Posts tagged with "smolweb"

Now that Rogallo is starting to settle down somewhat, with all the main Gemini Protocol work falling into place, I've been thinking about adding one or two adjacent protocols. The two most common and obvious ones are Finger and Gopher. While I'm still undecided about adding the latter, the former seems like a fun one to include (if only because I've had an account on plan.cat for around four years now).

With that in mind, much like I did with Wasat, I wrote a spec for what I wanted and pointed Antigravity at it. The result is Port79. As well as providing a library, there's also a small finger clone CLI, which can be run with python -m port79 (if it's installed as a library) or with port79 (if installed along with any command scripts).

$ port79 davep@tilde.team

hello [removed],

Project:
  Rogallo: https://rogallo.davep.dev/

Plan:
  Currently building gemini://tilde.team/~davep/

Pronouns: he/him

$ port79 davep@plan.cat
Login: davep                            Name: Dave Pearson
Directory: /home/davep                 Shell: /bin/plan.cat
Last login Mon Jul 20 19:06:33 2026 UTC
No Mail.
Plan:
Rogallo v0.12.0, with some more QoL changes:
https://blog.davep.org/2026/07/20/rogallo-v0-12-0.html

To be clear: this isn't intended to be a serious finger command (like, why would anyone even need that?), it's just a tool within the library that can be used to do some testing within a development (v)environment.

At some point soon I'll be adding port79 as a dependency of Rogallo and adding finger as a "native protocol".

I've bumped Rogallo to v0.12.0.

The first change is a simple addition of a !theme command to the command line. As much as possible, I've tried to make sure that every command that's in the command palette can also be run from the in-app command line, but I'd managed to leave this one out. Now you can type !theme and get the theme picker.

Next is the addition of an OpenFile command, bound to Ctrl+o by default. This opens a dialog for browsing the filesystem, allowing for easy access to local gemtext files.

Related to this, if you now enter the name of a directory in the command line, the same dialog will open, starting at that directory. Both these changes should make finding local gemtext files a smoother experience.

Another change is to the way that the recently added emoji removal works. I decided that it was a little too aggressive, in that it shouldn't remove them from the content of pre-formatted text. In my experience in Geminispace, so far, pre-formatted text is where the more creative displays happen. Indeed, I had a go at this myself for my new page:

Here I've used ANSI escape sequences and half-block characters to recreate my usual avatar. The problem is: the emoji-removal approach I've used sees the half-blocks as something to remove. The result isn't great.

Given that the unwanted emojis will generally be those in body text, links, quotes and headers, I've tweaked the way that pre-formatted text is shown, with it not having emojis removed. I feel this is a sensible approach.

I guess, if anyone really objects to this, I could add a configuration switch that dictates how aggressive the removal is.

The final change is something I wasn't really ever planning on doing, and I felt I'd removed the need for it when I added link stripes. But I got a request to do it and, really, the cost of doing it is nothing. The request? An option to move the link jump labels over to the left.

So now there's a ToggleCosyLinkNumbers command (bound to Super+F8 by default¹) which does what it says:

Personally, I prefer them on the right, where they don't disrupt the left-aligned margin for all the text, but I can see why this would be far more comfortable for others, so... why the heck not?

Given that Rogallo is coming on pretty well, I feel it's about time to get some sort of documentation for it going in Geminispace. With this in mind, I've created an account over on tilde.team so I can make use of their support for the Gemini protocol.

While I don't imagine I'll be writing documentation as comprehensive as the main site for Rogallo, I do aim to provide some basic information.

The other thing I'm going to maintain there is a version of the change log. Rather than edit it by hand each time, I've added a tool to the Rogallo repository that converts the Markdown version of the ChangeLog into Gemtext.

It looks pretty good in Rogallo.

Initially, I set all of this up so that I was editing the files via Tramp. This worked fine and got me going, but pretty quickly I decided that it would make more sense to create a repository, edit stuff locally, and then just rsync it when I'm good to go.

Not editing in production... I know... How boring.

A quick update to Rogallo, with changes concentrating on giving the user more control over the content of a rendered page.

Despite the fact that the Gemini Protocol and gemtext are all about things being minimal, some capsules can deliver pretty busy content. Personally, I rather like it, and I'm generally impressed at how creative some people are with these tools. On the other hand, I've noticed that some people don't always appreciate the use of emojis or ANSI escape sequences to provide colour. So, with this in mind, I've added a couple of features to help control the content.

The first is a command to toggle emoji removal. If you're finding the emojis in a page too distracting, use the command to toggle them off and on (bound to F6 by default).

The setting is sticky too, so if you're so inclined, you can turn emojis off and they'll stay off.

There's a similar command related to the handling of ANSI escape sequences. While some applications let you toggle this at the capsule level (AstroBotany is one example where it's part of the game's settings), not all do. So I've added a command to toggle this (bound to Shift+F6 by default).

