100 lines
5.1 KiB
Markdown
100 lines
5.1 KiB
Markdown
# Bopher-NG: A better Gopher browser in pure Bash
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> “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
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>
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> _― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey_
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## What is it?
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Bopher-NG is an ambitious attempt to write a full-featured Gopher client/browser in under 300 SLOC of pure Bash code. It started off as a really crude and unoptimized prototype developed right in [this blog post](https://chronovir.us/2023/03/28/I-wrote-a-browser/) for educational purposes.
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Improvements over the original Bopher from that post:
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- mouse support (where possible)
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- smoother rendering and scrolling
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- better edge-case stability (e.g. on macOS where using file descriptor 3 actually crashes everything)
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- better Gophermap processing according to the RFC
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- multi-level navigation history (although you can only go back)
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- status bar with currently opened resource name
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- ability to accept `gopher://` URLs from the command line
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- ability to save the URL to the currently viewed resource into the stash text file
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- ability to force-download pages instead of viewing regardless of their type
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- ability to display 8-type Gophermap entries as `telnet://` URIs (not opening anything for security reasons)
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"Pure Bash" means any external commands must only be used if absolutely required. For now, Bopher-NG only depends on three external commands (all POSIX-compliant):
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- `cat` (to handle possibly binary data read from the socket)
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- `stty` (to fetch current terminal size in rows and columns)
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- `date` (to shape entry timestamps when stashing links)
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## Which Bash versions are supported?
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Bopher-NG was only tested on Bash 5.1, but should support any version from 4.2 and up.
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## How to start Bopher-NG?
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Just run it specifying all the necessary components of the Gopher resource:
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```
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bopher-ng.sh host[ port][ selector][ type]
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```
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Or, you can just specify a valid `gopher://` URL:
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```
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bopher-ng.sh gopher://host[:port]/[type][selector]
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```
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E.g. running `bopher-ng.sh gopher://texto-plano.xyz:70/0comandos.txt` is the same as `bopher-ng.sh texto-plano.xyz 70 comandos.txt 0` and will open the same document.
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In both cases, only the host is required. If everything else is omitted, the port will default to 70, the selector will default to `/` and the resource type will default to 1.
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Also, your selectors now can have a `%09[search]` part, so you can specify your search queries directly on start and also save them later.
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## How to browse Onion nodes with Bopher-NG?
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Besides having Tor itself up and running, you also need to have the `torsocks` wrapper installed:
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```
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torsocks bash bopher-ng.sh gopher://[some-address].onion
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```
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## Will there be any Gopher-TLS support?
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No. Besides the ambiguity problem, it will also introduce huge external dependencies. Use .onion services instead whenever possible.
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## How to control Bopher-NG?
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- Scrolling: Up/Down arrow keys, k/j keys or mouse scroll wheel (if supported)
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- Page scrolling: PgUp/PgDn keys or h/l keys
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- Link navigation (keyboard): s - focus on the next link, w - focus on the previous link, Enter/Space - visit the focused link (or download if it points to a binary file), d - force-download the contents of the link
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- Link navigation (mouse, if supported): left click on the link - focus and visit (or download if it points to a binary file), middle click - focus and force-download the contents
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- Go back: b or right mouse click anywhere (if supported)
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- Stash the link to the currently open resource: S (shift+s)
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- Quit the browser: q
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## What is the link stash?
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Link stash is a viable and interoperable alternative to both bookmarks and clipboard that can be implemented with pure Bash. Essentially, it's an append-only text file at a fixed location (`~/.bopher-links.txt` by default) where the user can instruct Bopher-NG to save the link to the currently viewed resource. For your convenience, links are stashed with a UTC-based timestamp and in the `gopher://` format, so they can be copied from the file later and used in other browsers.
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You can override the `BOPHER_LINKSTASH` environment variable to change the location and name of this file if you need to.
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## Where do the downloads go?
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By default, they go to your current working directory, i.e. the directory you are running this script from. To override this with a fixed path, set the `BOPHER_DLDIR` environment variable.
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## Which platforms is the mouse supported on?
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Bopher-NG's mouse input is supported on any terminals that support the 1000 **and** 1006 mouse reporting modes. This includes but is not limited to:
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- Linux GUI terminal emulators (xterm, Konsole, urxvt, any VTE-based terminal emulator);
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- Linux bare terminals via GPM + [LCXterm](https://gitlab.com/AutumnMeowMeow/lcxterm) (sorry, I don't know why no one implemented it in GPM itself in 23 years);
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- macOS Terminal;
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- OpenGL-based xterm-compatible terminal emulators like WezTerm, Kitty, Alacritty etc.
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Note that this support is required at the client side only. For instance, you can safely run `bopher-ng.sh` on any compatible Bash version in an SSH session on your terminal and still be able to use mouse there.
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## What is the license on this?
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Fully public domain.
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