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minimalist gemini/spartan client, feels a bit like a shell tbh

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Gelim

builds.sr.ht status Go Report Card libera.chat/#gelim

A minimalist line-mode smolnet client written in go.

screenshot

More screenshots

You get a simple line-mode browser interface to save and navigate Gemini, Spartan, and Nex URLs, plus a pager to view pages. Nothing else.

Table of contents

Features

  • Quickly visit relative and absolute URLs from the prompt
  • Quickly edit the current URL like a GUI URL bar
  • Client certificates
  • gopher:// protocol support
  • spartan:// protocol support
  • nex:// protocol support
  • Tours, similar to AV-98 to loop between links

Install

Prebuilt binaries

Download the latest binary from either SourceHut or GitHub:

Prebuilt binaries for linux and darwin are provided with both x86 and ARM architectures.

The tarball archive available for each release includes the gelim binary, the license, this readme, and the gelim(1) manpage.

Skip to usage

With go install

go install git.sr.ht/~hedy/gelim@latest

Note that this method does not provide version information

Skip to usage

Build from source

First, install the dependencies:

  • go (>=1.16)

Clone the repo somewhere suitable, such as /usr/local:

git clone https://git.sr.ht/~hedy/gelim
cd gelim
# Recommended to use latest pinned version, rather than @latest
# git checkout v0.0.0

Build, optionally set PREFIX (default is PREFIX=/usr/local):

make

If all goes well, install gelim.

Remember to use the same PREFIX too.

sudo make install

# Or without sudo:
# $ make PREFIX=~/.local install

If you don't want to build the manual, you may put your hacker hat on, dive into the Makefile, and copy the go build command used to compile gelim. This lets you store version info accessible at --version.

Or you know what? Just a go build works too! The resulting binary will be in the current directory.

Optionally verify your installation:

make checkinstall

The gelim binary would be sitting at $PREFIX/bin/ with manpage at $PREFIX/share/man/ :)

Troubleshooting

  • Something to do with io.ReadAll:

    Gelim requires go version >= 1.16.

If you're having other issues with installation, please send an email to the mailing list.

Usage

Gelim is a simple program that manages your browsing history and rendering of pages. It simplifies browsing the internet an action of requesting documents then displaying them. It provides a simple interface for navigating links found on documents, manage history, navigate relative URL paths, and delegates the display of pages to less(1). Think of it as a shell-like wrapper around curl ... | less for browsing pages, but for small internet protocols.

Quickstart

This tutorial will give you a tour of the basic features of gelim. Follow along to get familiar with the interface.

First, let's enter gelim with a URL.

gelim geminiprotocol.net

This will bring you to less(1). You can use less to browse the page normally.

Note: if you see something like "-P is not an option", this is because your system does not support one of gelim's default options for less(1). You should configure your lessOpts to remove the -P option in your configuration.

When you want to visit a link, you have to quit less first. Press q

The page will be fetched and you'll be in less again.

Now let's try something more interesting.

While you're at the prompt type:

rawtext.club

Say you don't have an account on rawtext.club yet and would like to sign up.

Go to the bottom of the page, where the link to signing up is provided. Type G

Then, you have to quit the pager. Press q

Look for the link number that links to the sign up page, and enter it directly at the prompt. As of writing, the link number is 38, but keep in mind this number may change when you are trying this out.

38

And now you've decided to have a look at rawtext.club's values at the front page on more time. Unfortunately, the sign up page does not provide a link to go back to home. No worries, you can directly use the path (prefixed with . or /) at the prompt.

Let's try it out. Quit the pager (q), and type / and press enter

Voila, you're at the front page again!

Thanks for trying out this quickstart tutorial, there is still much to explore. Type in help from the prompt and check out the commands, have fun!

Navigating a page/document

Everything in page rendering is handled with less(1). less is called with options specified from your config file. gelim has no intervention in pre-processing any keys.

Hence, anything that works in less should work normally when less is called by gelim.

Useful navigation keys include: d/u/PgDn/PgUp/Space.

