Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

"Don't worry, all of these dependencies are worth it."

That had me in stitches.

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/

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

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?

Terminal is slowly becoming a full featured web browser.

Rip Terry. May you never be forgotten.

edit: But your spirit lives on ( based on the project:D )

Here's the bit from the blog post about it:

> When I first got introduced to [TempleOS], I was shocked and impressed by the flashy colors, graphical sprites and uncomprehensible UI. There are so many things that makes it so unique, weird and fascinating at the same time, somehow.... Basically, the command line becomes the direct interface for everything. You can write code, interact with the system and render graphics all in the same place, which is why TempleOS feels so unusual compared to conventional operating systems.

I think this could be a really cool approach. I enjoy tools like Chafa, imgcat, etc but something always feels a little clunky about the separation between text and images. Paradoxically having text and non-text all jumbled up like this feels better somehow.

Can I really render a 3D rat on my terminal? If I can then I'm sold.

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

How do I enter zoom mode or pan mode?

We are one step closer to the terminal in the movie Hackers, and I am all for it.

Emojis in a terminal are a step too far for me. This is just... Indulgent.

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?)

I was gonna comment here "real TempleOS vibes" then the TempleOS logo appeared a moment later in the demo video.

I actually see some use cases for this. It's one of those should be nonsense projects that somehow isn't.

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/

Can anyone explain why this is novel? It seems pretty basic?

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.

> inserted 3D objects in the demo above are actually from the TempleOS codebase itself

Brilliant. The dream lives on! This is the best form of paying respects.

It's walking a fine line between madness and genius, and who knows if it'll ever be practical, but more important is the sense of wonder and "fuck yeah" as King Terry expressed so eloquently.

Imagine this with VR dev environments!

so cool. well done

Dude. Congrats. You actually made a compelling argument to put rust on my machine:P

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