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ratatui-diff

Interactive viewer

examples/viewer.rs is a complete host application: terminal setup and restoration, an event loop, key bindings, mouse hit-testing, search input, selection with a copy preview, and file and context folding. Every screenshot on this site comes from it or from examples/minimal.rs.

Terminal window
cargo run --example viewer
cargo run --example viewer -- --aardvark-ink
cargo run --example viewer --features syntax -- \
  --fixture syntax --aardvark-ink --syntax Coldark-Dark --syntax-contrast

The viewer in unified view with its mode line above the diff and key hints below.

Keys

Section titled “Keys”
Key Action
↑ ↓, j k Scroll one row
PageUp PageDown Scroll one page
Home End Start or end of the document
← → Scroll horizontally (unwrapped)
[ ] Previous or next hunk
Tab Shift+Tab Focus the next or previous visible file header
Enter Collapse or expand the focused file
A Z Expand or collapse all files
e z Expand the first visible context fold; fold all
d Toggle document totals
s Toggle unified and split view
w Toggle wrapping
t Toggle whitespace markers
n Toggle line numbers
i Toggle word highlights
m Toggle monochrome
h Toggle syntax colors (syntax feature)
/ Search; Enter to confirm, Esc to clear
f F Next or previous match
v Start a selection; arrows, Home, End extend it
c Show the selected text’s copy preview
p Probe a fixed cell’s source coordinates
q Quit

Moving the mouse over source shows its file, side, line, and byte range in the status row; clicking a file header toggles it.

Options and fixtures

Section titled “Options and fixtures”
Flag Effect
--aardvark-ink Use the fixed RGB theme instead of the terminal palette
--sticky-headers Keep the current file header visible
--fixture NAME Load another built-in fixture
--syntax THEME Prepare syntax colors with a bundled theme (syntax feature)
--syntax-contrast Adjust syntax colors for contrast against the diff theme
--syntax-licenses Print the bundled grammar and theme notices
--capture VARIANT Render one widget-only frame for documentation captures

Fixtures: showcase (default), context, files, alignment, unicode, unicode-text, whitespace, multi-file, and syntax. All fixtures are generated in memory; the viewer never reads files.

How the screenshots are made

Section titled “How the screenshots are made”

Each figure is captured with Betamax from a tape in examples/ against the viewer built from the same revision as the site. To regenerate them locally:

Terminal window
python3 scripts/site-media.py
cd site && pnpm install && pnpm dev