Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

(ratty-term.org)

252 points | by orhunp_ 3 hours ago

36 comments

  • pjmlp 2 hours ago
    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

    • steezeburger 1 minute ago
      That's not 3d
    • pocksuppet 2 hours ago
      Or TempleOS.
      • mghackerlady 56 minutes ago
        People joke about templeos a lot, but it had some really neat ideas (holy-c is a pretty nice language)
      • Onavo 2 hours ago
        That was a work of art. Also Oberon.
        • em-bee 16 minutes ago
          and plan9

          also smalltalk

          we used oberon in one class in university. i don't remember much unfortunately.

        • whywhywhywhy 1 hour ago
          >work of art

          more like theopneustos

      • jszymborski 30 minutes ago
        I came here to mention how it reminded me of the sick 3D icons TempleOS had in its terminal
  • CTDOCodebases 1 hour ago
    "Don't worry, all of these dependencies are worth it."

    That had me in stitches.

  • noelwelsh 1 hour ago
    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/

    • bcjdjsndon 1 hour ago
      Terry A Davis already did this. It was as crazy then as it is now
      • ch4s3 41 minutes ago
        The person who built this directly cites Terry as the inspiration.
      • Wololooo 1 hour ago
        Obligatory Temple OS unhinged video.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o48KzPa42_o

        Joking apart, the whole thing was both an exercise in madness and genius. Sometimes I wonder what he would have done if he had not gone crazy. We will never know...

    • alias_neo 1 hour ago
      I wonder if something like this could work for thumbnails in the terminal; I prefer to browse my filesystem from a terminal rather than the point and click file manager typically, and it would be really useful if I could have a grid-style `ls` with terminal based renders of the 3d models (thinking STL/STEP, 3D printing) in that directory. Bonus points if I could preview/rotate the model to inspect it.
      • noelwelsh 50 minutes ago
        eza [1] is a step in that direction. It lacks the interactivity, however.

        [1]: github.com/eza-community/eza

      • calvinmorrison 53 minutes ago
        You can do this with thumbnails using sixels already
    • the_other 1 hour ago
      Mix this 3d graphics, with data science notebooks, with local LLMs, and perhaps an integrated coding harness, with visibility over your personal data and you’d have something absurdly good.

      This might overtake “a haiku+macOS mashup” as my idealised computing future.

      • miah_ 1 hour ago
        At that point you've re-invented emacs.
        • mghackerlady 50 minutes ago
          Greenspun’s Tenth Rule of Programming states that any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
    • sublinear 1 hour ago
      > push the state of terminal emulators forward

      What's overlooked here are the insane political and economic forces that were required to get anywhere close to the (sort of!) consistent implementation of plain text we have today. These projects try to piggyback off that success yet only contribute back harm. We have standards for a reason.

      I'm not saying people can't have fun, but don't try to start a cyberpunk-inspired revolution and then blame the side effects of groupthink and software rot on everyone else when it goes sideways.

  • amelius 2 hours ago
    Terminal is slowly becoming a full featured web browser.
    • iugtmkbdfil834 2 hours ago
      Always has been meme incoming. Also, more seriously, the purpose of a tool is to do a job. The question becomes whether this tool can be made useful. I.. honestly don't know, but I will be finding out soon:D
    • microflash 1 hour ago
      Or Terminal is already a full featured web browser?

      https://hyper.is/

    • tekla 1 hour ago
      Isn't there a Terminal that renders everything with React?

      Super slow, but I guess thats what web devs want.

      • EMM_386 42 minutes ago
        There are terminal libraries that do this:

        https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink

        Which is what Claude Code CLI uses (or was using?) and it caused many issues such as flickering, thrashing, and latency.

    • shevy-java 2 hours ago
      And rightfully so! \o/
  • sigseg1v 2 hours ago
    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?

    • berkes 2 hours ago
      There are quite a few GPU powered terminal emulators around already.

      Is that what you're looking for?

      • jetbalsa 58 minutes ago
        I think they are looking for full 2d graphics, bitmaps, sprites and the likes.
  • iugtmkbdfil834 2 hours ago
    Rip Terry. May you never be forgotten.

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

  • liamwire 40 minutes ago
    You had me at spinning rat cursor
  • pelagicAustral 3 hours ago
    Can I really render a 3D rat on my terminal? If I can then I'm sold.
    • mghackerlady 47 minutes ago
      I saw it this morning on reddit, the I beam was replaced with a spinning rat for the demonstration. It was very cool B)
    • sevenzero 2 hours ago
      This is exactly what I thought as well.
  • arkwin 1 hour ago
    We are one step closer to the terminal in the movie Hackers, and I am all for it.
  • basilikum 2 hours ago
    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
  • mohamedkoubaa 2 hours ago
    Emojis in a terminal are a step too far for me. This is just... Indulgent.
  • darkwater 1 hour ago
    What would happen when you use `cat` in Ratty then?
  • lackoftactics 36 minutes ago
    Hantavirus inspired?
    • xrd 24 minutes ago
      You should know that using a TERMINAL instead of a BROWSER ON THE DANGEROUS INTERNET is the ONLY WAY to *avoid* viruses!
  • randusername 51 minutes ago
    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.