Useful keys for jumping to positions include: g/G.

Use q to quit.

The prompt

Gelim uses a lightweight readline-like library for parsing the command line within the line-mode interface. By default, the prompt shows the current URL and a ">" symbol, this can be configured.

At the prompt, common line editing keys are supported. Completion for gelim's commands are also supported through tab and shifttab.

Config

For people on a Unix system gelim will look for configuration in ~/.config/gelim/config.toml.

Gelim follows XDG specification for deciding where to find config and where to store data files.

Though you do not need a configuration file to have gelim working.

# example config

prompt = "-->"
# default: "%U\n>" (the full url of # the current page), a new line and a ">".
# (more info below)

startURL = "example.com"
# default: ""
# the page to visit if starting gelim without a specified link

lessOpts = "-FSXR~"
# will be put in LESS environment variable.
# default: "-FSXR~ -P pager (q to quit)"

searchURL = "gemini://kennedy.gemi.dev/search"

clipboardCopyCmd = "pbcopy"
# Example for MacOS. default = "" (unset)

maxRedirects = 5

index0shortcut = -1
# default: unset (0). an alias for link index 0

maxWidth = 70
# width of each page is max(<terminalWidth>, maxWidth)
# set to 0 to always use the terminal width.
# set to negative X to use a maxWidth of X but disable centering.

useCertificates = [
    # default: [] (see details below)
    "gemini://astrobotany.mozz.us",
    "gemini://bbs.geminispace.org",
]

clipboardCopyCmd:

Example for linux with xclip: xclip -sel c

Contents to be copied will be piped to the command as stdin.

maxRedirects:

  • 0: Always confirm redirects
  • >0: Ask to confirm redirects after a set number of redirects
  • <0: Never confirm redirects. (Please see this section for behavior details)

index0shortcut:

How gelim should treat link index argument "0"; please see this section for details.

maxWidth:

This value is only used for non-preformatted page formats. This includes gemtext, where each line is a paragraph, but does not include text/plain and Nex protocol directory pages.

Prompt format options

You can use a number of placeholders for your prompt:

  • %U: Full url of current page including scheme (gemini://example.com/foo/bar)
  • %u: Full url of current page without scheme (example.com/foo/bar)
  • %P: Absolute path of the current url (/foo/bar)
  • %p: Base path of the current url (bar)
  • %H: Hostname including port
  • %h: Hostname without port

Use %% for a literal percent character, and percent-prefixed option that is not supported will be ignored and presented literally.

The query part of the URL is stripped for all options.

Here are some examples:

config    resulting prompt
-------   -----------------
"%U>"     "gemini://example.com/foo/bar> "
"%P %%"   "/foo/bar % "
"%z>"     "%z> "
"%%%% $"  "%% $ "

Newline characters ("\n") in the prompt are supported. The default prompt is %U\n>, which produces:

gemini://example.com/foo/bar
> _

Where _ indicates the cursor position.

Client certificates

Save your cert.pem and key.pem files in the gelim config directory (such as ~/.config/gelim/{cert,key}.pem). Symlinks are supported.

Then use the useCertificate config option to specify the list of URL prefixes that the client certificate should be used on. For example:

useCertificates = [
    "gemini://astrobotany.mozz.us/app",
    "gemini://bbs.geminispace.org",
]

If the current visiting URL has a prefix from this list, then the client certificate, if available, will be used.

A note about the pager

Gelim requires less(1) for paged output. If you don't have that installed, or is on windows, it will print the page directly and you'll have to scroll the page yourself (like AV-98). This is a bug and will be fixed in the near future.

Mouse support

Add --mouse (if your version of less supports it) to lessOpts option in your config file.

Search in page

Type /<your search query> when less is running. See less(1) for more information.

