I like this. No reason the terminal should only support text. Data science notebooks show one way the terminal can evolve. Lots of interesting stuff happening in this space, with Kitty probably being the most aggressive innovator here [1]. I'm not sure there is an overall vision, though.
Joking apart, the whole thing was both an exercise in madness and genius. Sometimes I wonder what he would have done if he had not gone crazy. We will never know...
I wonder if something like this could work for thumbnails in the terminal; I prefer to browse my filesystem from a terminal rather than the point and click file manager typically, and it would be really useful if I could have a grid-style `ls` with terminal based renders of the 3d models (thinking STL/STEP, 3D printing) in that directory. Bonus points if I could preview/rotate the model to inspect it.
Mix this 3d graphics, with data science notebooks, with local LLMs, and perhaps an integrated coding harness, with visibility over your personal data and you’d have something absurdly good.
This might overtake “a haiku+macOS mashup” as my idealised computing future.
What's overlooked here are the insane political and economic forces that were required to get anywhere close to the (sort of!) consistent implementation of plain text we have today. These projects try to piggyback off that success yet only contribute back harm. We have standards for a reason.
I'm not saying people can't have fun, but don't try to start a cyberpunk-inspired revolution and then blame the side effects of groupthink and software rot on everyone else when it goes sideways.
- rendering capabilities of this seem like it should also be able to handle 2d well, or am I mistaken? every solution I see for getting high quality 2d images or rasterization in terminal is all pretty bad. Could this do better than other solutions or is there a fundamental limit being hit somewhere?
- What happens with ssh given that this is gpu accelerated?
Always has been meme incoming. Also, more seriously, the purpose of a tool is to do a job. The question becomes whether this tool can be made useful. I.. honestly don't know, but I will be finding out soon:D
I was going to comment how it reminded me of TempleOS and the author should look into that, but the accompanying blog post explains how it was inspired by it https://blog.orhun.dev/introducing-ratty/
Really fun project! Dude, I spent the last week implementing Kitty Graphics and Clipboard protocols in ghostty-web in the Canvas render.
Then I added WebGL and WebGPU renderers [1], including support for Kitty.
Then I see this this project on a Monday morning... so now I have to implement Ratty Graphics Protocol?!?! [2].
ETA: I looked into this; Ghostty would need patched to support Ratty since Ghostty-Web now defers APC handling there. It would also require pulling in a 3D engine like three.js or otherwise implementing file parsing, lighting, etc. Finally, since local filenames are part of the protocol, a browser would need some file resolver helper, either to get the data over the APC channel or via a URL.
This is a great idea. I always wanted KDE konsole to e. g. show images inlined as is. This is possible via magick six:-, but I wanted this to be natively. I want the terminal to be able to work with any data and display it in any way. No need to simulate the 1980s era anymore (except for backwards/legacy support). So great idea here really.
> inserted 3D objects in the demo above are actually from the TempleOS codebase itself
Brilliant. The dream lives on!
"Don't worry, all of these dependencies are worth it."
That had me in stitches.
UNIX still trying to catch up with Xerox workstations in the REPL experience, or general Lisp machines for that matter.
Inline graphics from 1981,
https://youtu.be/o4-YnLpLgtk?t=376
Or TempleOS.
That was a work of art. Also Oberon.
>work of art
more like theopneustos
I like this. No reason the terminal should only support text. Data science notebooks show one way the terminal can evolve. Lots of interesting stuff happening in this space, with Kitty probably being the most aggressive innovator here [1]. I'm not sure there is an overall vision, though.
[1]: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/protocol-extensions/
Terry A Davis already did this. It was as crazy then as it is now
Obligatory Temple OS unhinged video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o48KzPa42_o
Joking apart, the whole thing was both an exercise in madness and genius. Sometimes I wonder what he would have done if he had not gone crazy. We will never know...
I wonder if something like this could work for thumbnails in the terminal; I prefer to browse my filesystem from a terminal rather than the point and click file manager typically, and it would be really useful if I could have a grid-style `ls` with terminal based renders of the 3d models (thinking STL/STEP, 3D printing) in that directory. Bonus points if I could preview/rotate the model to inspect it.
Mix this 3d graphics, with data science notebooks, with local LLMs, and perhaps an integrated coding harness, with visibility over your personal data and you’d have something absurdly good.
