Bebop/README.md

Bebop

Bebop is a Gemini browser for the terminal, focusing on practicality and speed. 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.

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.

It passes the Conman's client test but not Egsam's for now.

Features

Why use Bebop instead of something else?

Lightweight

It only uses a single dependency, asn1crypto, to delegate parsing certificates. Everything else including NCurses or TLS is done using Python's standard library.

Fun

Link navigation is done by entering the link ID with automatic validation: 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!

Of course this is based on my own perception of what exactly makes a client "fun" to use, but give it a shot!

And more!

It does not try to do many things. Common basic browsing features work: go to URL, scrolling, follow links, redirections, page encodings, etc.

It also provide these features:

• History
• Caching
• Bookmarks: it's just a text file with bindings.
• Downloads

Check out this board for what's done and coming next.

Configuration

Bebop uses a JSON file (usually in ~/.config). It is created with default values on first start. It is never written to afterwards: you can edit it when you want, just restart Bebop to take changes into account.

Here are the available options:

Key	Type	Default	Description
connect_timeout	int	10	Seconds before connection times out.
text_width	int	80	Rendered line length.
source_editor	string list	["vi"]	Command to use for editing sources.
command_editor	string list	["vi"]	Command to use for editing CLI input.

Note: for the "command" parameters such as source_editor and command_editor, a string list is used to separate the different program arguments, e.g. if you wish to use vim -c 'startinsert', you should write the list ["vim", "-c", "startinsert"]. In both case, a temporary or regular file name will be appended to this command when run.

FAQ

Can I change the colors?

I do not plan to allow modifying the colors or elements style for now. Configure a nice palette for your terminal so that Bebop fits nicely in there!

Will Bebop implement subscriptions?

I have no need for them as I prefer to use a browser-agnostic aggregator at the moment, so no.

WTF is wrong with the command line?

I don't understand how you're supposed to create a fine input field in pure curses without the form extension library, which is not available from Python. Or, I think I understand but it's way too hard for the limited time I have to work on Bebop. So the command line is based on the very limited Textbox class; it's fine for entering a simple URL or a bookmark title but if you need to type more than the window's width, press M-e (ALT + e) to open an editor.