burrow/README.md

# Burrow
A client/browser that accesses _gopherspace_. It is under current early stage development.

 ![Burrow browser](http://brianmevans.com/files/digger.png "Burrow v0.1.5 main window")

## Gopher
[_Gopher_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)) is a communications protocol that, in the early 90s, competed (briefly) with what became the world wide web. _Gopher_ serves up files and text based menus. As such, it is much lighter weight than HTML documents and the like served over http. Due to its text based nature it also has the benefit of being reliable in its visual output and style, and for being relatively accessible. 

## Browser Features
The following is a list of current and future Burrow features:

- Tk based GUI
    - Back button, move backwards in session history
    - Forward button, move forward in session history
    - Refresh button, will be replaced by a favorite button __(non-functional)__
    - Home, shows favorites and is a start page
    - An address bar, on _ENTER_ submits a request for a _gopher_ page
    - Settings button __(non-functional)__
    - A display area for the requested information
    - Scroll bar
    - A status bar to display various information
- Links to menus and files
    - On hover, link destination shows in status bar
    - On hover, link is underlined
    - Links are colored differently from regular text _(configurable)_
    - Link type appears next to link in noticeable coloring _(configurable)_
    - On primary click, destination is loaded and new location replaces old location in address bar
    - On primary click, link background changes to visually confirm click _(configurable)_
    - Cursor is a pointer over links, while regular text is an I-beam cursor.
- Menus Pages and files
    - Menus display correctly and quickly
    - Text files display correctly and quickly
    - Images files
    - Sound files __(non-functional)__
    - Binary files __(non-functional)__
    - HTML files, will open in default browser __(non-functional)__
    - Interactive pages/search __(non-functional)__
- History
    - Session based history for backward and forward navigation
    - Persistent favorites __(non-functional)__
    - Suggestions on URL entry based on persistent history __(non-functional)__
- Application settings and menus
    - Settings menu __(non-functional)__
        - Color themes
        - Icon themes
        - History settings
        - Files/download settings
    - Secondary click context menus for text manipulation & file saving __(non-functional)__
    - Page saving for offline viewing __(non-functional)__
    - Hotkey to view raw page source for menus __(non-functional)__
- Errors
    - Error warnings to user __(non-functional)__
    - Error page on bad/malformed request __(non-functional)__
    - Error display for type 3 server response __(non-functional)__


## Installation

Burrow requires python3 to be installed on the system prior to running.
Until some bundling/setup file creation occurs, you will also need to add:

    pip3 install pillow
    

On some linux distributions an additional package for tkinter may be required.
If you get a console error complaining about tkinter try the following (or equivalent for your package manager):

    sudo apt-get install python3-tk
    sudo apt-get install python3-pil.imagetk
    

## Distribution

Burrow's primary system target is linux. Once a version 1.0 is reached the plan is to distribute primarily through [Snapcraft](https://snapcraft.io/) packages. 

Some version of windows executable may come along as well, depending on configurability of build tools (py2exe, freeze, etc) for windows executables and time.


## Contribute

To contribute, please branch off of `develop` and then submit a pull request into `develop` with any changes. As the project grows I will likely add wiki, issues, etc as the need arises and more people get involved.