4 ms·

I made a terminal pager

173 points by speckx 7mo ago

pimlottc 7mo ago
The TL;DR doesn’t really say what this new pager offers compared to less; it seems to mostly be a learning project: > lore supports only a subset of what less does, but in a more intuitive and useful manner for my daily activity. I also find value in understanding it from the ground up, bytes to terminal views, and continuing to refine it as I learn more about what I actually want and need in a terminal pager.
gandreani 7mo ago
I really like this post! I think it's the clearest explanation I've seen of the different characteristics of utf-8 strings
cocodill 7mo ago
For a bubbletea application I'd expect more bubbles and tea there. But still, nice project.
vomayank 7mo ago
[flagged]
- lrobinovitch 7mo ago
  Author here! If I were to give this post a longer title, it would be "I made a terminal pager because I needed a really good viewport component for my Go TUIs, then realized that a TUI viewport is just a mini terminal pager and I want the same text navigation and manipulation experience everywhere that I encounter long text blocks in my terminal". I take no issue at all with `less`, it's super powerful and configurable as I call out in the post. I took the functionality I needed, made it a reusable component for Go TUIs, then made a terminal pager in the form of a Go TUI with it.
  - ghthor 7mo ago
    Still use Wander everyday <3
  - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
    "Because I felt like it" is also a perfectly acceptable answer ;-)
  - vomayank 7mo ago
    [flagged]
dostick 7mo ago
From the title I thought it’s about a dead man’s switch.
- nkoren 7mo ago
  I thought it was about replicating a mossad supply chain attack.
fragmede 7mo ago
A Splunk, a Splunk! My kingdom for a Splunk! (too bad Cisco bought them and made it too expensive). Also, no "less does more than more and most does more than less" joke?
mnkyprskbd 7mo ago
bat is the king of pagers. https://github.com/sharkdp/bat https://github.com/sharkdp/bat
- teki_one 7mo ago
  bat does not look like a pager: https://github.com/sharkdp/bat?tab=readme-ov-file#automatic-paging https://github.com/sharkdp/bat?tab=readme-ov-file#automatic-...
  - teo_zero 7mo ago
    In fact it's not. The name itself mimicks cat, not less. It's a filter that adds annotations to its input, such as syntax highlighting, git diffs and special-char coloring. Personally I can't find any use for bat: I'm a devote user of vim for editing, and it already does all of this, so why not using it to view files as well? It's satisfying to have the same interface, colors and shortcuts whether you're editing or viewing!
    - technojamin 7mo ago
      I use it for previewing files in `fzf` and `lf` (terminal file manager).
- asibahi 7mo ago
  Doesn’t it just call `less`?
  - joombaga 7mo ago
    Yes. It calls the default pager (or whatever you specify).
- saghm 7mo ago
  I like it a lot more than `less`, but unfortunately it's always a lot slower when first opening really large files. I'm not sure if it's eagerly loading the whole thing (maybe because that's needed for AST parsing in the case of syntax highlighting, although it happens even on files without highlighting), but there are times I have to swap to `less` still.
ancientcatz 7mo ago
If I remember correctly, `gum` also provides a pager feature: https://github.com/charmbracelet/gum https://github.com/charmbracelet/gum
- netghost 7mo ago
  TIL about `gum`. I love this and endeavor to integrate it into something sometime. Thank you for mentioning it!
  - project2501a 7mo ago
    Oh, you will love all of charmbracelet https://github.com/charmbracelet https://github.com/charmbracelet
jauntywundrkind 7mo ago
It's not great but I made a typescript library to wrap pickers recently, such as skim, fuzzel, fzf, dmenu, rofi, etc. Some very similar problems. Would love if anyone has thoughts or suggestions. It was quick and dirty, and works fine for my use, but I'm not sure where else I could take this, how else I might splice apart the problem, what else would suit it. https://tangled.org/jauntywk.bsky.social/picker-power https://tangled.org/jauntywk.bsky.social/picker-power
CGamesPlay 7mo ago
I am definitely waiting for a "modern less replacement" in the same vein as fd, sd, fzf, and the rest of the under-20yo cli crew. I get that "less" is reasonably maintained still. I think the killer feature for me would be refresh. I get that this can't work for piped input, but I want `git diff` to show in a pager with a refresh button that holds my place. fzf supports both refresh and piped input, so perhaps there's some ideas there that could be leveraged.