  • silon42 2 hours ago
    IMO, next crazy step is for terminal to just have wayland or X11 protocol ? (/s or not?)
  • 2ndorderthought 2 hours ago
    I actually see some use cases for this. It's one of those should be nonsense projects that somehow isn't.
    • panzi 2 hours ago
      What use cases do you see?
      • 2ndorderthought 1 hour ago
        Checking 3d models in a directory inside my terminal to see what's what without opening an application and clicking 100 times.
        • a96 1 hour ago
          .. over ssh. In a tmux. After disconnecting and reconnecting.
      • drob518 1 hour ago
        Yea, gotta be honest here; I’m struggling to see many use cases here other than 3d graphs. I really don’t need a spinning 3d rat cursor.
      • jayGlow 44 minutes ago
        we could bring back the 3d file browser and render it in the terminal now.

        https://youtu.be/dFUlAQZB9Ng?si=3fE-vE8xF5rSVhRR

      • avaer 1 hour ago
        Game development.
  • sgt 56 minutes ago
    How do I enter zoom mode or pan mode?
  • whywhywhywhy 1 hour ago
    I was gonna comment here "real TempleOS vibes" then the TempleOS logo appeared a moment later in the demo video.
  • voidUpdate 3 hours ago
    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/
    • iwontberude 2 hours ago
      [flagged]
      • hailruda 2 hours ago
        User name doesn’t checkout.

        Any technical reason for such a strong opinion?

        • iwontberude 2 hours ago
          He constantly used the N word to describe black people and always was warning people about how evil black people were. I’m not making this up, go watch his streams.
          • iugtmkbdfil834 2 hours ago
            Hold up.. is that your definition of a technical reason?
            • iwontberude 2 hours ago
              Yes and I can appreciate why you don’t see it as technical, but software should be made to help users. I was brought up the ACM way.
      • AntiUSAbah 2 hours ago
        It looks like he has schizophrenia which I would argue is a mental illness, a strong one.

        Why are you so invested in TempleOS?

        • iwontberude 2 hours ago
          Mental illness is no excuse for vile white Christian nationalism and hate against blacks. Miss me with that ignorance.

          It’s clear how hateful he is from just watching his streams. It’s not a tick or a symptom of a clinical issue, it’s a deep seated belief that was only exposed to us because of his schizophrenia.

          Yes I have empathy for him and I also recognize that he is a menace and probably is better unknown. We are spoiled for choice anyways.

          • AntiUSAbah 2 hours ago
            So just to be clear, a human being can't think properly / straight anymore, has issues forming a coherent worldview, has regularly crazy maniac phases were he would drive like 100 miles, dismantle his car, throw away his keys but you do not accept any of this as a reasonable excuse that that particular human is not able to break out or even manifests stereotypical thoughts?

            The mental base mode you are born, is a community of christians, parents forming your mind etc. and you have to break out of this, formulate your own independet worldview. A lot of people can't do that today. All religios people in fact.

            Plenty of woman can't break out of absuve relationships, familys protecting someone inside the family even if they are rapists due to "family is family; what would others think of us" etc. and thats were you draw the line for that Human being?

            • bonsai_spool 2 hours ago
              > Plenty of woman can't break out of absuve relationships, familys protecting someone inside the family even if they are rapists due to "family is family; what would others think of us" etc. and thats were you draw the line for that Human being?

              I think you're being fair overall, but I would also say that OP in this thread reply is highlighting something worthwhile. If Terry were a misogynist, I don't think this thread would have taken as long to recall his abnormal behavior. But that's just, like, my opinion.

      • rvz 2 hours ago
        It is just software. TempleOS and this project just looks cool.
  • neomantra 2 hours ago
    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....

  • rullelito 1 hour ago
    Can anyone explain why this is novel? It seems pretty basic?
  • shevy-java 2 hours ago
    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.
    • berkes 2 hours ago
      Kitty and several other terminal emulators, have built in graphics display already. IIRC, this is called the kitty protocol, but I might be mistaken.
    • anthk 1 hour ago
      I did that with Sixels, no Rust needed, no 3D crap, no ad-hoc addons, just old vt340 support in XTerm.

      That's how I read images under a remote pubnix with tut using a Mastodon account over plain SSH.

      Chafa and XTerm. It works.

  • olivierestsage 34 minutes ago
    In a world of slop, one truly noble project emerges
  • Lucasoato 2 hours ago
    Imagine this with VR dev environments!
  • BaardFigur 36 minutes ago
    Reminds me of TempleOS
  • nickcageinacage 2 hours ago
    so cool. well done
  • lioeters 58 minutes ago
    > 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.

  • iugtmkbdfil834 2 hours ago
    Dude. Congrats. You actually made a compelling argument to put rust on my machine:P
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