4.8 KiB
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.
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:
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 easier installation method is using Pip, either user or system-wide installation:
# User installation:
pip3 install --user bebop-browser
# System-wide installation:
sudo pip3 install bebop-browser
To update:
# User update:
pip3 install --user --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/plugin.py
module for more information.
Here is a list of plugins I did, available on PyPI:
bebop-browser-finger
: support for Finger protocol (readme)
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.