Chabuto

Chabuto Help

What this file is

This is an archive that carries its own application. The file you are reading holds the program, the files you put in it, and nothing else. There is no account, no server, and no installation: opening the file runs it, and saving it writes another complete file just like it. A file you were sent today still opens years from now, because everything it needs is inside.

The note at the top

The line under Contents is yours to write: a short note about this archive — what it holds, who it is for, what someone opening it ought to know first. Click it and type. It is kept when you click away or press Enter, and Escape puts back what was there. It holds up to 500 characters, it travels inside the archive like everything else, and when the archive has a password it is encrypted along with the files.

Adding and describing files

Add files copies files into this archive. They are copied, not linked — the originals stay where they are, and nothing leaves your device. One trip through the file picker is one step, so a single undo takes back everything it added.

Each file can carry a description, which is yours to write and may be left blank. A file without one offers Add a description; click it and type. It is saved when you click away or press Enter, not as you type, and a description you have written stays on show.

To rename a file, double-click its name and type the new one. Enter keeps the change and Escape abandons it. A name may hold any character you can type, a slash among them: which folder a file is in is kept separately from what it is called, so writing one into a name does not move the file. Renaming changes the name inside this archive only; the original on your device is untouched.

You can also drag files onto this window from wherever they sit on your machine. Anywhere on the window will do, and however many you drag at once the drop is one step, the same as one trip through the picker. Drag a folder instead and everything inside it comes in, however deeply nested, each file keeping the folder it came from. Add folder is that same intake through a chooser, for when dragging is awkward: it takes one folder and everything under it. Nothing is uploaded either way — the files are read from your own disk into this one, and the originals stay where they are.

A drop stops early rather than freezing the window if it is asked to carry more than a thousand files or a tree too deep to walk, and you are told how many arrived so the rest can be dropped separately. A file that does not fit is named and skipped, and the rest still arrive. The workspace shows what has been used, and what is left.

Arranging what is inside

Files can be grouped into folders, and a folder can hold folders of its own. What a folder holds is indented beneath it, and clicking the folder's name shuts it or opens it again — that is only about what you are looking at, and nothing about it is saved.

A folder is made by putting a file into one. Right-click a file to open its menu — with one button that is Ctrl and a click, or a two-finger tap on a trackpad — then choose New folder… and type a name. A slash in that name makes a folder inside another, so Papers/2026 is a folder called 2026 inside one called Papers; the name offered to you already begins with the folder the file is in, so going one level deeper is a matter of typing the last part. The same menu lists every folder the archive already has, so the next file joins one by name rather than by typing the path again.

To move several files at once, click one and then hold Ctrl or Cmd while clicking the others, or hold Shift to take everything between the two. With a drag handle focused, the space bar adds that file to the group or takes it out. Right-click any file of the group and the move applies to all of them at once, as one step, and dragging one of them by its handle brings the whole group with it.

To rename a folder, double-click its name. Enter keeps the change and Escape abandons it, and every file in that folder — and in the folders beneath it — follows the new name in one step. A slash nests here too, so renaming 2026 to 2026/Q1 puts everything it holds one level deeper.

A folder exists only through the files that are in it. There is no empty folder to make and none to tidy away: the last file to leave one takes it with it, and a folder you want to keep has to keep something. This is why nothing about the folders can disagree with what the archive actually carries — they are a way of looking at the files, drawn fresh each time from where the files say they are.

The order the files sit in is yours to set and is kept in the archive, so whoever opens it next sees them arranged the way you left them. Drag a file by the handle at its left to move it: up or down among its neighbours, onto a folder to put it inside, or onto empty space to bring it back out. With the keyboard, move onto the handle and use the up and down arrows; to change which folder a file is in, use Move to folder on the file's own menu. Every one of these is a single undoable step.

How much it will hold

Every limit below is on the stored size — what a file takes up after it has been compressed on the way in. Text, and anything else that compresses well, counts for a good deal less than its size on disk; a photograph or a video is already compressed and counts for close to all of it. This is why the workspace reports what has been used rather than leaving you to add the files up.

