Edbrowse, a Command Line Editor Browser | Hacker News Reader

Edbrowse, a Command Line Editor Browser

edbrowse.org

55 pointsmoodguy19 comments

I've been using this for around 20 years. It works well for browsing both the web and local files, though JavaScript makes it less useful now.

I have plugins to browse a lot of file types; an epub will open as an HTML file and let me read it in the same way I would anything else. Browsing directories is fast, and I can jump between edbrowse and the shell easily.

Are you blind? (Edbrowse was created by a blind user.) I.e., is your vision bad enough that it makes sense to use audio or braille as your main modality of computer output?

On JS, enough to download ahem -cd "loveaffair" retrobackups- and login in lots of sites thanks to Duktape.

The project's homepage isn't very helpful to get a grasp of what the tool actually looks like to use.

Here is a few links to relevant documentation pages with code code/script examples:

- Edbrowse as a File Manager: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/CMB/edbrowse/Files.md

- Search Wikipedia using Edbrowse: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/CMB/edbrowse/Search-W...

- Edit text using Edbrowse: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/CMB/edbrowse/Edit-tex...

A couple of screenshots would be nice

The author of edbrowse is visually impaired, and so is the target audience.

This is like saying braille books could use more illustrations.

Please read the very first hyperlink to learn more, http://www.eklhad.net/philosophy.html

True. I still want screenshots though!

>This program was originally written for blind users, but many sighted users have taken advantage of the unique scripting capabilities of this program

Not sure a Braille book is a suitable metaphor here. A Braille book that is readable by people who don't know Braille, and also (to some degree) markets itself to sighted people?

Boy, it must be hard when you want someone to take a minor step to make it easier for you to understand or use some software, but your values aren't shared by the community of software makers, so they don't do it.

I stand by my metaphor. It’s a command-line interface, a picture of text is only reducing its accessibility.

To complain about the visually impaired not doing enough to make the content more accessible for the visually gifted. I’m just too upset to respond to this kind of discussion. This is my last HN discussion, you’re right, blind people should take screenshots of their programs, enjoy your contrarian community

I don't think this disagreement is worth being so upset about. Be well my friend.

It doesn’t have to be an image to be a screenshot. It could just as easily be a properly formatted monospace block quote of the terminal contents.

Another metaphor would be a screenshot of bash, or a screenshot of cat, or a screenshot of the original /bin/ed. Next they'll be wanting someone to stream a session of /bin/cat on youtube. Yes, this program was developed with blind people in mind. Plenty of sighted people have found uses for it, and that's lovely. For blind people, there's really no equivalent to the screenshot. Maybe a typescript. Maybe a few minutes of audio from a TTS. Of course, the latter would be useless to a deaf-blind person. But our best bet is reading some docu and taking it for a spin. It is not too much to ask of sighted people to step out of their comfort zones for a little while. Your world is highly suboptimal for me. Care to step into mine for a bit? Not having access to cheap visual imagery is in fact no cross to bear.

Without doubt, implying that lack of screenshots of software designed for blind users is unfair should tickle a self-aware person’s sense of irony and one should be careful with phrasing.

That said, I suspect such requests are not fully baseless.

While nothing beats actually putting on a blindfold and trying, it does not seem unreasonable for a sighted person to try to find out what, e.g., Braille looks like. This knowledge may give them ideas into how it could be possible to incorporate more of it into predominantly visual spaces, for example. We have different modes of attending to the world, and in fact it is seeing Braille in public spaces that reminds many sighted people that not being able to see it is actually a thing (and perhaps even prompts some to learn it).

Is it not similar with software? If it could increase adoption of accessible software among users who do not need it in their current state, would that not support the goal? (Not to deny that screenshots are really beside the point when it comes to documentation completeness of such software, of course.)

us sighted people are imaginatively impaired. we need screenshots because we don't have developed the capacity to imagine an interface from a textual description like blind people probably do.

Absolutely.

I'm sorry to see you go. Yes, this is HN at its absolute worst and most self-entitled.

https://files.catbox.moe/ta3tun.png

Perhaps a typescript, rather?

In the same spirit but more modern, I’m developing Offpunk:

https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/

(with 2.0 just having been released last week : https://ploum.net/2023-11-25-offpunk2.html and discuted here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38412886 )

Reply on news.ycombinator.com