CLI Options

~> gelim --help
Usage: ./gelim [FLAGS] [URL]

Flags:
  -c, --config string    specify a different config location
                         
  -h, --help             get help on the cli
  -i, --input string     append input to URL ('?' + percent-encoded input)
                         
  -I, --no-interactive   don't go to the line-mode interface
                         
  -s, --search string    search with the search engine (this takes priority over URL and --input)
                         
  -v, --version          print the version and exit
                         
For help on the TUI client, type ? at interactive prompt, or see gelim(1)

Examples:

Search

~> gelim -s "astrobotany"

Test your awesome, boring, classic, totally OG CGI scripts (exits immediately)

~> gelim example.org/cgi-bin/greet.sh -Ii 'world'
Hello, world!

~>

Use it in scripts to show outputs in stdout

~> cat <<EOF > python-help.sh
read -p "help> "
gelim do.hedy.dev/help/py -Ii "${REPLY:-help}"
EOF

~> bash python-help.sh
help> input
'Help on built-in function input in module builtins:

input(prompt=None, /)
    Read a string from standard input.  The trailing newline is stripped.

    The prompt string, if given, is printed to standard output without a
    trailing newline before reading input.

    If the user hits EOF (*nix: Ctrl-D, Windows: Ctrl-Z+Return), raise EOFError.
    On *nix systems, readline is used if available.'

(Single quotes added on output to aid syntax highlighting.)

Submit your twtxt to antenna

~> gelim -I 'gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/submit' -i 'gemini://do.hedy.dev/tw.txt'
Thank you for your submission! Antenna has now been updated.

Screenshots

Commands

screenshot of help command output

Tour

screenshot of tour command

Edit url

screenshot of editing url

Spartan

screenshot of spartan colors

Links

screenshot of links

Search

screenshot of search command

Spartan input

screenshot of spartan input functionality

Behavior details

A good way to master a piece software is to understand how it works from the program's perspective.

Let's take a look at some UX details from various parts of gelim that could require clarification.

Link indexing

Links on a page are numbered starting from 1. If a page has 3 links, the link indices are 1, 2, and 3.

You can simply type 1, 2, or 3 at the line-mode prompt directly to visit them.

Negative arguments

-1 specifies the last link, -2 the second-last link and so on.

This pattern is applied for ALL commands that take in a link index as argument, such as link, tour, history, editurl.

Multiple arguments

Commands link and tour supports multiple link index arguments, for example:

> link 1 2
> tour 3 4 5

What they do with those links is dependent on what the command is for.

Index 0

This is undefined by default, but can act as a shortcut, set in config index0shortcut.

A hint is printed when you do not set this config value, and you try to use a 0 for link index:

> link 0
[ERROR] Behaviour for index 0 is undefined.
You can use -1 for accessing the last item, -2 for second last, etc.
Configure the behaviour of 0 in the config file.
Example: index0shortcut = -1, then whenever you use 0 it will be -1 instead.
This works for commands history, links, editurl, and tour.

Ranges

At the moment, ranges of link indices only work for command tour.

Ranges can be specified with an upper bound and a lower bound, separated by a comma. Both bounds can be omitted.

The default value of upper bound is the first link index, and the default value of lower bound is last link index.

Bounds are inclusive.

Naturally, if both bounds are excluded, all links on current page are selected.

gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/> l
[...]
10 gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/
11 gemini://rawtext.club:1965/~sloum/spacewalk.gmi
12 gemini://calcuode.com/gmisub-aggregate.gmi
13 gemini://caracolito.mooo.com/deriva/
14 gemini://gempaper.strangled.net/mirrorlist/
15 gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/

gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/> t 11,
Added 5 items to tour list

gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/> t c
Cleared 5 items

gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/> t ,
Added 15 items to tour list

Redirects

The configuration option to set the maximum allowed automatic redirects is maxRedirects. This is set to 5 by default (following RFC-2068), meaning gelim will follow redirects 5 times, after which, if there are further redirects, user will be prompted for what to do.

The command to view the history of redirects following current URL is redirects.

Special values:

  • 0: Ask for input for all redirects
  • <0 (negative): Automatically follow all redirects

Due to implementation and resource limitations, gelim cannot practically follow an infinite number of redirects, nor can gelim save the history of all previous redirects and show them all in the redirects command.

