retawq

retawq is an interactive, multi-threaded network client (web browser) for text terminals on computers with Unix-like operating systems.

It is written in C, fast, small, nicely configurable, and comfortable; e.g. the low-level network communications are performed in a non-blocking way, and you can keep open as many "virtual windows" as you want and work simultaneously in two of them in a split-screen mode.

Features:

User Interface Features
- multi-window - you can open as many "virtual windows" as you like and work simultaneously in two of them in a split-screen mode
- multi-view - you can view a long series of documents within each browser window and easily go back and forth
- internationalization (i18n) - optional support for several natural languages (currently English, French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese); cf. the compile-time configuration option OPTION_I18N
- mouse - optional mouse support for higher comfort; cf. the compile-time configuration option OPTION_TEXTMODEMOUSE
- contextual menus - so you need not remember all those boring keyboard commands
- sessions - you can save current sessions and resume them at any later time
- keymaps - for the flexible association of keys with program actions
- incremental display - content is displayed as soon as it is received from the server; you need not twiddle thumbs until the whole document (or a large portion of it) has been received
- resizable terminals - retawq tries to utilize the extents of your terminal optimally; and when you resize it, the visible documents are immediately re-layouted within the new boundaries (if the libraries on your computer support this); any terminal size from 30x10 to 250x250 characters (width x height) is supported.
- several interfaces - there's more than just a web browser: you can start the program in different runmodes, e.g. to download a file "in the background" or to get a shell-like FTP client
Technical Features
- configurability - many compile-time, command-line and run-time configuration options are provided;
- additionally, you can choose the classical-style Makefile or the more modern/portable configure script
- multi-threading - retawq optionally uses (moderate) multi-threading in order to make fast, responsive use possible
- network protocols - several access methods are supported: HTTP/1.1 and 1.0 (including proxies and cookies), homepage (ditto), FTP, ftps, news/NNTP, finger, local files and directories, local CGI scripts; cf. URL Schemes for more information; other protocols will follow
- HTML renderer - more than 60 tags are known; the form support is quite complete (except file upload); more than 130 character entities are known, many others can be guessed; preliminary (little) support for tables and framesets exists
- IPv6 - optional support for the "next generation" Internet Protocol version; cf. the compile-time configuration option OPTION_IPV6
- fast, small, portable and stable - a special emphasis is put on keeping the program very fast and small but making it comfortable, nicely configurable and standards-compliant nevertheless
- low requirements - runs nicely even on slow computers with little memory; also doesn't require much from its environment: only a standard C library with rather little functionality is needed, anything else can be either disabled or configured to use existing libraries or to fall back on built-in replacements