FastLBRY-terminal

FastLBRY terminal

This is one of the 3 programs that will be the FastLBRY project. There are not enough choice when it comes to LBRY. You can either use the Odysee.com website. Or the LBRY Desktop that shares the source code with Odysee, which makes it a sub-optimal solution. LBRY Desktop is more local, but it's still a tiny browser with a website on it.

If you look on what's running on Odysee.com, you will discover a bloated mess of compiled JavaScript on top of other bloated mess of JavaScript. Pages barely contain HTML5 code. I've talked to them about this and all they could say was:

Thank you for the issue and write up. This is not something we plan to do anytime soon since we rely on the open-source videojs framework heavily. We may consider it in the future.

Fine. You won't do that. How about me? Maybe I can do that. It's Free / Libre Software we are talking about. You don't need a permission to start implementing things.

Here is the plan for this project:

• FastLBRY Terminal. A fully featured, terminal application to interact with LBRY. It will allow watching videos, download files, view and send comments, upload new files. This stage is half finished.
• FastLBRY GTK. A fully featured graphical application. It will have all the same features as the FastLBRY Terminal but with a GUI that a basic user might understand. It will require a bit of UI design work. I don't want it to resemble YouTube. LBRY is way deeper then just a clone of YouTube. I want the design to showcase the LBRY network correctly.
• FastLBRY HTML5. A fully featured server application. Released on the AGPL this time. That people could install to make instances of LBRY on the web. But instead of it being this bloated mess of JavaScript. It will be a straight forward HTML5 site. With JS maybe only in the most minimal form. And only for secondary features ( like live notifications for comments ). So it will not break core features if the user decides to block all JS.

WE NEED HACKERS!!! WE NEED YOU!!!

This project requires a lot of work to be done. The good thing is. It's based on python. Without using too many complex features. We do use the lbrynet SDK for this for now. Maybe we can implement the entire SDK in code later on.

If you know nothing about programming, this is a good way to start. If you know something about programming, this is a good opportunity to contribute. To learn things needed to hack on this project and to help it be where it needs to be you can use the following resources.

• Python Basics to learn the basic syntax of python. You can use this as a handbook when ever you don't understand a line. Or when ever you need a way to implement a thing.
• LBRY SDK API to learn all kinds of possible things that you can do with the SDK. Alternatively you can go to the folder flbry ( using cd flbry ) and then use the --help feature to see various commands of the SDK. ./lbrynet --help. This way I learned enough to hack this bare bones version so far.
• DuckDuckGo a search engine that can help you find answers for things that are not documented in any of the previous places. Sometimes you may need to go to the second page.
• The Matrix Chat (#FastLBRY:matrix.org) where you can hang out with already a quite substantial amount of users / hackers or FastLBRY. I'm also there. So if you have any question what so ever, just post it there.

VIDEO TUTORIAL ON HOW TO HACK IT

Click the image to watch on odysee or... Direct Spee.ch link

Now open the run.py file in your preferred editor and start hacking.

To do list

To get an idea of what to work on, there is a checklist of things. Alternatively. You can look into the Issues page for various issues found by the users. That you can help fixing as well.

Publications Platform Stuff

• A smart command parser for user requests. Like instead of typing channel @blenderdumbass they could type @blenderdumbass and the program will understand that they are looking for the channel. Issue #4
• Search for publications
• List all publications of channels
• Search in channels Issue #5
• Get data about channels Issue #6
• Get data about publications
• Download / Play the publications
• Read articles
• Read comments Issue #7
• Write comments Issue #8
• Upload publications Issue #9
• List stuff you've uploaded
• Support publications Issue #10
• Re-post publications Issue #11
• Boost publication ( which is not the same as support ) Issue #12
• View following Issue #13
• Follow channels Issue #14

Account / Wallet Stuff

• See wallet history
• See balance Issue #15
• Send LBC to an address Issue #16
• Login from with in FastLBRY ( currently you need to use LBRY Desktop ) Issue #17
• See uploads history
• See downloads history
• See list of your own channels Issue #18
• Analytics ( Hopefully better then in Odysee. We can use the wallet history to do something interesting. ) Issue #19

Other stuff

• Swap the lbrynet binary with a full python implementation that will not need compiling. Issue #3
• Make the UI scale-able for people will bad sight and phones like PinePhone or Librem5 could use the terminal client. Requires hell of a lot of design. Issue #20
• Language packs. Maybe something like in VCStudio. Issue #21
• Write a full user documentation.
• Write a full developer documentation.

Licensing

The project is (c) J.Y.Amihud and Other Contributors 2021, under the GNU General Public License Version 3 or any later version. This choice will protect this project from proprietaryzation.

Unfortunately, the LBRY SDK is (c) LBRY Inc. and is under the Expat License ( also known as the MIT license. ) Click here to read their license. Which wasn't our choice. You can complaint about it on the LBRY SDK repository.

User help

If you have a question or an issue please tell us about it. We are not magical wizards. We can't read your mind. And we don't have telemetry. So it's on you to tell us about errors and other annoyances. You can use the:

• Issue tracker
• Matrix Chat (#FastLBRY:matrix.org)