Richterm

Richterm is a textual interface with support for links, different fonts, and customizable menu.

Interface

Processes can interact with richterm either by writing and reading to /dev/cons, or by working with its file system, mounted over at /mnt/richterm.

/cons is provided for backwards-compatibilty, text written here will appear on screen as one would expect.

/text expects specially formatted text to present on screen.

/ctl will return events, such as menu hits or link follows.

Content of /menu file will appear in the right-click menu.

Format

/text is parsed on line-by-line basis, with first character being treated as command and rest as argument.

Commands

• '.' - print text
• 'n' - print new line
• 't' - print tab
• 's' - print space
• 'l' - set link
• 'f' - set font

For 'n', 't', and 's' argument is ignored and should be empty. For 'l' and 'f' empty argument will unset the parameter.

Usage

Left mouse button is used for selecting text.

Middle-click menu provides operations on selected text.

Right-click menu combines link operations (Follow, Snarf, Plumb) and user menu managed by /menu file.

On launch richterm will start /bin/richrc script by default. It handles richterm's link and menu events and tries to open links in appropriate programs or sends them to plumber.

For now, following programs are provided:

• Dir prints direcrory listing, supplied with appropriate link for every line.
• Markdown prints markdown-formatted files.
• Gopher prints gopher menus and text files from supplied gopher URL.
• Gemini does the same for gemini URLs.

In addition, richrc manages primitive link history via 'Back' option in user menu.

Installation

The usual mk install invocation will install richterm binary into /$objtype/bin directory and extra binaries and scripts into /sys/lib/richterm/bin/... directories.

/sys/lib/richterm/bin/... will be bound over /bin by richterm on launch automatically.