AV-98 command line Gemini client

About

AV-98 is a command line client for the Gemini protocol, written in Python.

Installation

AV-98 is installable via pip, with the command `pip install AV-98` (note the uppercase and hyphen).

AV-98 has no true dependencies beyond the Python standard library. However, if either the `ansiwrap` or `cryptography` packages are installed, they will be used to provide a better user experience and enable more features. Note that if you've installed AV-98 with `pipx` (because your Linux distribution offers a so-called "externally managed Python environment" but doesn't have a package for AV-98), but you have installed `ansiwrap` and/or `cryptography` with the system package manager, AV-98 won't be able to "see" those packages from within the virtual environment that pipx needlessly creates for it. In this scenario you need to run `pipx inject AV-98 ansiwrap` and `pipx inject AV-98 cryptography`.

Code

AV-98 development happens in the git repo at https://git.sr.ht/~solderpunk/AV-98. You can run `git clone https://git.sr.ht/~solderpunk/AV-98` to get a local copy.

AV-98 code was previously hosted at https://tildegit.org/solderpunk/AV-98 but this repository is deprecated as of January 2025 and will not be used any more.

Documentation

The AV-98 git repository contains a man page in the `docs/` directory, `av98`(1), and this is the authoritative documentation for how to configure, understand and us AV-98. If you installed AV-98 with `pip` or `pipx`, the man page won't have been installed at the same time (pip doesn't support it). If you installed AV-98 via your operating systems's packaging manager, then it may have been. You can always install the man page manually after cloning the repository (see above), but for your convenience there is also a pre-formatted 70 column ASCII version of the man page accessible via Gemini here:

- documents all command line options and AV-98 commands av98.1.txt

Release history

v1.1.0 - 2025-02-03
v1.0.1 - 2020-06-13
v1.0.0 - 2020-06-07

Trivia

AV-98 is named after the AV-98 Ingram "patrol labor" mecha from the Patlabor anime franchise. This is for consistency with the VF-1 Gopher client it was derived from, which was named after a mecha from the same anime series the SDF public access unix system took its name from, in recognition of the role SDF has played in keeping Gopherspace alive in the 21st century.