Unable to see normal web-page in plain tty1-tty6 while running latest browsh 1.8.0 on Debian 11

[N0rbert]

Thanks for your great project!

I have just installed it into fresh minimal Debian 11 VM inside VirtualBox.
All settings are default - en_US.UTF-8 locale, no DM, no GUI and so on.
Here I can run links2 and links2 -g with the mouse provided by gpm package with correct rendering of brow.sh website - see below:

• links2 brow.sh

  

• links2 -g brow.sh

  

Then I have installed your great program by

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh/releases/download/v1.8.0/browsh_1.8.0_linux_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install ./browsh_1.8.0_linux_amd64.deb

So I have started it by browsh --debug and I see the rendering below:

The debug log is attached - debug.log.

Is it expected behavior?
Could you please provide fully reproducible way to use browsh on plain tty1-tty6?

[tombh]

So this is in the frambuffer? Without X or Wayland? I think the lack of colour and UTF8 chars (like: ▄) makes Browsh look like that. It might be better to just use Browsh in monochrome mode, toggled with ALT+m.

[N0rbert]

It is tty2 (accessed via ++) with default /sbin/agetty running on it.
Well, pressing + makes page look better. No colors, but "viewable".
But I can't click on any link, so it does not react on GPM mouse. Seems to be known issue - #237 . Do you have keyboard navigation for in-page links?
Which settings, shell, fonts do you recommend for normal color browsing by browsh in TTYs?

[tombh]

I think we'd have to get #439 merged for proper keyboard navigation.

I've not used Browsh much in raw TTYs, so I don't have any recommendations I'm afraid. Though I would very much like Browsh to work well without X/Wayland.

I wonder how https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl fares on the TTY?

[N0rbert]

Thanks!
I'll try to play with plain TTYs more.
About Carbonyl I have already filed fathyb/carbonyl#149 with similar results.
I hope that Browsh and/or Carbonyl will become new links2 alternative for raw TTYs with full JavaScript and CSS support :)

[ioogithub]

I have the same problem, webpage renders unusable with white diamonds on tty. So it seems browsh requires X or Wayland to run?

It is certainly not usable like this.

Perhaps your can update your document to specify that browsh does not run on on the console.

[andrewp907]

I'm getting the same experience. I was hoping that browsh could get me a giant step closer to freedom from the GUI. I can live without support for the half block ▄ but because I don't have a mouse, lack of keyboard support beyond simple scrolling up and down means that I can't view any pages that I can't reach by URL (e.g. I can't log into websites), and that forces me to start up the GUI again for anything that elinks can't handle.

This is a super fascinating project though. In the tty I wonder if just using a space instead of the half block might be better, although that sacrifices half the resolution. Or maybe the half block isn't a lost cause. When I type "showconsolefont", something that looks like a half block appears at decimal position 254 (where positions start at 0) if I'm reading this correctly. Maybe there could be a .config option for the user to specify a character to use if it's not in the Unicode spot.

When keyboard support is implemented, I would appreciate a clear visual cue of where the cursor is, maybe inverted colors. Elinks does this well. The thin blue outline that I see in the GUI when tabbing is not going translate over by itself.

[andrewp907]

I have a perfectionist streak so it's easy for me to grumble. About browsh being slower than elinks (what do I expect?), about needing to fire up a terminal emulator in a graphical environment (where I have touchscreen support) and switch on colors and Unicode, about crashing when I try to write a longwinded comment like this. I have to say though, now that I'm seeing what everyone else is seeing about images rendering in a plain text environment and being able to do complex stuff like log into github--having practically a full fat browser as web services expect but in my comfort zone next to my ~$--browsh is seriously pretty dang impressive. Certainly there are still rough edges to smooth but I can already see myself turning to browsh regularly when elinks, as capable and no-nonsense as it is, isn't getting the job done.

[andrewp907]

This is a bit out of scope for this issue, but, just in case anyone else is trying to use websites in the tty. I tried installing gpm as a workaround. With gpm running, my external mouse now works as expected in elinks for clicking links, but not in browsh (although I can still see the pointer in browsh). Ditto for the scroll wheel (works great in elinks, not in browsh). Back in Gnome, mouse works great everywhere including in browsh, but I had to start Gnome up so that takes some of the shine off for me personally.