This might overtake “a haiku+macOS mashup” as my idealised computing future.
At that point you've re-invented emacs.
> push the state of terminal emulators forward
What's overlooked here are the insane political and economic forces that were required to get anywhere close to the (sort of!) consistent implementation of plain text we have today. These projects try to piggyback off that success yet only contribute back harm. We have standards for a reason.
I'm not saying people can't have fun, but don't try to start a cyberpunk-inspired revolution and then blame the side effects of groupthink and software rot on everyone else when it goes sideways.
Seems... really good?!
Questions:
- rendering capabilities of this seem like it should also be able to handle 2d well, or am I mistaken? every solution I see for getting high quality 2d images or rasterization in terminal is all pretty bad. Could this do better than other solutions or is there a fundamental limit being hit somewhere?
- What happens with ssh given that this is gpu accelerated?
There are quite a few GPU powered terminal emulators around already.
Is that what you're looking for?
I think they are looking for full 2d graphics, bitmaps, sprites and the likes.
Terminal is slowly becoming a full featured web browser.
Or Terminal is already a full featured web browser?
https://hyper.is/
Isn't there a Terminal that renders everything with React?
Super slow, but I guess thats what web devs want.
Always has been meme incoming. Also, more seriously, the purpose of a tool is to do a job. The question becomes whether this tool can be made useful. I.. honestly don't know, but I will be finding out soon:D
And rightfully so! \o/
Rip Terry. May you never be forgotten.
edit: But your spirit lives on ( based on the project:D )
Can I really render a 3D rat on my terminal? If I can then I'm sold.
This is exactly what I thought as well.
We are one step closer to the terminal in the movie Hackers, and I am all for it.
This looks a lot like it'd qualify for a ShowHN. Add "ShowHN: " to the beginning of the title and it should show up in /show
Emojis in a terminal are a step too far for me. This is just... Indulgent.
I was gonna comment here "real TempleOS vibes" then the TempleOS logo appeared a moment later in the demo video.
What would happen when you use `cat` in Ratty then?
IMO, next crazy step is for terminal to just have wayland or X11 protocol ? (/s or not?)
Can anyone explain why this is novel? It seems pretty basic?
I actually see some use cases for this. It's one of those should be nonsense projects that somehow isn't.
What use cases do you see?
Yea, gotta be honest here; I’m struggling to see many use cases here other than 3d graphs. I really don’t need a spinning 3d rat cursor.
Checking 3d models in a directory inside my terminal to see what's what without opening an application and clicking 100 times.
.. over ssh. In a tmux. After disconnecting and reconnecting.
Game development.
I was going to comment how it reminded me of TempleOS and the author should look into that, but the accompanying blog post explains how it was inspired by it https://blog.orhun.dev/introducing-ratty/
Really fun project! Dude, I spent the last week implementing Kitty Graphics and Clipboard protocols in ghostty-web in the Canvas render.
Then I added WebGL and WebGPU renderers [1], including support for Kitty.
Then I see this this project on a Monday morning... so now I have to implement Ratty Graphics Protocol?!?! [2].
ETA: I looked into this; Ghostty would need patched to support Ratty since Ghostty-Web now defers APC handling there. It would also require pulling in a 3D engine like three.js or otherwise implementing file parsing, lighting, etc. Finally, since local filenames are part of the protocol, a browser would need some file resolver helper, either to get the data over the APC channel or via a URL.
[1] https://github.com/NimbleMarkets/ghostty-web/tree/nm-webgpu
[2] https://github.com/orhun/ratty/blob/main/protocols/graphics....
This is a great idea. I always wanted KDE konsole to e. g. show images inlined as is. This is possible via magick six:-, but I wanted this to be natively. I want the terminal to be able to work with any data and display it in any way. No need to simulate the 1980s era anymore (except for backwards/legacy support). So great idea here really.
Kitty and several other terminal emulators, have built in graphics display already. IIRC, this is called the kitty protocol, but I might be mistaken.
I did that with Sixels, no Rust needed, no 3D crap, no ad-hoc addons, just old vt340 support in XTerm.
That's how I read images under a remote pubnix with tut using a Mastodon account over plain SSH.
Chafa and XTerm. It works.
so cool. well done
Imagine this with VR dev environments!
Dude. Congrats. You actually made a compelling argument to put rust on my machine:P