- zeech 7mo ago
  I went looking for a 'new' pager a couple years back and settled on this [0]. I've since gone back to `less` since it got annoying jumping between systems and having different pagers, but when I used it it was quite nice. [0] https://github.com/walles/moor https://github.com/walles/moor
- anthk 7mo ago
  That should be under a less(1) flag, but optional as it can mess piping.
- busfahrer 7mo ago
  I've noticed that subconsciously, I've started to use `bat` for interactive paging, even though that's not its main use case
  - CGamesPlay 7mo ago
    Bat just uses less internally. And it deliberately breaks less’ handling of ^C, annoyingly.
    - indentit 7mo ago
      Bat has an option to use a built-in pager, a Rust crate called minus
      - CGamesPlay 7mo ago
        Didn't know that! I tried it and it doesn't work for me, sadly. Test case: `seq 1 100 | bat --pager=builtin` Result: immediate exit, no output printed at all. https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1053 https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1053
sourcegrift 7mo ago
Also called `vi -`
thegdsks 7mo ago
How does this compare to less with syntax highlighting? I've been using bat as a pager (bat --paging=always) and it covers most of what I need. Curious what the advantage is for larger files.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
jzer0cool 7mo ago
Was curious but the git link there doesn't load?
umutnaber 7mo ago
good work
da_rob 7mo ago
Well-written article! I wish there was some kind of standard to tell CLI apps what features to expect from the system pager, so they can act accordingly … Right now, apps can talk to the terminal to check for feature support, but all of that falls apart when the output is piped to a pager. (Do we support inline links? ANSI colors? Sixel support??) Shameless plug, specifically regarding Sixel support: I needed a pager with better image support than just less -r and made https://github.com/roblillack/lessi https://github.com/roblillack/lessi
- Cthulhu_ 7mo ago
  To be pedantic, you mean a standard like IEEE 1003 aka POSIX? (https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/more.html https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/m...)
- xk3 7mo ago
  maybe just check TERM? although to be honest--do you even need a pager if your shell/terminal is nice enough? I rarely pipe to a pager because kitty/fish/tmux support OSC 133 pretty well and I can press one button to go up to the previous command prompt and another button to go back. I can press a few keys to search the scrollback. It all works seamlessly across SSH sessions too if you set it up right. # tmux bind-key -T copy-mode C-Home send -X history-top bind-key -T copy-mode C-End send -X history-bottom bind -T copy-mode C-Up send-keys -X previous-prompt bind -T copy-mode C-Down send-keys -X next-prompt # kitty map ctrl+up scroll_to_prompt -1 map ctrl+down scroll_to_prompt 1 map shift+PAGE_UP scroll_page_up map shift+PAGE_DOWN scroll_page_down # fish shell config.fish if test -z "$SSH_TTY"; and test -z "$TMUX" bind pageup "kitty @ scroll-window 1p-" bind pagedown "kitty @ scroll-window 1p" end
broken-kebab 7mo ago
I suggest writing an intro which would answer 'why' you made it.
- ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
  Why wouldn't you?
efaref 7mo ago
I wrote streampager a few years ago to scratch a similar itch. It works well enough for my own uses (and is/was used in library form as the built-in pager for sapling and jj). I think it still needs some work for more general use which I unfortunately don't have time for at the moment.
asibahi 7mo ago
Slightly related: I am an Arab who speaks Arabic and reads Arabic and the only place I ever see the unicode character ﷽ is by programmers giving an example of "unicode is too hard". Perhaps as a graphical element at the beginning of books, too. It is a part of the Arabic Presentation Forms block which explicitly is for supporting legacy encodings and should not be used.
- dyauspitr 7mo ago
  The whole phrase is one character?
  - pekim 7mo ago
    It's one codepoint, U+FDFD, with the name "Arabic Ligature Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem". https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+FDFD https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+FDFD
  - asibahi 7mo ago
    It’s one code point that’s (in theory) meant to hold the ligature of the whole phrase. As it stands it’s only used as a demonstration of Unicode difficulty.
  - goodmythical 7mo ago
    ﷽ translates to "In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful." But it is indeed just the single character (U+FDFD)

