  I'm sorry, did you even read my comment? I mentioned those by name... >> I know there's some browsers but things like W3M, Lynx, or *links* are... rough...
- ororoo 1y ago
  I believe they wants text browser written specifically in rust, and does not want to touch any software written in filth like c/c++.
  - littlestymaar 1y ago
    Too bad Rust compiles with LLVM (C++) and the stdlib links to glibc (C) then. I sincerely hope it isn't the reason though, I'm a huge rust fan myself (10years of coding with it already) and I think rust is definitely the future, but that doesn't mean all previous open source foundations should be thrown away.
gf000 1y ago
But.. why? Like I do get the occasional need where it's easier to just see an html page in the terminal, but why would you render to a low-resolution 2D buffer with random character-hacks with a huge amount of overhead, over having a real buffer and just writing pixels to it, with actual hardware acceleration?
- huflungdung 1y ago
  [dead]
- selfhoster11 1y ago
  SSH access over a slow network connection?
  - gf000 1y ago
    Why not proxy the network calls only then and use a real browser?
  - acdha 1y ago
    Use SSH’s dynamic proxy mode (-D) so you have the full browser running locally and only the network traffic running over SSH. This is enormously better for UI response time and things like compressed files: you only transfer the compressed text, image, audio, or video files rather than the decoded form which can be an order of magnitude larger.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  Character based interfaces are just nice, IMHO. The Borland IDE was the pinnacle of dev interfaces IMHO. It updated to have modern language server support etc would be my dream dev environment. It would be cool to see how far a compliant web browser could be taken in text mode. It's really sad that most terminals don't have proper image support, btw. Edit: A comment here linked to https://www.brow.sh/ https://www.brow.sh/ It looks amazing.
- godelski 1y ago
  > but why would you render to a low-resolution 2D buffer with random character-hacks Have you used a terminal in the last 5 years? We got graphics and everything now[0] > huge amount of overhead A... terminal... with... large overhead? Surely you're joking. Have you met any gui app? Microsoft word takes a few gigs. Have you seen electron apps like Spotify or slack? My fucking mail client takes over half a gig and neomutt takes almost nothing. Either you're making numbers up or we live in different realities > actual hardware acceleration? Hardware acceleration has existed for years... Maybe stop making assumptions and check out what terminals can do. They've come a long way since the 80's. I'd suggest starting with something like ghostty. [0] https://notcurses.com/ https://notcurses.com/
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
globular-toast 1y ago
Why would you want to live in a terminal? That's extremely limiting. What you really want is Emacs. Emacs has both a TUI web browser (EWW) and info browser already. You can even run vim in Emacs if you want, either the "real" (and inferior) thing via vterm, or use evil mode or another modal mode for Emacs like god mode.
- vinceguidry 1y ago
  I wanted to like modal editing in Emacs. But I had to come to terms with the fact that it's always going to be a kludge. Boon is the best I've seen it get, but when I wanted to improve it, I realized it would be less work over the long run to just make my own text editor, though that's mostly because my chosen language, ruby, just doesn't have very good tooling yet. If you're willing to live in elisp, Emacs is amazing. I'm not, I'm always going to want to do it with ruby, and well, Emacs doesn't let you do that.
- godelski 1y ago
  Probably not as limited as you think https://notcurses.com/ https://notcurses.com/
miguel_martin 1y ago
Not rust, but check out nimwave: https://github.com/ansiwave/nimwave https://github.com/ansiwave/nimwave
mike31fr 1y ago
Carbonyl looked promising but unfortunately is not maintained anymore: https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl

fruitworks 1y ago

the cursive tui library does some html rendering https://sr.ht/~ireas/cursive-markup-rs/ https://sr.ht/~ireas/cursive-markup-rs/ the whole cursive library strikes me as very html-like in layout

awesomeusername 1y ago

Browsh [0] - it runs firefox headless, and renders everything to ascii in the terminal It's glorious [0] https://www.brow.sh/ https://www.brow.sh/

be_erik 1y ago

I use this one pretty often. It’s great. https://chawan.net/ https://chawan.net/

godelski 1y ago
This actually looks pretty reasonable. Thanks! I'll definitely be giving it a try
- moderation 1y ago
  Chawan is great. Very customizable. Regular updates. Fast. The chaman utility replacing man is also good