With both these commands, if this sort of view isn't to your taste:

You can quickly and easily turn it into this:

I think I prefer the richer view, but I can see the utility of the more austere view.

Somewhat related to the above, I've also added the ability to configure the main "icons" that get used inside the rendered content. So if you don't like the choice of ⪢ for links within a capsule, ↗ for links outwith a capsule, or • for a list item bullet, you can change them in the configuration file.

Rogallo v0.10.0 is now available. This release has a number of changes, including some new features, some changes to the user interface, and a couple of quality-of-life improvements.

Maximum document width¶

Amongst some feedback someone left on a slightly unrelated post over on station there was mention of how a document "should" wrap at around 72 characters. While no rationale was given for the "should" part, I was happy enough to accept that this could be a preference for some people. With this in mind, I've added a configuration option to set a maximum width for documents.

While, personally, I prefer Rogallo's default behaviour (I work in an environment where I can resize a window, and I'm capable of doing it), I can appreciate that someone might want to cap it. So for folk who prefer this, they can now make Rogallo look like this (with maximum_document_width set to 80):

For the moment this can only be set via the configuration file. At some point I might make this more of a dynamic thing. I can imagine this being something handy, or at least fun, to change up as you're viewing different content.

Link jump timeout¶

The same feedback "suggested" that the link jumping facility that Rogallo has should have a timeout that clears the buildup of the number being looked for. This seemed like a reasonable thing to ask for. So, before, if you typed 1, a link with a label of 1 would be selected. If you did nothing for a while, and then typed 2, a link with the label of 12 would be highlighted. With the new timeout (set to 1 second by default, configurable in the configuration file), if you type 1 and then 2 more than a second later, first link 1 will be selected, then link 2 will be selected. On the other hand, if you type 1 then 2 within a second, 12 will be selected.

Setting the timeout to 0 disables this and Rogallo's link jumping facility will work as it did before.

Failed input recovery¶

With this new feature, if you send input text to a capsule and it rejects it for some reason, the input will be held on to. If you then visit the same URI again, the input dialog will be pre-populated with what you attempted to send a moment ago. This gives you the opportunity to edit anything wrong with the submission and try again.

Added all application commands to the command line¶

If you prefer to use Rogallo's command line more than the command palette, I've now ensured that all bindable application commands can be accessed via the command line. There's a difference in their form, to stay in keeping with the command line. So whereas in the command palette you'd run GoHome by typing go home, in the command line it becomes a !-prefixed snake-case command: !go_home.

All possible commands are listed in the help screen if it's brought up while the command line has focus.

Capsule navigation commands¶

Rogallo now has two new commands for quickly navigating within the current capsule path. GoToParent will navigate up a level in the path of the current URI, and GoToRoot will go to the root of the capsule.

Visited vs non-visited links¶

The icon for links is now used to show if a link is already in the location history (and so has been visited before), or not:

Here you can see that Account settings isn't in the visit history, but the other two links are. I was going to do the whole link, but I've never been a fan of how web browsers do this, so I've gone with just the icon. I've also made it subtle but still noticeable. So far, I'm much preferring this; I don't need it blasting out the difference, I just need it to be enough for me to notice¹.

Swapped around history and bookmark tools¶

Until now the "history" and "bookmarks" shortcut keys advertised in the footer brought up the sidebar-based management widgets. This made sense when that's all I had in Rogallo. For a while now though I've had palette-based search tools for both history and bookmarks. Normally I want to search for and select a bookmark or history item way more than I want to manage those lists. So I've relegated the sidebar-based tools to a secondary position and placed the palette-based search tools up front.

This also means that the default bindings have changed a bit. As always, you can discover the bindings with rogallo bindings.

Conclusion¶

I know I've nodded towards this before, but I think I'm getting close to making a v1.0.0 release. I want to daily-drive for a few more days, and I'd also like to expand the website. I'd also like to build a Gemini/Gemtext-based site for Rogallo -- it'd be pretty weird if I only documented it in http(s)space. I won't let those wishes become blockers for moving to calling Rogallo "stable", but it would be nice to have.

Wasat v0.8.0 is now available. This provides a small update to the GeminiURI class, adding three utility properties for extra URI manipulation.

• without_query - gives the URI minus any attached query
• parent - gives the parent path of the current URI (also minus the query)
• root - gives the root path for the current URI (also minus the query)

In each case, the result is a fresh GeminiURI instance.

These are added because I'm aiming to add "go to parent" and "go to root" commands to Rogallo.

I've released v0.9.0 of Rogallo. The first big change in this release is the addition of syntax highlighting to pre-formatted text.

Much like in Markdown, Gemtext also supports pre-formatted text bounded by code fences. Gemtext supports the concept of "alt-text" for such text, like this:

```python
def hello(name: str = "World") -> str:
    return f"Hello, {name}!"
```

Until now Rogallo would simply show the text as-is (with some styling to make it stand out from normal paragraphs). From this release, if there is alt-text for the pre-formatted block, and if it's the name of a supported language, the content will have syntax highlighting applied.