173 points by speckx 7mo ago

The TL;DR doesn’t really say what this new pager offers compared to less; it seems to mostly be a learning project: > lore supports only a subset of what less does, but in a more intuitive and useful manner for my daily activity. I also find value in understanding it from the ground up, bytes to terminal views, and continuing to refine it as I learn more about what I actually want and need in a terminal pager.

gandreani 7mo ago

I really like this post! I think it's the clearest explanation I've seen of the different characteristics of utf-8 strings

cocodill 7mo ago

For a bubbletea application I'd expect more bubbles and tea there. But still, nice project.

vomayank 7mo ago

[flagged]

lrobinovitch 7mo ago
Author here! If I were to give this post a longer title, it would be "I made a terminal pager because I needed a really good viewport component for my Go TUIs, then realized that a TUI viewport is just a mini terminal pager and I want the same text navigation and manipulation experience everywhere that I encounter long text blocks in my terminal". I take no issue at all with `less`, it's super powerful and configurable as I call out in the post. I took the functionality I needed, made it a reusable component for Go TUIs, then made a terminal pager in the form of a Go TUI with it.
- ghthor 7mo ago
  Still use Wander everyday <3
- ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
  "Because I felt like it" is also a perfectly acceptable answer ;-)
- vomayank 7mo ago
  [flagged]

dostick 7mo ago

From the title I thought it’s about a dead man’s switch.

nkoren 7mo ago
I thought it was about replicating a mossad supply chain attack.

fragmede 7mo ago

A Splunk, a Splunk! My kingdom for a Splunk! (too bad Cisco bought them and made it too expensive). Also, no "less does more than more and most does more than less" joke?

mnkyprskbd 7mo ago

bat is the king of pagers. https://github.com/sharkdp/bat https://github.com/sharkdp/bat

teki_one 7mo ago
bat does not look like a pager: https://github.com/sharkdp/bat?tab=readme-ov-file#automatic-paging https://github.com/sharkdp/bat?tab=readme-ov-file#automatic-...
- teo_zero 7mo ago
  In fact it's not. The name itself mimicks cat, not less. It's a filter that adds annotations to its input, such as syntax highlighting, git diffs and special-char coloring. Personally I can't find any use for bat: I'm a devote user of vim for editing, and it already does all of this, so why not using it to view files as well? It's satisfying to have the same interface, colors and shortcuts whether you're editing or viewing!
  - technojamin 7mo ago
    I use it for previewing files in `fzf` and `lf` (terminal file manager).
asibahi 7mo ago
Doesn’t it just call `less`?
- joombaga 7mo ago
  Yes. It calls the default pager (or whatever you specify).
saghm 7mo ago
I like it a lot more than `less`, but unfortunately it's always a lot slower when first opening really large files. I'm not sure if it's eagerly loading the whole thing (maybe because that's needed for AST parsing in the case of syntax highlighting, although it happens even on files without highlighting), but there are times I have to swap to `less` still.

ancientcatz 7mo ago

If I remember correctly, `gum` also provides a pager feature: https://github.com/charmbracelet/gum https://github.com/charmbracelet/gum

netghost 7mo ago
TIL about `gum`. I love this and endeavor to integrate it into something sometime. Thank you for mentioning it!
- project2501a 7mo ago
  Oh, you will love all of charmbracelet https://github.com/charmbracelet https://github.com/charmbracelet

jauntywundrkind 7mo ago

It's not great but I made a typescript library to wrap pickers recently, such as skim, fuzzel, fzf, dmenu, rofi, etc. Some very similar problems. Would love if anyone has thoughts or suggestions. It was quick and dirty, and works fine for my use, but I'm not sure where else I could take this, how else I might splice apart the problem, what else would suit it. https://tangled.org/jauntywk.bsky.social/picker-power https://tangled.org/jauntywk.bsky.social/picker-power

CGamesPlay 7mo ago

I am definitely waiting for a "modern less replacement" in the same vein as fd, sd, fzf, and the rest of the under-20yo cli crew. I get that "less" is reasonably maintained still. I think the killer feature for me would be refresh. I get that this can't work for piped input, but I want `git diff` to show in a pager with a refresh button that holds my place. fzf supports both refresh and piped input, so perhaps there's some ideas there that could be leveraged.

