phetch/doc/phetch.1.md

PHETCH(1)

NAME

phetch - quick lil gopher client

SYNOPSIS

phetch [OPTIONS] [URL]

DESCRIPTION

phetch is a terminal client designed to help you quickly navigate the gophersphere. It features non-nonsense keyboard navigation, support for most Gopher features, easy-to-use TLS and Tor support, as well as bookmarking and history features.

Usually phetch is started with a Gopher URL:

phetch gopher://some-gopher-url.com

If no URL is given, however, phetch will launch and open its default "start page". This can be configured to be any URL. (See CONFIG.)

OPTIONS

-l, --local Connect to the local Gopher server at URL 127.0.0.1:7070.

-p URL, --print URL Print a rendered Gopher server response of URL and exit.

-r URL, --raw URL Print the raw Gopher server response of URL and exit.

-s, --tls Attempt to fetch all pages securely over TLS.

-S, --no-tls Do not use TLS for connections. This can be used to cancel out an option set in the config file, for instance.

-o, --tor Make all connections using a local Tor proxy. Tor is The Onion Router. Set the TOR_PROXY env variable to use an address other than the Tor default of 127.0.0.1:9050.

-O, --no-tor Disable Tor.

-w, --wrap COLUMN Wrap long lines in Gopher "text" views at COLUMN. Default: 0 (off)

-m, --media PATH Use program at PATH to open media files (movies and sounds). Default: mpv

-M, --no-media Don't try to open media files. Download them like regular binary Gopher items.

-a, --autoplay Autoplay media files instead of prompting.

-A, --no-autoplay Don't autoplay media files. Prompt instead.

-c, --config FILE Use FILE instead of ~/.config/phetch/phetch.conf

-C, --no-config Do not use any config file.

-t, --theme FILE Use FILE for color theme.

--print-theme Print current theme.

-e, --encoding ENCODING Render text views in CP437 or UTF8 (default) encoding.

-h, --help Print a help summary and exit.

-v, --version Print version information and exit.

NOTES

When given a URL, phetch will show the requested Gopher page and enter interactive mode.

Without a URL, phetch will show a builtin dashboard with easy access to online help, bookmarks and history, and enter interactive mode.

Command line options always override options set in phetch.conf.

NAVIGATION

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

All single letter commands also work with the Ctrl key: e.g., h and Ctrl-h are synonyms.

h Go to builtin help page. q Quit phetch.

left arrow Go back in history. right arrow Go forward in history. up arrow, p, k Select previous link. down arrow, n, j Select next link. PgUp, - Scroll up by many lines. PgDn, SPACE Scroll down by many lines.

Number key Open/select link. Enter Open current link. Esc, Ctrl-c Cancel

f, / Find link in page.

g Go to Gopher URL. R Reload current URL. u Edit URL. y Copy URL.

b Show bookmarks. s Save bookmark. a Show history. (Mnemonic: All pages/history)

r View raw source. w Toggle wide mode. e Toggle encoding between UTF8 and CP437.

MENU NAVIGATION

Up and down arrows Use the up and down arrows, j and k keys, or n and p keys to select links. phetch will scroll for you, or you can use page up and page down (or - and spacebar) to scroll by many lines at once.

Number keys If there are few enough menu items, pressing a number key will open a link. Otherwise, the first matching number will be selected. Use Enter to open the selected link.

Incremental search Press f or / to activate search mode, then just start typing. phetch will look for the first case-insensitive match and try to select it. Use arrow keys or Ctrl-p/Ctrl-n to cycle through matches.

BOOKMARKS

There are two ways to save the URL of the current page:

y Copy URL. s Save bookmark.

Bookmarks will be saved to the file ~/.config/phetch/bookmarks.gph if the directory ~/.config/phetch/ exists.

b View saved bookmarks.

The clipboard function uses pbcopy on MacOS, and xsel -sel clip on Linux.

HISTORY

If you create a history.gph file in ~/.config/phetch/, each Gopher URL you open will be stored there.

New URLs are appended to the bottom, but loaded in reverse order, so you'll see all the most recently visited pages first when you press the a key.

Feel free to edit your history file directly, or share it with your friends!

CONFIG

If you create a phetch.conf file in ~/.config/phetch/, it will be automatically loaded when phetch starts. The config file supports most command line options, for your convenience, as well as a few ways to customize your browsing experience. For example, phetch will always launch in TLS mode if tls yes appears in the config file -- no need to pass --tls or -t on startup.

Here is an example config with all options:

# Page to load when launched with no URL argument.
start gopher://phetch/1/home

# Always use TLS mode. (--tls)
tls no

# Connect using local TOR proxy. (--tor)
tor no

# Always start in wide mode.
wide no

# Program to use to open media files.
media mpv

# Use emoji indicators for TLS & Tor.
emoji no

# Encoding. Only CP437 and UTF8 are supported.
encoding utf8

# Wrap text at N columns. 0 = off (--wrap)
wrap 0

# How many lines to page up/down by? 0 = full screen
scroll 0

# Path to theme file, if you want to use one
theme ~/.config/phetch/dark.theme

THEMES

You can change phetch's color scheme by supplying your own theme file with --theme/-t or by setting theme FILE in your phetch.conf.

You can also view the current theme with:

$ phetch --print-theme

Theme files look like this:

ui.cursor white bold
ui.number magenta
ui.menu yellow
ui.text white
item.text cyan
item.menu blue
item.error red
item.search white
item.telnet grey
item.external green
item.download white underline
item.media green underline
item.unsupported whitebg red

Valid colors for use in phetch themes:

bold
underline

grey
red
green
yellow
blue
magenta
cyan
white
black

darkred
darkgreen
darkyellow
darkblue
darkmagenta
darkcyan
darkwhite

blackbg
redbg
greenbg
yellowbg
bluebg
magentabg
cyanbg
whitebg

MEDIA PLAYER SUPPORT

phetch includes support for opening video files (; item type) and sound files (s item type) in mpv or an application of your choice using the -m command line flag. To test it out, visit a compatible Gopher server or check out the "gopher types" help page by lauching phetch and then pressing ctrl-h then 3.

By default phetch will prompt you when you try to open a media file, but you can change this behavior by starting it with --autoplay/-a or by setting autoplayer true in your config file.

ABOUT

phetch is maintained by chris west, and released under the MIT license.

phetch's Gopher hole: gopher://phkt.io/1/phetch phetch's webpage: https://github.com/xvxx/phetch