Textualize See

Textualize See is a command line tool to open files in the terminal.

A TOML configuration file maps glob-style patterns on to commands. You could configure see to open any file matching the pattern "*.py" with rich-cli and "*.rs" files with bat, for example.

Think of see as the terminal equivalent of double-clicking a file on the desktop.

The configuration is flexible enough that see can run a different command depending on the directory. For instance you might want a different command to display .html files in a Django project (which are in reality template files), than elsewhere on your system.

While the default is to view the file, you can request different actions, such as "edit", "format", "print" etc.

Install

See is distributed as a Python package. The easiest way to install it is probably with pipx.

pipx install textualize_see

This will add see to your path.

Usage

Note You will need to configure see before you use it.

Call see with a path to view that file in the terminal:

see application.py

If you add two arguments, then the first should be an action, and the second should be a path.

see edit application.py

This will open application.py with a command to edit the file.

Any additional arguments added after the path are forwarded to the command. In the following command --pager is not an option for see, so it will be forwarded to the command that opens the file.

see application.py --pager

Note that see will run commands for configured paths only. If there is no matching path then see will do nothing. See below for configuration.

Configure

Textual reads its configuration from ~/.see.toml (a TOML file). This file should consist of several tables which specify the action (e.g. "view") and a glob style pattern to match against.

The table should have a run key which defines the command to run. The run value may contain $PATH or $ARGS which will be replaced with the path and forwarded arguments respectively.

The following entry in ~/.see.toml will match any files with the extension ".py":

[[actions.view."*.py"]]
run = "rich $PATH $ARGS"

If you were to run the following see command:

see application.py --pager

Then see would pass the path to rich along with any options it doesn't recognize, such as --pager.

rich application.py --pager

Priority

You can optionally add a priority integer value, associated with a pattern. If not provided, priority will default to 1.

If more than one pattern matches the path, then the action with the highest priority will be used. This can be used to add a fallback if there is no explicit match. For example, we could add the following section to cat any files to the terminal that we haven't explicitly matched:

[[actions.view."*"]]
priority = 0
run = "cat $PATH $ARGS"

Why did I build this?

I've always felt something like this should exist.

It is functionality that desktops take for granted, but the experience is not quite as transparent in the terminal. There are alternatives (see below) but this is how I would want it work. It is also cross-platform so I don't seem like a fish out of water on Windows.

Why not just use ... ?

Inevitably this will prompt the question "Why not just use TOOL?". I don't want to talk you out of TOOL, but this is what I considered:

open or xdg-open

There is open on macOS, and xdg-open on Linux, which open files. But these typically open desktop applications, and when I'm in the terminal I typically want to stay in the terminal.

hash bangs?

The hash bang #! is used to execute the file, while I just want to open it. It also requires that you can edit the file itself.

shell aliases

You could add an alias for each filetype you want to open, like md-view and md-edit etc. Which is a perfectly reasonable use for alias, but it does require a command per filetype + action which is harder to commit to muscle memory.

ZSH offers alias -s which associates a file extension with a command. For example if you have the alias alias -s py=rich then you can enter foo.py to syntax highlight a Python file. I like this, but I think it is only offered by the zsh shell (may be wrong) and it is not cross platform.

Why Python?

It's Python because I am mainly a Python developer. Tools like this do tend to be written a little closer to the metal. If see becomes popular and the interface stabilizes, then maybe I (or somebody else) will write it a compiled language. Until then you might have to wait an additional few microseconds to run apps.

Support

Consider this project alpha software for the time being. It was written in under a day and hasn't been battle tested. It has so far only been tested under MacOS, but the goal is to make it work across all the platforms.