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Ratzilla

Ratzilla

19 comments

·February 1, 2025

kaeso

I think this may lack a bit of context, so I'll try to fill in.

This is a demo that was just showcased live by the author as part of their talk at FOSDEM'25: https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5496-brin...

The talk was centered on Ratatui (a TUI library in Rust, https://ratatui.rs/) now targeting terminals and web browsers with a shared approach. Video recording of the talk should appear online soon.

sixthDot

I'll save your time : project homepage[1]

[1]: https://github.com/orhun/ratzilla

nimbius

[flagged]

agieocean

Nothing to do with autism come on

oddthink

Looks interesting, but it's not at all responsive. I can't view it without making my window larger than my screen and manually sliding it back and forth. Even basic TUIs know their output size. I know it's a UI demo, but that seems pretty basic.

How is this still so hard? Tk basically had this figured out 25 years ago.

xg15

Why choose between abusing the browser or the terminal for application GUIs if you can do both at the same time?

(Still looks kind of cool though)

RockRobotRock

Yeah it sounds like the worst of both worlds to me. Still cool!

cmiller1

Switching tabs doesn't seem to overwrite the vertical lines, I have pink and green pipes drawn on the 2nd and 3rd tab that were supposed to only be on the first one.

AnonHP

I’m totally ignorant on this and don’t understand. How is WebAssembly helpful for terminal UI apps and why has it been chosen here? Is it mainly for easier cross platform support (with the UI being HTML and then translated for the terminal)? How does it compare on ease of development, testing, maintenance effort, etc., to other terminal UI libraries?

pornel

It's the other way around: there's an existing ratatui library that is pretty nice for making rich terminal UIs, and since ratatui is written in Rust, the easiest way of porting it to the web is through WASM.

weinzierl

Exactly, Ratatui can bring terminal aesthetics to web but it also works the other way around. A lot of the modern terminal aesthetics is inspired by the web. It is not real 80s, more faux 80s.

Ratatui's creator had an excellent talk about this at FOSEM which basically was structured into these two chapters.

https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5496-brin...

wffurr

It's not for terminal UI apps; it's for web apps themed to look like terminal UI apps.

rererereferred

Web app that looks like a terminal, not what I thought at first, a terminal app written in a react-like way (and that people just call web-like).

swayvil

This is good art. It really speaks to me.

cranberryturkey

what the hell is this? it looks sick

assimpleaspossi

You find this everywhere in the tech community. Especially places like github. Posts about software where there is no explanation whatsoever as to what it does or why.

tempodox

I think that's because the authors are clairvoyant and naively expect us poor souls to be, too.

iamwil

It's impossible to explain everything from the beginning. You might not be the target audience and the software/blog post was unwittingly posted. And sometimes, people just put things on the web for shits and giggles with no audience in mind. With no audience in mind, you don't feel the need to explain anything.

Anyway, HN fulfills that need. HN is widely-read that it's likely SOMEONE knows what the hell something is, and if often willing to give a summary. So if you're befuddled, just read the comments.