An archive holds up to 1000 files, about 34 MB per file, and about 101 MB in total. A single file is also refused if it would expand past about 268 MB however small it compresses to, because it has to fit in memory to be read at all. A name may run to 255 characters, a description to 2000, and the archive's own note to 500; longer ones are shortened rather than refused.

Two limits apply to particular things. Markdown is displayed up to about 4 MB — past that it is still carried and still exported, just not rendered, because formatting a file costs several times its size at once. And Open will read a Chabuto file of up to about 403 MB, which is comfortably more than a full archive weighs.

These numbers come from what browsers were measured to survive, with room to spare, and they are deliberately the same on every machine: a file that opens on a laptop with a lot of memory has to open on one without.

Opening and getting files back out

Files of common kinds open in a browser tab: plain text, Markdown, PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP and AVIF images, MP3, WAV and WebM audio, WebM video, and PDF. Everything else is carried faithfully but cannot be previewed here, which is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature — this application never interprets what it carries.

Markdown is the one exception, and a narrow one. It is formatted for reading rather than shown as source, so the page you see is built by this application from the text — never from markup the file supplied. Links and images are deliberately left out: a link would be a way out of the file, and an image would have to be fetched, which an archive that promises to reach nothing must not do. A very large Markdown file is carried but not displayed, because rendering one costs several times its size at once. Use Export to get the original text back exactly as it arrived, whatever its size.

Every file can be exported, whether or not it can be previewed. Export writes out everything the archive carries, under the names the files arrived with, into a folder you choose; where the browser cannot ask for a folder, each file downloads instead. A single file can be exported from its own row. Exported files come back byte for byte, though their original dates cannot be restored — a browser is not allowed to set them.

Passwords

Encrypt protects this archive with a password. The list of files is encrypted along with the files themselves, because what an archive contains is often more revealing than the contents; a protected file shows no title, no note and no file names to anyone who opens it without the password. The password is asked for once, and everything is re-encrypted the next time you save.

There is no way to recover a lost password. Nobody holds a copy, there is no reset, and no service to ask. A wrong password and a damaged file are reported the same way on purpose, so that trying passwords reveals nothing. Once an archive has a password, the same button lets you change or remove it.

Saving, and copies

Save writes this archive back out as a complete file. Save as writes it under a new name. Every saved copy is a whole application again: you can send it, rename it, back it up, or open it on a machine that has never heard of this one. Saving never changes the file you opened until you tell it to, and closing the tab with unsaved changes loses them, so save before you leave.

History keeps safety copies of recent work in this browser. They stay on this machine, are never part of a saved file, and are not kept once an archive has a password.

Opening a file someone sent you

A saved Chabuto file is a program, not a document. Opening one runs whatever that file contains, so a file from someone you do not trust deserves the same caution as any other program — in particular, a hostile file could ask for a password and keep it. If you are unsure, open a Chabuto file you already trust and use its Open command to read the uncertain one, which uses this application's own code rather than the other file's.

Launching other Jimae files, and iPhone

Open loads another file into the current app. Launch starts the app carried by the selected Jimae file, replacing this page.

Launch runs a Jimae file in its own application, replacing this page, only after its application signature and material verify against the family release key. Complete and Compact use the same signature; a missing or invalid signature is refused, without an override. To recover an older file, Open it in a trusted current Chabuto and Save: supported data is read without running the old application. Nothing from the selected file enters this archive.

On iPhone, a saved Jimae file will not run by itself. Open Chabuto from the family site instead, add it to the Home Screen, and launch it once while online: the About box then says Ready offline. From then on the Home Screen app runs with no connection, and its Open and Launch commands read files you have saved to Files — a file that arrived by mail goes there through Share and Save to Files.

Keyboard

Ctrl or Cmd with Z undoes, and adding Shift redoes; both leave a field you are typing in alone, so your own editing still undoes normally. F1 opens this Help. On a file's drag handle, the up and down arrows move it among its neighbours and the space bar picks it out to be moved with others.

Updates

This application never updates itself. Checking for a newer release is something you ask for, from the About box — the small mark at the top left — and it sends nothing about this archive or about you. A newer version arrives as a separate download: open your existing file in it and save, and your archive continues in the newer application.