The first stable release of the Offpunk console browser has been published, which, in addition to opening web pages, supports protocols such as Gemini, Gopher, and Spartan, as well as reading news feeds in RSS and Atom formats. The program is written in Python and is distributed under the BSD license.
A key feature of Offpunk is its focus on content viewing in offline mode. The browser allows users to subscribe to pages or mark them for later viewing, after which the data for those pages is automatically cached and updated as needed. Thus, Offpunk enables users to maintain copies of websites and pages that are always available for local viewing and kept up to date through periodic data synchronization. Synchronization parameters can be user-configured; for instance, some content may synchronize daily while others sync monthly.
Management is conducted through a command system and keyboard shortcuts. There is a flexible system for maintaining multi-level bookmarks, subscriptions, and archived content. Custom handlers can be integrated for different MIME types. HTML pages are parsed and displayed using the BeautifulSoup4 and Readability libraries. Images can be converted to ASCII graphics using the chafa library.
For automating actions, an RC file is used, defining the sequence of commands at startup. For example, through the RC file, you can automatically open the homepage or load content from certain sites for subsequent offline viewing. The downloaded content is saved in the directory ~/.cache/offpunk/ as a hierarchy of files in .gmi and .html formats, allowing for manual modification, cleaning, or viewing pages in other programs.
The project continues the development of the Gemini and Gopher clients AV-98 and VF-1, created by the protocol's author. The Gemini protocol is significantly simpler than the protocols used in the Web, yet more functional than Gopher. The network part of Gemini resembles a highly simplified HTTP over TLS (traffic is encrypted by default), and the page markup is closer to Markdown than HTML. The Spartan protocol is designed for transmitting documents in the Gemini format but differs in its network interaction (does not use TLS) and extends Gemini's capabilities with tools for exchanging binary files and supports data transmission to server.
Source: opennet.ru
