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Bebop/README.md

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Bebop

Bebop is a Gemini browser for the terminal, focusing on practicality and laziness. It is a personal project to learn how to use ncurses and try new ways to explore the Geminispace. It borrows some ideas from Amfora, another great terminal browser, Vim for interactivity and tries to support mouse usage decently. It also supports some “smol net” protocols such as Finger and Gopher through plugins.

If you are interested in Gemini and looking for a desktop/laptop client, I recommend trying a graphical one like the excellent Lagrange or Kristall, or Amfora if you're feeling more at home in the terminal. Bebop won't attempt to support every feature other clients might have, but if you want to try something a bit different, keep reading…

Screenshots:

welcome screenshot browsing Medusae screenshot browsing Spacewalk screenshot

The changelog is in the annotated tags.

Features

Why use Bebop instead of something else?

  • Lightweight, no external Python dependencies.
  • Nice keybinds are defined, and Vim users should get quickly familiar with them.
  • Fun! Link navigation is done by entering the link ID with automatic validation so you can just smash your numpad to take your ship to unknown places (see usage section below for details).
  • History, cache, client certificates, bookmarks (it's just a text file with bindings), downloads, plugins and more!

Install

You need Python 3.7 or more recent. If you don't know what Python is or if you have it installed, check out this Gemini link gemini://dece.space/dev/faq/using-python-programs.gmi (Web version).

The recommended installation method is using Pipx, but using Pip is fine, either user or system-wide installation.

# User installation:
pip3 install --user bebop-browser
# User installation using pipx:
pipx install bebop-browser
# System-wide installation:
sudo pip3 install bebop-browser

To update:

# User update:
pip3 install --user --upgrade bebop-browser
# User update using pipx:
pipx upgrade bebop-browser
# System-wide update:
sudo pip3 install --upgrade bebop-browser

Note that you can also simply clone this repo and use python3 -m bebop to run from the source instead of installing it.

Platform specific info

Linux

Linux is the main platform I can test so you should be good to go, and don't hesitate to report issues.

BSD

I don't know! Let me know your experience with it if you did try it.

macOS

It should work on macOS like on other UNIX-like systems. I have limited access to devices running macOS so cross your fingers… The main difference I've seen is that some keys may behave a bit differently and that text attributes such as italics or dim may not work.

Windows

Bebop relies heavily on ncurses to display its content to the terminal, and it does not work great on Windows. You need to install the curses support separately as most Python distributions on Windows do not have it: the package windows-curses on PyPI seems to work here.

Seems like there is no color support out of the box nor text attributes. It works OK in cmd.exe, but it feels completely broken on Windows Terminal.

Plugins

Since v0.2.0 you can use and develop plugins for Bebop. Installing a plugin requires you to install the corresponding Python package, usually from PyPI, then enable the plugin in your config file. Check the internal help page or the bebop/plugins.py module for more information.

Here is a list of plugins I did, available on PyPI:

  • bebop-browser-finger: support for Finger protocol (readme)
  • bebop-browser-gopher: support for Gopher protocol (readme)

Plugins have to be installed in the same Python environment as Bebop. If you installed Bebop using Pipx, this is done using the inject command.

# Installating the Gopher plugin in the user environment:
pip3 install --user bebop-browser-gopher
# Installating the Gopher plugin for a Pipx installation:
pipx inject bebop-browser bebop-browser-gopher

Usage

Just run bebop, optionally following by an URL (bebop -h to see options). I have it aliased to "bop" but that is up to you.

Documentation about the keybinds, config values and commands are embed into the software itself: press "?" to display the help page.

The first thing you will want to get used to is the link navigation. All links have an ID written before them and you press the corresponding number to access it. If there are less than 10 links on a page, pressing the link ID will take you to the page directly. If there are 30 links, pressing "1" will wait for another digit. If there are 1000 links but you wish to visit link 5, pressing 5 and enter will do.

There is an FAQ at gemini://dece.space/dev/bebop.gmi.

Happy browsing!

About

Licensed under GPLv3.

Name comes from this song which is good background music for browsing Gemini. Oh and Cowboy Bebop.