The command shows a maximum of 10 most recent redirect URLs.

Once the number of unprompted redirects reaches 20, gelim aborts and prints the 10 most recent redirects.

If you wish, you can still copy the last URL from the output and visit the URL as normal.

What happens when the max number of redirects is reached

Consider the example where maxRedirects is set to 2 in the configuration file.

This is the behavior of following the redirhell torture test URL:

[...]
So, with that said, the first link is to the "Redirection From Hell" test, a test
of a series of temporary redirects, always. The second link is to the next test.

 [1] Redirection From Hell
 [2] 0023
gemini://gemini.thebackupbox.net/test/torture/0022> 1
[WARNING] Max redirects of 2 reached
1 gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/20190
2 gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/25942

Redirect to:
gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/26941
[y/n]> y
[WARNING] Max redirects of 2 reached
1 gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/9114
2 gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/4356

Redirect to:
gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/2582
[y/n]>

After 2 redirects, the user will be prompted and the count of redirects resets, meaning the user saying "y" to prompt is equivalent to the user opening a new link of the said URL.

If the total number of times the user gets redirected for a particular website is 10, and maxRedirects is set to 3, the user will be prompted 3 times on whether to follow a subsequent redirect.

  1. 3 redirects followed
  2. Continue? yes
  3. 3 redirects followed
  4. Continue? yes
  5. 3 redirects followed
  6. Continue? yes
  7. 1 redirect followed
  8. the page loads and is displayed

Here is an example for the behavior of redirects command, following the case where maxRedirects is set to 2:

[...]
So, with that said, the first link is to the "Redirection From Hell" test, a test
of a series of temporary redirects, always. The second link is to the next test.

 [1] Redirection From Hell
 [2] 0023
gemini://gemini.thebackupbox.net/test/torture/0022> 1
[WARNING] Max redirects of 2 reached
1 gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/32043
2 gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/1544

Redirect to:
gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/22150
[y/n]> n
gemini://gemini.thebackupbox.net/test/torture/0022> redir
1 gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/32043
2 gemini://thebackupbox.net/test/redirhell/1544
gemini://gemini.thebackupbox.net/test/torture/0022>

More...

You can use help <cmd> at the prompt to view usage information for a particular command. If there's anything that is confusing or a pattern/behavior that is hard to remember, let me know!

Of course, a last resort could be studying the source code directly, remember to look at the corresponding version which you built gelim from.

Inconsistent behavior?

If there is any inconsistent behavior in gelim's interface, or if it does not follow what is described in the docs, please let me know using a method of contact described below.

Remotes

Discuss

Chat on the #gelim channel on libera.chat IRC.

You can send feature requests or bug reports on GitHub. If you prefer email, feel free to use my public inbox.

Todo

See the ticket tracker.

Patches

Open PRs on the GitHub repo, or if you prefer patches, use my public inbox.

Development

make gelim
make gelim.1
# both
make all # or just make
make clean

make fmt
make checkfmt

# after tagging and pushing
# cp .envrc.example .envrc
# requires goreleaser, and sourcehut and github tokens
make release         # build and publish to GitHub (with goreleaser)
.scripts/release.sh  # uploads artifacts to sourcehut

Meta

Gelim = "gemini" + "line-mode"-like interface

Pronunciation = Ge like "Jelly", lim like "limits"

Motivation

This project started off as an "AV-98 with a pager". The line-mode interface is largely inspired by AV-98, except URLs, links indices and relative paths can be directly entered at the prompt in addition to line-mode commands. Pages are rendered with formatting and color, and is automatically sent to a pager for display.

Gelim is written in Go because I preferred to distribute single binaries.

About

minimalist gemini/spartan client, feels a bit like a shell tbh

todo.sr.ht/~hedy/gelim

Topics

cli golang repl gemini hacktoberfest gemini-client

Resources

Readme

License

MIT license
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Releases 7

v0.13.1 Latest
Dec 14, 2024
+ 6 releases

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