If you're curious which languages are supported, it should be anything that Pygments supports.

Another significant change is to the user input dialog. As mentioned in an earlier post, the Gemini protocol imposes limits on how much text can be submitted to a capsule. As documented, the limit is for a resulting URI of 1024 bytes¹. To save someone typing out a long entry, only to have it lost², I've added a count of how much input is left available (calculated from the size of the URI that would result):

To help ensure that the user doesn't submit too much, I've also added an error display if you go over the limit, which also refuses to submit the input.

With these in place it should be a lot harder to run into an unexpected loss of input.

One final tweak is a small change to the optional link stripe system I recently added. While playing around with some other themes, I noticed that the styling didn't show up well, or at all, in many of them. So I've changed it a little so it now shows in all available themes. I'm still not convinced it's quite right -- I'll play some more. But at least now it's visible in all cases.

The Gemini Protocol makes it clear that the maximum length of a URI, when making a request, is 1024 bytes. This has implications for how large a user's input can be when responding to a 1x response. Because of this, I'd like to update Rogallo so that it lets the user know how much space they have left as they type in their input.

With this in mind I've released v0.7.0 of Wasat. This adds the following to GeminiURI:

• GeminiURI.MAXIMUM_LENGTH -- a constant for the maximum length of a Gemini URI (as mentioned above: 1024).
• len() support -- if you ask for the len of an instance of GeminiURI it will return the length of the full URI.
• GeminiURI.bytes_left is a property that tells you how many bytes are left until the limit, given the current URI.
• GeminiURI.too_long is a boolean property that flags if the current URI is too long to send to a Gemini capsule.

This should give me all I need to add some guardrails to the user input dialog in Rogallo.

I've bumped Gemtext to v1.0.0. I've gone from "this is test code" to "this is stable code" mostly because the library is so simple and I'm unlikely to add any radically new features to it¹.

This bump also has one small addition: I've added an alt_text property to the PreFormatted class. This exists to capture and make available any text that comes after the pre-formatted text marker. For example, this text:

```python
print("Hello, World!")
```

will now result in:

PreFormatted(content='print("Hello, World!")', alt_text='python')

If/when I add syntax highlighting of pre-formatted text blocks to Rogallo, this new property will make that possible.

Rogallo v0.8.0 is now available. This release includes a small bug fix, a big change to how external links and unhandled MIME types are dealt with, and a further improvement to link navigation.

First the big change: hand-off of unhandled content and trust. Until now, if Rogallo was met with a URI it didn't know how to handle, or met with a MIME type it isn't designed to deal with, it would simply hand it off to the browser in your environment. This is generally handy as it means that, when you're browsing gemtext content, if you meet a link that takes you to a conventional website, the link will (normally) be opened in your browser.

There are, of course, any number of schemes that form part of a URI. While Rogallo might commonly be handing off http and https URIs, there's no reason why it can't be handing off a finger or a mailto or whatever. Or, potentially, something a wee bit more dodgy like a javascript URI. While some web browsers don't allow that sort of thing by default (Safari, for example, blocks it unless configured otherwise), others might, and this could result in a nasty surprise.

So now Rogallo has a confirmation step that lets you allow a scheme this once, this and every subsequent time, or just cancel out.

By default the trusted schemes (the ones you say "always" on) are saved in a trusted_schemes file in the data directory.

Similar to the above: if, via a URI that Rogallo can handle, it meets a MIME type it can't handle, it will also pass it off to your operating system. I've added similar protection there too.

In this case any MIME types marked as trusted are dropped into a trusted_mime_types file in the data directory.

I feel these changes help remove any possible footguns previously caused by unquestionably handing off URIs to the wider environment.

Another change I've made is to add even more link navigation. This sort of follows on from yesterday's release where I added labelled jumps to links. Again, the usual method of moving between links is to use Tab and Shift+Tab. The problem with those keys is they navigate you through all widgets in the UI that can receive focus. So, if you keep tapping Tab, you'll navigate out of the viewer and into the next available widget, once you reach the last link.

With this release I've added some extra keys which can be used to constantly cycle around the links while you're inside the viewer. These are:

• Left, Shift+Up, L to go backwards through the links.
• Right, Shift+Down, l to go forwards through the links.

While these might not be to everyone's taste (I'm already getting very used to using Left and Right), they do add another set of options for link navigation.

The final change is a simple bug fix, where the command line history simply wasn't being saved and loaded correctly. From now on it should save correctly and allow navigation of the history using the cursor keys.

With these changes in place, I feel I'm actually getting close to bumping up to a v1.0.0 release. While there are still things I want to add (there are currently a handful of TODO items in the issues), I see these as nice-to-have items that I want to do later on, rather than as must-have items that preclude considering Rogallo a viable daily-driver.

I'll see how the next day or so goes.