zeech 7mo ago
I went looking for a 'new' pager a couple years back and settled on this [0]. I've since gone back to `less` since it got annoying jumping between systems and having different pagers, but when I used it it was quite nice. [0] https://github.com/walles/moor https://github.com/walles/moor
anthk 7mo ago
That should be under a less(1) flag, but optional as it can mess piping.
busfahrer 7mo ago
I've noticed that subconsciously, I've started to use `bat` for interactive paging, even though that's not its main use case
- CGamesPlay 7mo ago
  Bat just uses less internally. And it deliberately breaks less’ handling of ^C, annoyingly.
  - indentit 7mo ago
    Bat has an option to use a built-in pager, a Rust crate called minus
    - CGamesPlay 7mo ago
      Didn't know that! I tried it and it doesn't work for me, sadly. Test case: `seq 1 100 | bat --pager=builtin` Result: immediate exit, no output printed at all. https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1053 https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/issues/1053

sourcegrift 7mo ago

Also called `vi -`

thegdsks 7mo ago

How does this compare to less with syntax highlighting? I've been using bat as a pager (bat --paging=always) and it covers most of what I need. Curious what the advantage is for larger files.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

jzer0cool 7mo ago

Was curious but the git link there doesn't load?

umutnaber 7mo ago

good work

da_rob 7mo ago

Well-written article! I wish there was some kind of standard to tell CLI apps what features to expect from the system pager, so they can act accordingly … Right now, apps can talk to the terminal to check for feature support, but all of that falls apart when the output is piped to a pager. (Do we support inline links? ANSI colors? Sixel support??) Shameless plug, specifically regarding Sixel support: I needed a pager with better image support than just less -r and made https://github.com/roblillack/lessi https://github.com/roblillack/lessi

Cthulhu_ 7mo ago
To be pedantic, you mean a standard like IEEE 1003 aka POSIX? (https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/more.html https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/m...)
xk3 7mo ago
maybe just check TERM? although to be honest--do you even need a pager if your shell/terminal is nice enough? I rarely pipe to a pager because kitty/fish/tmux support OSC 133 pretty well and I can press one button to go up to the previous command prompt and another button to go back. I can press a few keys to search the scrollback. It all works seamlessly across SSH sessions too if you set it up right. # tmux bind-key -T copy-mode C-Home send -X history-top bind-key -T copy-mode C-End send -X history-bottom bind -T copy-mode C-Up send-keys -X previous-prompt bind -T copy-mode C-Down send-keys -X next-prompt # kitty map ctrl+up scroll_to_prompt -1 map ctrl+down scroll_to_prompt 1 map shift+PAGE_UP scroll_page_up map shift+PAGE_DOWN scroll_page_down # fish shell config.fish if test -z "$SSH_TTY"; and test -z "$TMUX" bind pageup "kitty @ scroll-window 1p-" bind pagedown "kitty @ scroll-window 1p" end

broken-kebab 7mo ago

I suggest writing an intro which would answer 'why' you made it.

ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
Why wouldn't you?

efaref 7mo ago

I wrote streampager a few years ago to scratch a similar itch. It works well enough for my own uses (and is/was used in library form as the built-in pager for sapling and jj). I think it still needs some work for more general use which I unfortunately don't have time for at the moment.

asibahi 7mo ago

Slightly related: I am an Arab who speaks Arabic and reads Arabic and the only place I ever see the unicode character ﷽ is by programmers giving an example of "unicode is too hard". Perhaps as a graphical element at the beginning of books, too. It is a part of the Arabic Presentation Forms block which explicitly is for supporting legacy encodings and should not be used.

dyauspitr 7mo ago
The whole phrase is one character?
- pekim 7mo ago
  It's one codepoint, U+FDFD, with the name "Arabic Ligature Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem". https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+FDFD https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+FDFD
- asibahi 7mo ago
  It’s one code point that’s (in theory) meant to hold the ligature of the whole phrase. As it stands it’s only used as a demonstration of Unicode difficulty.
- goodmythical 7mo ago
  ﷽ translates to "In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful." But it is indeed just the single character (U+FDFD)