# Help

Welcome to Telescope!

Essential key bindings: arrow keys to move the cursor and read the page, > to enter an URL, B and F (uppercase) to navigate backward and forward in the history.  ‘q’ to quit.

This page is always available as

> $ telescope about:help


## What is Telescope?

Telescope is a Gemini browser written for fun, as hobbystic project in my free time.  As such, it lacks tons of features available in others, more mature Gemini browsers, but it also has some unique ones.

The UI is strongly inspired from Emacs and w3m, so it’s possible to notice various familiar concepts, such as the minibuffer or the tab line.  Care has been taken to make it as familiar as possible for vi and “CUA” users too.

=> gemini://telescope.omarpolo.com Telescope Project Homepage

> Tip: move the cursor over a link and press M-RET (alt + enter) to open it in another tab.  Then use [ and ] to switch between tabs.

Telescope is documented carefully, so please refer to the manual page to know more about all the available keybindings, the format and location of the configuration file and more:

> man telescope


## Operate the Telescope

By default Telescope includes various keys inspired from either Emacs or vi.  However, knowledge of these editors is not required.  Here’s a list of essential commands

* > to prompt for a URL;
* < to edit the current URL;
* arrow keys to move the cursor;
* page up/down to scroll;
* tab and shift-tab to jump to the next/previous link;
* F and B (uppercase) to navigate forward and backward in the history;
* enter to open the link under the cursor;
* alt-enter to open the link under the cursor in a new tab;
* [ and ] to move between tabs;
* control + t to open a new tab;
* control + w to close the current tab;
* u to re-open a closed tab;
* q to quit.


## Operate — Emacs version

If you’re familiar with Emacs, most of the keybindings are available on Telescope by default!  C-{b,f,n,p} works as expected, as well as C-x C-c, C-x t o, C-v/M-v and even M-x!


## Operate — vi version

Telescope strives to be familiar for vi/vim users too!  hjkl is available by default, as well as ‘g t’, ‘g T’ etc.  :tabnew, :tabn and :wq work too!


## Appearance

Telescope is fully customizable.  The configuration file is

> ~/.config/telescope/config

By default Telescope doesn’t use colours too much in order to adapt to both light and dark-themed terminals.  This doesn’t mean that Telescope cannot use colours though!  See for example contrib/light.config and contrib/dark.config.


## Custom pages

> Tip: on long and structured pages like this one, try to use the ‘toc’ command.  Press ‘t’ to open the table of content and jump to a specific heading.

All the ‘about:*’ pages can be locally overridden.  For example, to customise about:new create:

> ~/.local/share/telescope/pages/about_new.gmi

about:bookmarks is the only page that doesn’t follow this pattern; it’s located at

> ~/.local/share/telescope/bookmarks.gmi


## Protocol Proxies

Telescope supports custom protocol proxies (proxies that translate between protocols).  Thanks to programs like the duckling-proxy, it’s possible to navigate the web using a Gemini browser.

=> https://github.com/LukeEmmet/duckling-proxy The Duckling Proxy

Configuring telescope to use a proxy is easy, just drop something like the following to your configuration file:

```Example of protocol proxy configuration for http and https
proxy "http" via "gemini://127.0.0.1:1965"
proxy "https" via "gemini://127.0.0.1:1965"
```


# What is Gemini?

Gemini is a new internet protocol which:

* is heavier than gopher
* is lighter than the web
* will not replace either
* strives for maximum power to weight ratio
* takes user privacy very seriously

=> gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space Project Gemini Homepage