Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics • Hacker News Board

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#41

Post by mohamedkoubaa » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:06 PM UTC

Emojis in a terminal are a step too far for me. This is just... Indulgent.

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#42

Post by berkes » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:07 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #33

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.

Kitty and several other terminal emulators, have built in graphics display already. IIRC, this is called the kitty protocol, but I might be mistaken.

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#43

Post by drob518 » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:10 PM UTC

panzi wrote: post #36

2ndorderthought wrote: post #4

I actually see some use cases for this. It's one of those should be nonsense projects that somehow isn't.

What use cases do you see?

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.

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#44

Post by avaer » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:11 PM UTC

panzi wrote: post #36

2ndorderthought wrote: post #4

I actually see some use cases for this. It's one of those should be nonsense projects that somehow isn't.

What use cases do you see?

Game development.

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#45

Post by 2ndorderthought » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:11 PM UTC

panzi wrote: post #36

2ndorderthought wrote: post #4

I actually see some use cases for this. It's one of those should be nonsense projects that somehow isn't.

What use cases do you see?

Checking 3d models in a directory inside my terminal to see what's what without opening an application and clicking 100 times.

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#46

Post by noelwelsh » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:16 PM UTC

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/

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#47

Post by darkwater » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:19 PM UTC

What would happen when you use `cat` in Ratty then?

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#48

Post by anthk » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:21 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #33

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.

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.

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#49

Post by bcjdjsndon » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:24 PM UTC

noelwelsh wrote: post #46

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/

Terry A Davis already did this. It was as crazy then as it is now

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#50

Post by alias_neo » Mon, May 11, 2026, 12:25 PM UTC

noelwelsh wrote: post #46

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/

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.