alt Hacker NewsRatty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics
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UNIX still trying to catch up with Xerox workstations in the REPL experience, or general Lisp machines for that matter.
Inline graphics from 1981,
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.
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 )
This reminds me of when compiz came out and everyone was like MY WINDOWS ARE ON A CUBE and I NEED WOBBLY WINDOWS.
So anyway, being that guy, I immediately installed it.
It's very interesting to learn about the newly proposed glyph protocol [1] in the linked blog post. I was bemoaning the lack of exactly this here about 6 months ago [2]!
[1] https://rapha.land/introducing-glyph-protocol-for-terminals/
"Don't worry, all of these dependencies are worth it."
That had me in stitches.
Can I really render a 3D rat on my terminal? If I can then I'm sold.
This is kinda possible already today with the Kitty graphics protocol, I made a demo here of rendering 3D graphics[1] with kitty. The actual important missing thing (and which ratty seems to also not include) is vsync.
If rendering is not aligned then it's possible for the terminal emulator to read the framebuffer while the application is writing to it, causing visual artifacts.
[1] https://x.com/zack_overflow/status/2035921425341763756?s=20
We are one step closer to the terminal in the movie Hackers, and I am all for it.
This is pure Hollywood OS - hackers feverishly entering obscure incantations like “upload virus”…but now with the terminal twisted into a Moebius strip!
What would happen when you use `cat` in Ratty then?
You had me at spinning rat cursor
The question is - why do we still need the terminal abstraction at all?
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
Emojis in a terminal are a step too far for me. This is just... Indulgent.
If this turns out to exfiltrate all my keys, I will have some explaining to do to my security department.
I built DeepSteve (https://github.com/deepsteve/deepsteve) with a similar itch but went the other way. Instead of adding graphics to the terminal, I put the terminal in a place that already has graphics.
I kept trying to optimize my terminal layout and realized I could just run my terminals inside of the browser, and let Claude Code write JavaScript in the same browser tab to customize the experience however I want. It's kind of a terrible idea, but it's my terrible idea, and I love it.
This is so cool I'm sad I can't think of any use case for me
IMO, next crazy step is for terminal to just have wayland or X11 protocol ? (/s or not?)
I’m not sure why I’d use it, but I enjoyed the visual and loved the brutalist design of the website -- it brought back some fond memories of the good old days.
How long until we have a web browser in a terminal (not just Lynx, but a full on web browser)?
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/
It's funny when terminal emulators add shit like that but search in windows names/content ? nah who needs that
You can also use the kitty protocol or sixel in modern terminals.
It's like someone crossed an 80s Silicon Graphics workstation with a Vic-20.
I, Beldar, approve.
I have been waiting for a proper implementation of this since forever. Thanks orhun.
Hah, reminds me of the Quantel broadcast equipment on the 1990s. Why fade to black when you can fade to 3d butterfly!?
I was gonna comment here "real TempleOS vibes" then the TempleOS logo appeared a moment later in the demo video.
This is gloriously bonkers.
Damn this was really fun to use.
That's quite cool, visually pleasing to the eye and high on data usage.
Amazing project and the ratatui community is really wholesome :,)
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." - Jeff Goldblum (OG Jurassic Park)
People complain about token limits
Then spend their tokens on abominations like this
Make it make sense
More of this please! Outside the box thinking! Yes and yes!
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....
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.
Remember when the Claude Code devs claimed that CC is a game engine?
This is a game engine.
In a world of slop, one truly noble project emerges
Was this aided with LLMs or purely for the love of the game? I don't see an AGENTS.md or anything similar in the repo.
How do I enter zoom mode or pan mode?
Cool... why?
Cool.
Seriously, though, when are we going to see the convergence of terminals and GUI remoting protocols? People have already departed far from Unix pipeline utilities. "TUI" programs are already GUIs in disguise. Why keep pretending that the terminal (as used by TUI programs) is a different kind of thing?
A couple of comments here mention using this in VR. Fwiw, years back I played a bit with shallow-3D UIs for software dev. Shallow like within a few cm of a laptop display, to minimize VAC eye strain for all-day use. Think more being able to layer and draw in color, but in 3D, rather than waving arms in a room.
The 3D can be wiggle 3D, or perspective from webcam head/eye tracking, or stereo from shutter glasses, or XR HMDs. Wiggle is easiest - just move the object orientation back and forth. Cute but distracting. Well, cross/parallel-eye gaze is easier, but limited - ok for little UI test swatches. Perspective is more subtle, less intrusive. Can be simple with a head tracker driving a single orientation, or go all in with eye pose (for distance) and window locations, to do an accurate 3D render. App stereo pairs can be "I give you two windows Left/Right-eye", or "alternating L/R view, labeled/synced/polled". Other possibilities. Many of these need window system/manager/desktop support. I found a lot of leverage in using a stack of electron and X.
It's fun to displace text in 3D. Like colorization, but more so. And if you don't mind a cluttered appearance, you can add secondary information layers segregated by depth. And... etc. Emacs with characters-have-a-depth finally gets you something LispMs didn't have. Fun aside, to explore possibilities with code text, with anything not inherently 3D, far easier to prototype UX with fg/bg colors, fonts, unicode, and animation. Or in browser, overlaid divs and transparent 2D/3D canvases.