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README.md
OFFPUNK
A command-line, text-based and offline-first Gemini browser by Ploum.
Focused on Gemini first but with some Gopher/web support available or projected, the goal of Offpunk is to be able to synchronise your content once (a day, a week, a month) and then browse it while staying disconnected.
Offpunk is a fork of the original AV-98 by Solderpunk and was originally called AV-98-offline as an experimental branch.
How to use
Offmini is a single python file. Installation is optional, you can simply download and run "./offmini.py" or "python3 offmini.py" in a terminal.
You use the go
command to visit a URL, e.g. go gemini.circumlunar.space
.
Links in Gemini documents are assigned numerical indices. Just type an index to
follow that link. If a Gemini document is too long to fit on your screen, the content is displayed in the less pager (by default). Type q
to quit and go back to Offpunk prompt.
Use add
to add a capsule to your bookmarks and bookmarks
or bm
to show your bookmarks (which are stored in a file in you .config).
Use offline
to only browse cached content and online
to go back online. While offline, the reload
command will force a re-fetch during the next synchronisation.
Use the help
command to learn about additional commands. Some abreviations are available. See abbrevs
.
When launched with the "--sync" option, offpunk will run non-interactively and fetch content from your bookmarks and ressources tentatively accessed while offline. New content found in your bookmarks will be automatically added to your tour (use tour ls
to see your current tour, tour
without argument to access the next item and tour X
where X is a link number to add the content of a link to your tour).
With "--sync", one could specify a "--cache validity" in seconds. This option will not refresh content if a cache exists and is less than the specified amount of seconds old.
For example, running
offpunk.py --sync --cache-validity 43200
will refresh your bookmarks if those are at least 12h old. If cache-validity is not set or set to 0, any cache is considered good and only content never cached before will be fetched.
At the moment, caching only work for gemini:// ressources. gopher:// is not implemented and http(s):// ressources are sent to an "offline browser" (by default, None, nothing is done). It could be useful to send the http:// links to a text file in order to visit them while online.
TODO
Known issues in the code:
-
WONTFIX: Sync is slow if you have bookmarks with lot of links that change very often.
-
FIXME0: Certificates error are not handled in --sync
-
FIXME1: consider root file is always index.gmi
-
FIXME2: offline web browser use os.system because it’s the only one that understands the ">> file.txt"
-
TODO: Update blackbox to reflect cache hits.
-
TODO: allow to search cache while offline
More
See how I browse Gemini offline => gemini://rawtext.club/~ploum/2021-12-17-offline-gemini.gmi
Announces about Offpunk will be made on Ploum’s Gemlog => gemini://rawtext.club/~ploum/
Dependencies
Offpunk has no "strict dependencies", i.e. it will run and work without anything else beyond the Python standard library. However, it will "opportunistically import" a few other libraries if they are available to offer an improved experience.
- The ansiwrap library may result in neater display of text which makes use of ANSI escape codes to control colour.
- The cryptography library will provide a better and slightly more secure experience when using the default TOFU certificate validation mode and is highly recommended.
- Python magic is useful to determine the MIME type of cached object. If not present, the file extension will be used but some capsules provide wrong extension or no extension at all. (apt-get install python3-magic)
- Xsel allows to
go
to the URL copied in the clipboard without having to paste it (both X and traditional clipboards are supported). Also needed to use thecopy
command. (apt-get install xsel)
Features
- Offline mode to browse cached content without a connection. Requested elements are automatically fetched during the next synchronization and are added to your tour.
- Support "subscriptions" to gemlogs. New content seen in bookmarked gemlogs are automatically added to your next tour.
- TOFU or CA server certificate validation
- Extensive client certificate support if an
openssl
binary is available - Ability to specify external handler programs for different MIME types
- Gopher proxy support (e.g. for use with Agena)
- Advanced navigation tools like
tour
andmark
(as per VF-1). Unlike AV-98, tour is saved on disk accross sessions. - Bookmarks
- IPv6 support
- Supports any character encoding recognised by Python
RC files
You can use an RC file to automatically run any sequence of valid Offpunk
commands upon start up. This can be used to make settings controlled with the
set
or handler
commanders persistent. You can also put a go
command in
your RC file to visit a "homepage" automatically on startup, or to pre-prepare
a tour
of your favourite Gemini sites or offline
to go offline by default.
The RC file should be called offpunkrc
. Offpunk will look for it first in
~/.offpunk/
and second in ~/.config/offpunk/
. Note that either directory might
already exist even if you haven't created it manually, as Offpunk will, if
necessary, create the directory itself the first time you save a bookmark (the
bookmark file is saved in the same location). Offpunk will create
~/.config/offpunk
only if ~/.config/
already exists on your system, otherwise
it will create ~/.offpunk/
.
Cache design
The offline content is stored in ~/.cache/offmini/gemini/ as plain .gmi files. The structure of the Gemini-space is tentatively recreated. One key element of the design is to not have any database. The cache can thus be modified by hand, content can be removed, used or added by software other than offpunk.
There’s no feature to automatically trim the cache. It is believed that gemini content being lightweight, one would have to seriously browse a lot before cache size is an issue. If cache becomes too big, simply rm -rf the folders of the capsules taking too much space.