I love this browser, thank you for building it!
replies(1):
Chawan started out as a w3m clone, and the UI still resembles it. However, the architecture has turned out quite different, with pages loaded in separate processes, and protocol/file type handling separated out into external binaries. An interesting result is that you can even register decoders for custom inline image formats, although practical use cases of this are rather minimal.
There is a gallery showcasing some websites being rendered here: https://chawan.net/gallery/index.html
[1]: https://nim-lang.org
If you're interested, I posted a user style for HN here: https://lists.sr.ht/~bptato/chawan-devel/%3CD9S40OS2QWHL.PXQ...
Mainly just to fix the vote arrows, because for now background-image only renders placeholders.
For navigation in particular you'd use capital D to discard the current buffer and return to the previous page. There's also , (comma, back) and . (period, forward), which non-destructively cycle through the stack.
(Well, it's really a tree, but the UI mostly treats it as a stack.)
When I do `cha example.com` I can't figure out how to use any of the commands (hjkl, etc). The only keys I've found that have any effect are typing numbers which show up in the bottom left. Haven't figured out how to do anything with those. Am I missing something obvious about how to use this or could this be a bug?
I built from source on MacOS Sequoia 15.5 Apple Silicon using Nim 2.24. Pages load correctly, I just can't get the commands to work. Thanks!
Could you please pull the macos-input branch from https://git.sr.ht/~bptato/chawan and report back on what the `a` file includes after opening a site and typing some commands? (Should be created in the current working directory.)
``` handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c 'j' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c 'j' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104c5b780"j" c 'j' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c 'k' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c 'k' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104ca8b70"k" c 'k' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c 'l' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c 'l' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104c5bab0"l" c 'l' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c 'k' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c 'k' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104ca8d20"k" c 'k' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c 'j' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c 'j' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104c5b480"j" c 'j' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c 'h' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c 'h' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104ca89c0"h" c 'h' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c 'g' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c 'g' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104cae780"g" c 'g' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '1' after handleCommandInput, buffer "" c '1' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '2' after handleCommandInput, buffer "" c '2' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '3' after handleCommandInput, buffer "" c '3' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '1' after handleCommandInput, buffer "" c '1' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '2' after handleCommandInput, buffer "" c '2' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '2' after handleCommandInput, buffer "" c '2' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '3' after handleCommandInput, buffer "" c '3' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '\3' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c '\3' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104cae690"\3" c '\3' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '\3' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c '\3' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104adaed0"\3" c '\3' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '\3' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c '\3' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104ca8720"\3" c '\3' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '\4' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c '\4' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104bf8d80"\4" c '\4' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '\3' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c '\3' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104caaa80"\3" c '\3' handleCommandInput 1, buffer "" c '\4' handleCommandInput 2, buffer "" c '\4' after handleCommandInput, buffer 0x104ca8e40"\4" c '\4' ```
OK, let's try something else. On master, is anything written to the status line if you press `p` when started with
cha -o'page.p="pager.alert(config.page.j)"' -VI started with termcap because I was already familiar with it through w3m. But termcap is an obsolete interface, and cannot describe the only useful attribute for modern terminals (true color). Its only benefit was "maybe it accidentally works on a hardware terminal from the 80s", which is cool but not really worth the extra failure mode.
So instead of migrating to terminfo, I ditched it completely in favor of terminal queries (which were already necessary for other reasons). There is still a built-in terminal database, to detect known TERM values with XTerm incompatibilities. But a terminal that correctly responds to queries will work out of the box, even if its TERM value is unknown.
Nim is wonderful language and I am glad to see it used for this.
Having support for some CSS makes it a bit more difficult, as spacing between elements is now an issue, where previously links would ignore margins and padding all together which were used to display cleaner inline list elements (for menus and such).
As it hasn't been brought up yet, a really great hack (esp. for us without sixel) is this terminal port of chromium: https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl .. but the original creator hasn't had time to get back to it. So it is very bare bones & lacks a lot of features, like keyboard shortcuts, file saving.. but obviously it brings full web compatibility and is just very cool. Wishing for someone with rust skills to pick it up again, last time I looked (couple of months ago) none of the forks had any momentum.
What's the best resource (paid or free) in your opinion for learning about these TTY related concepts?
I'm aware of https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/index.php for example, but that doesn't go into termcap/terminfo/curses.
one of the comments mentions http://www.amazon.com/termcap-terminfo-OReilly-Nutshell-Lind... though (online https://www.scribd.com/document/831486848/Termcap-and-Termin...)
For the record, this is the definition of being a hacker by Stallman: «Being a programmer doesn't mean being a hacker: it means appreciating playful cleverness. Now, you can program without being playfully clever and you can be playfully clever in other fields without programming.»
I can totally relate with your frustration. Here, come criticize my half-stack instead: https://akkartik.name/freewheeling-apps You're absolutely right in general.
If you use a compatible terminal emulator.
But if you really want custom CSS for grid displays, chawan does support the standard "grid" media feature: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/grid
That said, for the actual escape sequences, XTerm's ctlseqs.ms[1] is an invaluable resource. I also took many ideas from nick black's notcurses[2], and I especially recommend his notes on "sprixels".[3]
[1]: https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html
[2]: https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php/Notcurses
[3]: https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php/Theory_and_Practic...
...those pesky GUI users want pixel-precision :P
Surely it's a hobby project. You have to have very specific tastes to browse in the terminal in 2025.
> using external binaries for protocols feels like sidestepping the real engineering
You could easily move all protocols to the main binary. The reason for the current arrangement is that this way, you can e.g. replace the HTTP handler with curl-impersonate, or add custom protocols like magnet (etc.) See the bonus directory in the sources for inspiration.
> tied to niche image formats like sixel/kitty which barely anyone supports.
Sixel & Kitty are the only image formats anybody supports. The alternatives are ASCII art (fun, but too pixelated) & hacking images onto the terminal thru the display server (is that still a terminal-based app?) But I'm happy to discuss further, I find the issue fascinating :)
> mac
The macOS issue is largely a function of the only person working on this not having a mac. If you do, you can help solving it by debugging it yourself & posting the results: https://todo.sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/63
docker build -t chawan:0.2.0 .
docker run -it --rm chawan:0.2.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/
Rendering images or movies on the TTY is common.
fbida: https://www.kraxel.org/blog/linux/fbida/
mpv: https://mpv.io/
Fbida sometimes need the -d option pointing to /dev/drm/something, when using screen or tmux.
MPV required for years -vo=drm on the TTY but since some months it always works. Nice improvement :)
A display server is not needed.
I hope the author is safe. His work was really good,I must say. Fuck wars in general.
I'll check if the issue tracker has anything related to supporting titled alternate stylesheets (and eventually allowing users to pick one of them), because on the website where I made efforts for the markup to look reasonable on links, I also have a "simple" style that removes most of the CSS fanciness.
Things that aren't ready are on topic, hobby tools, scratch-an-itch or learning projects are all on topic in for Show HN. Generic harumphing isn't. It is boring and lowers the quality of the threads.
Priorities, I guess. As long as I'm in a terminal, I'd rather have support for hardware terminals from the 80s than truecolor. But my only hardware terminal is a VT-420, so probably works for more or less anything that supports base XTerm (monochrome).