w3m - a text based web browser and pager
w3m [OPTION]... [
file |
URL ]...
w3m is a text based browser which can display local or remote web pages
as well as other documents. It is able to process HTML tables and frames but
it ignores JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets.
w3m can also serve as
a pager for text files named as arguments or passed on standard input, and as
a general purpose directory browser.
w3m organizes its content in buffers or tabs, allowing easy navigation
between them. With the w3m-img extension installed,
w3m can display
inline graphics in web pages. And whenever
w3m's HTML rendering
capabilities do not meet your needs, the target URL can be handed over to a
graphical browser with a single command.
For help with runtime options, press “H” while running
w3m.
When given one or more command line arguments,
w3m will handle targets
according to content type. For web,
w3m gets this information from HTTP
headers; for relative or absolute file system paths, it relies on filenames.
With no argument,
w3m expects data from standard input and assumes
“text/plain” unless another MIME type is given by the user.
If provided with no target and no fallback target (see for instance option
-v below),
w3m will exit with usage information.
Command line options are introduced with a single “-” character
and may take an argument.
- -B
- with no other target defined, use the bookmark page for
startup
- -H
- use high-intensity colors
- -M
- monochrome display
- -no-mouse
- deactivate mouse support
- -num
- display each line's number
- -N
- distribute multiple command line arguments to tabs. By
default, a stack of buffers is used
-
-ppc num
- width of num pixels per character. Range of 4.0 to
32.0, default 8.0. Larger values will make tables narrower.
(Implementation not verified)
-
-ppl num
- height of num pixels per line. Range of 4.0 to 64.0.
(Implementation not verified)
-
-title, -title=TERM
- use the buffer name as terminal title string. With
specified TERM, this sets the title configuration style accordingly
- -v
- with no other target defined, welcome users with a built-in
page
- -W
- toggle wrapping mode in searches
- -X
- do not initialize/deinitialize the terminal
-
+num
- go to line num; only effective for num larger
than the number of lines in the terminal
-
-cols num
- with stdout as destination; HTML is rendered to lines of
num characters
-
-cookie, -no-cookie
- use stored cookies and accept new ones, or do neither
- -F
- render frames
-
-graph, -no-graph
- use or do not use graphic characters for drawing HTML table
and frame borders
-
-header string
- append string to the HTTP(S) request. Expected to
match the header syntax Variable: Value
- -m
- Render the body of Usenet messages according to the header
“Content-type”
- -no-proxy
- do not use proxy
-
-post file
- use POST method to upload data defined in file. The
syntax to be used is var1=value1[&var2=value2]...
- -4
- IPv4 only. Corresponds to dns_order=4 in configuration
files
- -6
- IPv6 only. Corresponds to dns_order=6 in configuration
files
- -insecure
- use insecure SSL config options, alias for -o
ssl_cipher=ALL:eNULL:@SECLEVEL=0 -o ssl_min_version=all -o
ssl_forbid_method= -o ssl_verify_server=0
-
-l num
- number of lines preserved internally when receiving plain
text from stdin (default 10,000)
- -r
- use caret notation to display special escape characters
(such as ANSI escapes or nroff-style backspaces for bold and underlined
characters) instead of processing them
- -s
- squeeze multiple blank lines into one
-
-t num
- set tab width to num columns. No effect on
stdout
-
-I charset
- user defined character encoding of input data
-
-O charset
- user defined character encoding of output data
-
-T type
- explicit characterization of input data by MIME type
- -dump
- dump rendered page into stdout. Set implicitly when output
is directed to a file or pipe
- -dump_source
- dump the page's source code into stdout
- -dump_head
- dump response of a HEAD request for a URL into stdout
- -dump_both
- dump HEAD, and source code for a URL into stdout
- -dump_extra
- dump HEAD, source code, and extra information for a URL
into stdout
- -help
- show a summary of compiled-in features and command line
options
- -show-option
- show all available configuration options
- -version
- show the version of w3m
-
-bookmark file
- use file instead of the default bookmark.html
file
-
-config file
- use file instead of the default configuration
file
-
-o option=value
- modify one configuration item with an explicitly given
value; without option=value, equivalent to -show-option
- -debug
- use debug mode (only for debugging)
- -reqlog
- log headers of HTTP communication in file
~/.w3m/request.log
- Combine snippets of HTML code and preview the page
-
$ cat header.html footer.html | w3m -T text/html
- Compare two files using tabs
-
$ w3m -N config.old config
- Display web content in monochrome terminal
-
$ w3m -M http://w3m.sourceforge.net
- Display embedded graphics
-
$ w3m -o auto_image=TRUE http://w3m.sourceforge.net
- Display content from Usenet
-
$ w3m -m nntp://news.aioe.org/comp.os.linux.networking
- Upload data for a URL using the POST method
-
$ w3m -post - http://example.com/form.php <<<'a=0&b=1'
- Convert an HTML file to plain text with a defined line
length
-
$ w3m -cols 40 foo.html > foo.txt
- Output the bookmarks page as text with an appended list of
links
-
$ w3m -B -o display_link_number=1 > out.txt
- Conversion of file format and character encoding
-
$ w3m -T text/html -I EUC-JP -O UTF-8 < foo.html > foo.txt
- Welcome users with a built-in page
-
$ w3m -v
w3m recognises the environment variable
WWW_HOME as defining a
fallback target for use if it is invoked without one.
If the
W3M_DIR environment variable is set to a directory name,
w3m will store its user files there instead of under the ~/.w3m
directory.
The default locations of some files are listed below. These locations can be
altered via the
W3M_DIR environment variable.
- ~/.w3m/bookmark.html
- default bookmark file
- ~/.w3m/config
- user defined configuration file; overrides
/etc/w3m/config
- ~/.w3m/cookie
- cookie jar; written on exit, read on launch
- ~/.w3m/history
- browser history - visited files and URLs
- ~/.w3m/keymap
- user defined key bindings; overrides default key
bindings
- ~/.w3m/mailcap
- external viewer configuration file
- ~/.w3m/menu
- user defined menu; overrides default menu
- ~/.w3m/mime.types
- MIME types file
- ~/.w3m/mouse
- user defined mouse settings
- ~/.w3m/passwd
- password and username file
- ~/.w3m/pre_form
- contains predefined values to fill recurrent HTML
forms
README and example files are to be found in the doc directory of your
w3m
installation. Recent information about
w3m may be found on
the project's web
pages at
w3m has incorporated code from several sources. Users have contributed
patches and suggestions over time.
Akinori ITO