littlestymaar 1y ago

> I'm really waiting for the TUI web browser. That would let me live completely in the terminal. You can already do this, since the 90s: Lynx[1] and w3m[2] have both existed for more than three decades at this point. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3m https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3m

jasonjayr 1y ago
ELinks is the TUI browser I've used since .... forever. https://github.com/rkd77/elinks https://github.com/rkd77/elinks
- xvilka 1y ago
  Something like ELinks could be created by writing a simple TUI on top of the Servo engine. Then it would be able to handle even complex Web pages full of JavaScript which is a huge chunk of the modern Internet.
godelski 1y ago
I'm sorry, did you even read my comment? I mentioned those by name... >> I know there's some browsers but things like W3M, Lynx, or *links* are... rough...
ororoo 1y ago
I believe they wants text browser written specifically in rust, and does not want to touch any software written in filth like c/c++.
- littlestymaar 1y ago
  Too bad Rust compiles with LLVM (C++) and the stdlib links to glibc (C) then. I sincerely hope it isn't the reason though, I'm a huge rust fan myself (10years of coding with it already) and I think rust is definitely the future, but that doesn't mean all previous open source foundations should be thrown away.

gf000 1y ago

But.. why? Like I do get the occasional need where it's easier to just see an html page in the terminal, but why would you render to a low-resolution 2D buffer with random character-hacks with a huge amount of overhead, over having a real buffer and just writing pixels to it, with actual hardware acceleration?

huflungdung 1y ago
[dead]
selfhoster11 1y ago
SSH access over a slow network connection?
- gf000 1y ago
  Why not proxy the network calls only then and use a real browser?
- acdha 1y ago
  Use SSH’s dynamic proxy mode (-D) so you have the full browser running locally and only the network traffic running over SSH. This is enormously better for UI response time and things like compressed files: you only transfer the compressed text, image, audio, or video files rather than the decoded form which can be an order of magnitude larger.
actionfromafar 1y ago
Character based interfaces are just nice, IMHO. The Borland IDE was the pinnacle of dev interfaces IMHO. It updated to have modern language server support etc would be my dream dev environment. It would be cool to see how far a compliant web browser could be taken in text mode. It's really sad that most terminals don't have proper image support, btw. Edit: A comment here linked to https://www.brow.sh/ https://www.brow.sh/ It looks amazing.
godelski 1y ago
> but why would you render to a low-resolution 2D buffer with random character-hacks Have you used a terminal in the last 5 years? We got graphics and everything now[0] > huge amount of overhead A... terminal... with... large overhead? Surely you're joking. Have you met any gui app? Microsoft word takes a few gigs. Have you seen electron apps like Spotify or slack? My fucking mail client takes over half a gig and neomutt takes almost nothing. Either you're making numbers up or we live in different realities > actual hardware acceleration? Hardware acceleration has existed for years... Maybe stop making assumptions and check out what terminals can do. They've come a long way since the 80's. I'd suggest starting with something like ghostty. [0] https://notcurses.com/ https://notcurses.com/

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

globular-toast 1y ago

Why would you want to live in a terminal? That's extremely limiting. What you really want is Emacs. Emacs has both a TUI web browser (EWW) and info browser already. You can even run vim in Emacs if you want, either the "real" (and inferior) thing via vterm, or use evil mode or another modal mode for Emacs like god mode.

vinceguidry 1y ago
I wanted to like modal editing in Emacs. But I had to come to terms with the fact that it's always going to be a kludge. Boon is the best I've seen it get, but when I wanted to improve it, I realized it would be less work over the long run to just make my own text editor, though that's mostly because my chosen language, ruby, just doesn't have very good tooling yet. If you're willing to live in elisp, Emacs is amazing. I'm not, I'm always going to want to do it with ruby, and well, Emacs doesn't let you do that.
godelski 1y ago
Probably not as limited as you think https://notcurses.com/ https://notcurses.com/

miguel_martin 1y ago

Not rust, but check out nimwave: https://github.com/ansiwave/nimwave https://github.com/ansiwave/nimwave

mike31fr 1y ago

Carbonyl looked promising but unfortunately is not maintained anymore: https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl