The ELinks Manual


Table of Contents

Preface
1. Getting ELinks up and running
Building and Installing ELinks
Requirements
Recommended Libraries and Programs
Further reading
Tips to obtain a very small static elinks binary
ECMAScript support?!
Ok, so how to get the ECMAScript support working?
The ECMAScript support is buggy! Shall I blame Mozilla people?
Now, I would still like NJS or a new JS engine from scratch…
Feature configuration file (features.conf)
Notes for users
Bookmarks (CONFIG_BOOKMARKS)
XBEL Bookmarks (CONFIG_XBEL_BOOKMARKS)
Cookies (CONFIG_COOKIES)
Form History (CONFIG_FORMHIST)
Global History (CONFIG_GLOBHIST)
MIME
Mailcap (CONFIG_MAILCAP)
Mimetypes File (CONFIG_MIMETYPES)
Gzip and Deflate Decompression (CONFIG_GZIP)
Bzip2 Decompression (CONFIG_BZIP2)
LZMA Decompression (CONFIG_LZMA)
IPv6 Protocol Support (CONFIG_IPV6)
URI Rewriting (CONFIG_URI_REWRITE)
BitTorrent Protocol Support (CONFIG_BITTORRENT)
Local CGI Support (CONFIG_CGI)
Data URI protocol (CONFIG_DATA)
Finger User Information Protocol Support (CONFIG_FINGER)
File Service Protocol (CONFIG_FSP)
File Transfer Protocol Support (CONFIG_FTP)
Gopher Protocol Support (CONFIG_GOPHER)
NNTP Protocol Support (CONFIG_NNTP)
SMB Protocol Support (CONFIG_SMB)
Cascading Style Sheets (CONFIG_CSS)
HTML Highlighting (CONFIG_HTML_HIGHLIGHT)
ECMAScript (JavaScript) Browser Scripting (CONFIG_SCRIPTING_SPIDERMONKEY)
Mouse Support (CONFIG_MOUSE)
88 Colors in Terminals (CONFIG_88_COLORS)
256 Colors in Terminals (CONFIG_256_COLORS)
True color (CONFIG_TRUE_COLOR)
Ex-mode Interface (CONFIG_EXMODE)
LEDs (CONFIG_LEDS)
Document Marks (CONFIG_MARKS)
Debug mode (CONFIG_DEBUG)
Fast mode (CONFIG_FASTMEM)
Own C library functions (CONFIG_OWN_LIBC)
Small binary (CONFIG_SMALL)
Unicode UTF-8 support (CONFIG_UTF8)
Back-trace Printing (CONFIG_BACKTRACE)
Disable Root User (CONFIG_NO_ROOT_EXEC)
2. Frequently Asked Questions
I rebuilt/upgraded/reconfigured ELinks and restarted it, but it looks like nothing has changed!
How does cutting and pasting work?
How does the "Move" button on the bookmark manager work?
What's up with the navigation in the various managers?
Why are there so many Links flavors?
Which one to use?
What are the Ki (kibi) and Mi (mebi) units?
How can I get 256 colors?
What User-Agent header does ELinks send?
ELinks doesn't erase characters from the screen when it should!
3. Introduction to the World of ELinks
Overview of the User Interface
The Title, Tab and Status bar
The Main, Link and Tab Menus
The Managers
LED status indicators
Navigation
Page-Oriented Navigation
Link-Oriented Navigation
Position-Oriented Navigation
Forms
Searching
Hints and Odd Features
4. The Ultimate Bookmarks Guide
The Bookmark Manager
The Ancient Forests
Searching for a needle in the haystack
File formats
Native file format
XBEL file format
Usage hints
5. The Wonders of Tabbed Browsing
Introduction to the basic actions involving tabs
The tab bar and the tab menu
Creating new tabs
Switching between tabs
Closing tabs
Advanced topics involving tabs
Moving tabs
Saving and restoring tabs
6. Marks (the lite edition)
What it is?
Restrictions
Marks lifespan
7. URL Shortcuts in ELinks
What it does
How it works
Alternative URI rewriting mechanisms
8. The Terminal Setup
Options
Terminal type
Color mode
Switch fonts for line drawing (aka 11m hack)
Restrict frames in cp850/852
Block cursor
Transparency
Text underlining capability
UTF-8 I/O
Character Set
Terminal Configurations
9. Introduction to MIME handling
Handling MIME types, the ELinks way
What are MIME types and why may you want to use them?
Associating files to MIME types
Managing a given MIME type
Specifying the details for a handler
Setting up elinks.conf
Associating a file extension to a MIME type
Defining a handler
Associating a MIME type to a handler
10. Managing External Viewers with Mailcap
A Short Intro to Mailcap
Parameters to Mailcap Entries
Reading of Mailcap Files
Fields
Mailcap Configuration
Some Sample Mailcap Entries
11. Managing remote ELinks instances
Limitations and outstanding issues
Remote Actions
12. The tale of ex-mode
What it is
Configuration directives in exmode
Actions in exmode - or exmode in action?
How to use it
The "but"s
13. ELinks BitTorrent Client
Using the BitTorrent Client
The Resume Dialog
The Download Dialog
14. Scripting ELinks with Lua
Introduction
What is it
Where to get it
What it runs on
Installing
Installing Lua
Installing ELinks
Running ELinks with Lua
Using ELinks with Lua
ELinks Lua additions
Config file
Hooks
Functions
Variables
User protocol
Example recipes
Go to URL on steroids
Expanding ~ (tilde)
Filtering crap
Reading gzipped files
Printing
Deferring to Netscape
Alternative bookmark system
More ideas
15. Scripting ELinks with ECMAScript
Global Object
Global Object Methods
Global Object Properties
ELinks Object
ELinks Object Methods
ELinks Object Properties
ELinks Object Hooks
Cache Object
Cache Object Properties
View-state Object
View-state Object Properties

List of Tables

11.1. Mozilla -remote compatible commands.
11.2. ELinks extensions.