I've started building a TUI for Lemmy (files.catbox.moe)
from crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com to linux@lemmy.ml on 28 Dec 2023 23:49
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/11262170

I’m not sure this is the right community.

I’ve been hoping for a TUI frontend for Lemmy for a while, but unfortunately none came out and I’ve decided to build a proof of concept on my own.

It’s written in python with pythorhead, blessed and chafa.py and it’s quite janky.

#linux

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shartworx@sh.itjust.works on 28 Dec 2023 23:56 next collapse

Have you looked at Textual? It probably has more functionality than blessed.

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 29 Dec 2023 00:02 next collapse

I did, but i was going for something really small and simple, more like an ebook reader than a webui.

bloopernova@programming.dev on 29 Dec 2023 00:02 next collapse

+1 for Textual. It’s great stuff!

krash@lemmy.ml on 30 Dec 2023 12:40 collapse

Textual is great, and the community at discord is very helpful and welcoming.

wwwgem@lemmy.ml on 29 Dec 2023 00:08 next collapse

Wish someone would come with something like tut for mastodon.

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 29 Dec 2023 00:18 collapse

While complex tuis are definitely not my cup of tea (I prefer cli tools to be simple, otherwise I would probably use a proper gui), I’m really happy that I’m not the only one wishing for a way to access lemmy from the terminal.

LainOfTheWired@lemy.lol on 29 Dec 2023 00:26 next collapse

That looks epic!

Please add the ability to view images with an external image viewer as I find a lot of social TUI apps seem to lack that.

Add that and you’re making my ideal Lemmy client

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 29 Dec 2023 00:34 collapse

Thank you, that’s so kind! I’ll probably try to tackle the comments first as they come quite messy from the api, then I’ll probably give the images a go.

To be honest, I’m hoping this project doesn’t get out of my league too quickly as a have almost no experience with working with apis.

KiranWells@pawb.social on 29 Dec 2023 08:04 collapse

You might look into displaying images in the terminal as well; many modern terminals support showing actual images natively

mesamunefire@lemmy.world on 29 Dec 2023 01:31 next collapse

Something like rtv would be great!

circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org on 29 Dec 2023 01:56 next collapse

I love this. Anything that keeps me in the terminal and out of the browser is a blessing from Tux himself.

nix@merv.news on 29 Dec 2023 02:11 next collapse

How did you upload a video?

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 29 Dec 2023 02:14 collapse

Uploaded it to catbox.moe and then just pasted the link in the url field when creating the post. Hope that helps :)

itsaj26744@programming.dev on 29 Dec 2023 02:30 next collapse

There is one named neonmodem overdrive but it is buggy. It also support discourse forums any plan for this?

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 29 Dec 2023 02:43 collapse

There is one named neonmodem overdrive but it is buggy.

It really is buggy, iirc I couldn’t even get it to run properly.

It also support discourse forums any plan for this?

I really don’t have any plans (or even a name) for the app, as I’ve just started playing around with pythorhead yesterday. I just hoped posting a prototype or a proof of concept might spark a discussion and maybe inspire someone much more competent than me.

itsaj26744@programming.dev on 29 Dec 2023 02:48 collapse

Fine I thought u were somewhere.🥲

[deleted] on 29 Dec 2023 06:24 next collapse

.

noctisatrae@beehaw.org on 29 Dec 2023 07:35 next collapse

I’m too working on a TUI to browse the-eye.eu, I’m still struggling with asynchronous render & Rust.

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 29 Dec 2023 17:16 collapse

Async programming is really quite hard to wrap your head around. Currently I’m mostly struggling with excessive memory consumption.

noctisatrae@beehaw.org on 29 Dec 2023 19:15 collapse

Send help I’m struggling with lifetimes, unbounded channel & implementing EventHandler… <3

djtech@lemmy.world on 29 Dec 2023 13:58 next collapse

For rendering high quality images in the terminal, check out the Kitty graphical protocol. I don’t know if they are any python libraries to use, but I think that they are. P.S. This seems to work well stackoverflow.com/…/how-to-display-graphical-imag…

callyral@pawb.social on 29 Dec 2023 14:10 next collapse

does this protocol work for other terminals? such as alacritty, foot, urxvt, or even st (with appropriate patch ofc)?

djtech@lemmy.world on 29 Dec 2023 14:14 collapse

A quick research tells me that there aren’t patches for other emulators, but the protocol seems well described, so making those patches is possible. I could also take a look at Alacritty source code and deicide if I could make this project work.

