Add default preview scripts?

[valoq]

Should lf include example preview scripts as part of its official configuration?
Currently all the information regarding external previews are in the wiki, and its kind of a mess too.
Previously it only included small example bits for how preview scripts could look like. I just added full a text only preview script and rangers scope.sh with sixel support to the wiki to provide more complete examples, but the question remains if such an example should be part of lf.

I think it may be a good idea to include a well structured and extendable preview script to make it easier for users to adapt it.

Since there are likely other tool cases for previews, I would suggest that users can link their own preview scripts here to compare what is currently used. based on that we may get a good idea of a small script that could serve as official template while covering only the most common use cases for previews.

My example would be this script which uses bat, pdfinfo, mediainfo, archive tools and chafa for sixel support when installed:
https://gist.github.com/valoq/da060834e66f1b4d80c9c51a7eece6f0

Thoughts?

[CatsDeservePets]

I had the same thoughts about the current state of the wiki just recently:

• Overhauling the wiki #2386

Just to make clear: I am against bundling a previewer script inside lf itself. There is no one-size-fits-all thing here, let alone trying to make it cross platform. There had to be tons of tests and fallbacks for possible installed packages, the OS, current shell, GNU vs Posix utilities, the terminal emulator, ...
In general, I do think that yazi's out of the box experience is better (or more beginner friendly) than lf's. But when I installed it on Windows, the previewer showed an error message complaining about file (the Unix utility) not being installed.

I also think that shipping a previewer could come across as lf endorsing the utilities used in there.

What does make sense is a big overall of the wiki, including but not limited to the previewer section.
I wanted to do that myself but shortly lost motivation. I will have to work on it again.

[valoq]

Just to make clear: I am against bundling a previewer script inside lf itself. There is no one-size-fits-all thing here, let alone tying to make it cross platform. There had to be tons of tests and fallbacks for possible installed packages, the OS, current shell, GNU vs Posix utilities, the terminal emulator, ...

That's a good point actually.

My main motivation was not to much the content of a preview script though, but rather the structure and the variables passed by lf.
Perhaps an alternative would be to have this skeleton preview script with an example using cat (which works on all systems) dummy commands, commented out by default. It would not provide anything more then what the internal preview does, but it could show a structure that can easily be expanded and used as a template, with references to the wiki for expansion.

[CatsDeservePets]

I am all for that. I don't even think that we have to use dummy commands as long as we are using the correct shebang and no GNU only flags. Adding a separate example for Windows also sounds reasonable (has to be cmd as ps1 files do not work as executable previewer scripts).