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 29 Dec 2023 17:25 collapse

I went with chafa as it’s terminal agnostic and supports various modes.

Then again, I’m not really sure a tui frontend needs high quality image rendering. Earlier I even considered going completely 1bit braille or just ASCII just so that the image doesn’t take all of the focus at the expense of the post body.

As mentioned by another commenter, I believe opening the full image in an external viewer is a much better solution, not to mention easier to implement.

jodanlime@midwest.social on 29 Dec 2023 20:46 collapse

You could also look into using sixel. It’s kinda like the kitty protocol but older and terminal agnostic.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 29 Dec 2023 20:54 collapse

Thanks, I’ve only heard of sixel, but never really read into it. Sounds promising.

kariboka@bolha.forum on 02 Jan 2024 04:05 collapse

A suggestion is do it like neofetch and let the user choose. Amazing work.

Secret300@sh.itjust.works on 29 Dec 2023 18:37 next collapse

Finally a Lemmy client for Linux mobile

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 29 Dec 2023 21:45 collapse

That made me laugh so hard. Are there really no clients for linux mobiles?

Secret300@sh.itjust.works on 30 Dec 2023 17:50 collapse

There wasn’t a few months back when I checked

Truck_kun@beehaw.org on 30 Dec 2023 03:10 next collapse

I would not recommend working on two GUI’s at once, but if you build it in a way you can use different frameworks for it, the maker of Rich also makes a nice TUI framework API called Textual.

Here’s some projects made with it for a sample of what it’s usage can look like: https://www.textualize.io/projects/

I believe it does not use curses at all.

wiki_me@lemmy.ml on 30 Dec 2023 10:13 next collapse

Link returns “This site can’t be reachedThe webpage at files.catbox.moe/8g7agm.mp4 might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.”.

Do you have a github or codeberg link?

Maybe we should add it to awesome-lemmy?.

crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 30 Dec 2023 17:11 collapse

Link returns “This site can’t be reachedThe webpage at files.catbox.moe/8g7agm.mp4 might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.”.

It seems to be working for me.

Do you have a github or codeberg link?

I didn’t think anyone would have interest in it so i haven’t uploaded it. After new year’s I could clean it up a bit and host it on github.

Maybe we should add it to awesome-lemmy?.

I think it may be e a bit too early for that. At the current state it supports dynamic fetching of the feed in the background (quite buggy), paginating and displaying long posts and displaying top level comments only. At the current state it’s quite enough for me to enjoy a few (more like a few dozen) posts, but definitely not anywhere close to “awesome”.

wim@lemmy.sdf.org on 30 Dec 2023 13:51 next collapse

Have you considered supporting Sixel for images?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel

taanegl@beehaw.org on 30 Dec 2023 19:45 next collapse

He’s a mad man, a mad man!

But cool! Any hopes for image and video support?

nmtake@lemm.ee on 29 Dec 2023 00:05 next collapse

FYI see github.com/mrusme/neonmodem

isotope@lemm.ee on 29 Dec 2023 14:33 next collapse

Looks good! You might want to join forces with github.com/LunaticHacker/lemmy-terminal-viewer

MonkderZweite@feddit.ch on 29 Dec 2023 13:08 next collapse

One reason more to stop with the silly text-in-image posts. There’s a text-only post option, you know guys? Lemmy is not Instagram.

MonkderZweite@feddit.ch on 29 Dec 2023 13:13 collapse

There’s TIV/FIM/imgfb if you’re looking for ways to render images in terminal. Or convert them to sixel.