1W3M(1) General Commands Manual W3M(1)
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6 w3m - a text based web browser and pager
7
9 w3m [OPTION]... [ file | URL ]...
10
12 w3m is a text based browser which can display local or remote web pages
13 as well as other documents. It is able to process HTML tables and
14 frames but it ignores JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets. w3m can
15 also serve as a pager for text files named as arguments or passed on
16 standard input, and as a general purpose directory browser.
17 w3m organizes its content in buffers or tabs, allowing easy navigation
19 between them. With the w3m-img extension installed, w3m can display
20 inline graphics in web pages. And whenever w3m's HTML rendering capa‐
21 bilities do not meet your needs, the target URL can be handed over to a
22 graphical browser with a single command.
23 For help with runtime options, press “H” while running w3m.
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28 When given one or more command line arguments, w3m will handle targets
29 according to content type. For web, w3m gets this information from
30 HTTP headers; for relative or absolute file system paths, it relies on
31 filenames.
32 With no argument, w3m expects data from standard input and assumes
34 “text/plain” unless another MIME type is given by the user.
35 If provided with no target and no fallback target (see for instance op‐
37 tion -v below), w3m will exit with usage information.
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40 Command line options are introduced with a single “-” character and may
41 take an argument.
42 General options
44 -B with no other target defined, use the bookmark page for startup
45 -H use high-intensity colors
47 -M monochrome display
49 -no-mouse
51 deactivate mouse support
52 -num display each line's number
54 -N distribute multiple command line arguments to tabs. By default,
56 a stack of buffers is used
57 -ppc num
59 width of num pixels per character. Range of 4.0 to 32.0, de‐
60 fault 8.0. Larger values will make tables narrower. (Implemen‐
61 tation not verified)
62 -ppl num
64 height of num pixels per line. Range of 4.0 to 64.0. (Imple‐
65 mentation not verified)
66 -title, -title=TERM
68 use the buffer name as terminal title string. With specified
69 TERM, this sets the title configuration style accordingly
70 -v with no other target defined, welcome users with a built-in page
72 -W toggle wrapping mode in searches
74 -X do not initialize/deinitialize the terminal
76 +num go to line num; only effective for num larger than the number of
78 lines in the terminal
79 Browser options
81 -cols num
82 with stdout as destination; HTML is rendered to lines of num
83 characters
84 -cookie, -no-cookie
86 use stored cookies and accept new ones, or do neither
87 -F render frames
89 -graph, -no-graph
91 use or do not use graphic characters for drawing HTML table and
92 frame borders
93 -header string
95 append string to the HTTP(S) request. Expected to match the
96 header syntax Variable: Value
97 -m Render the body of Usenet messages according to the header “Con‐
99 tent-type”
100 -no-proxy
102 do not use proxy
103 -post file
105 use POST method to upload data defined in file. The syntax to
106 be used is var1=value1[&var2=value2]...
107 -4 IPv4 only. Corresponds to dns_order=4 in configuration files
109 -6 IPv6 only. Corresponds to dns_order=6 in configuration files
111 -insecure
113 use insecure SSL config options, alias for -o ssl_ci‐
114 pher=ALL:eNULL:@SECLEVEL=0 -o ssl_min_version=all -o ssl_for‐
115 bid_method= -o ssl_verify_server=0
116 Text pager options
118 -l num number of lines preserved internally when receiving plain text
119 from stdin (default 10,000)
120 -r use caret notation to display special escape characters (such as
122 ANSI escapes or nroff-style backspaces for bold and underlined
123 characters) instead of processing them
124 -s squeeze multiple blank lines into one
126 -t num set tab width to num columns. No effect on stdout
128 Data type/encoding options
130 -I charset
131 user defined character encoding of input data
132 -O charset
134 user defined character encoding of output data
135 -T type
137 explicit characterization of input data by MIME type
138 Options for data output, followed by immediate exit
140 -dump dump rendered page into stdout. Set implicitly when output is
141 directed to a file or pipe
142 -dump_source
144 dump the page's source code into stdout
145 -dump_head
147 dump response of a HEAD request for a URL into stdout
148 -dump_both
150 dump HEAD, and source code for a URL into stdout
151 -dump_extra
153 dump HEAD, source code, and extra information for a URL into
154 stdout
155 -help show a summary of compiled-in features and command line options
157 -show-option
159 show all available configuration options
160 -version
162 show the version of w3m
163 Options for overriding default settings and resources
165 -bookmark file
166 use file instead of the default bookmark.html file
167 -config file
169 use file instead of the default configuration file
170 -o option=value
172 modify one configuration item with an explicitly given value;
173 without option=value, equivalent to -show-option
174 -debug use debug mode (only for debugging)
176 -reqlog
178 log headers of HTTP communication in file ~/.w3m/request.log
179
181 Pager-like usage
182 Combine snippets of HTML code and preview the page
183 $ cat header.html footer.html | w3m -T text/html
184 Compare two files using tabs
186 $ w3m -N config.old config
187 Browser-like usage
189 Display web content in monochrome terminal
190 $ w3m -M http://w3m.sourceforge.net
191 Display embedded graphics
193 $ w3m -o auto_image=TRUE http://w3m.sourceforge.net
194 Display content from Usenet
196 $ w3m -m nntp://news.aioe.org/comp.os.linux.networking
197 Upload data for a URL using the POST method
199 $ w3m -post - http://example.com/form.php <<<'a=0&b=1'
200 Filter-like usage
202 Convert an HTML file to plain text with a defined line length
203 $ w3m -cols 40 foo.html > foo.txt
204 Output the bookmarks page as text with an appended list of links
206 $ w3m -B -o display_link_number=1 > out.txt
207 Conversion of file format and character encoding
209 $ w3m -T text/html -I EUC-JP -O UTF-8 < foo.html > foo.txt
210 Start with no input
212 Welcome users with a built-in page
213 $ w3m -v
214
216 w3m recognises the environment variable WWW_HOME as defining a fallback
217 target for use if it is invoked without one.
218 If the W3M_DIR environment variable is set to a directory name, w3m
220 will store its user files there instead of under the ~/.w3m directory.
221
223 The default locations of some files are listed below. These locations
224 can be altered via the W3M_DIR environment variable.
225 ~/.w3m/bookmark.html
227 default bookmark file
228 ~/.w3m/config
230 user defined configuration file; overrides /etc/w3m/config
231 ~/.w3m/cookie
233 cookie jar; written on exit, read on launch
234 ~/.w3m/history
236 browser history - visited files and URLs
237 ~/.w3m/keymap
239 user defined key bindings; overrides default key bindings
240 ~/.w3m/mailcap
242 external viewer configuration file
243 ~/.w3m/menu
245 user defined menu; overrides default menu
246 ~/.w3m/mime.types
248 MIME types file
249 ~/.w3m/mouse
251 user defined mouse settings
252 ~/.w3m/passwd
254 password and username file
255 ~/.w3m/pre_form
257 contains predefined values to fill recurrent HTML forms
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260 README and example files are to be found in the doc directory of your
261 w3m installation. Recent information about w3m may be found on the
262 project's web pages at ⟨http://w3m.sourceforge.net⟩
263
265 w3m has incorporated code from several sources. Users have contributed
266 patches and suggestions over time.
267
269 Akinori ITO ⟨aito@fw.ipsj.or.jp⟩
270w3m 0.5.3 2016-08-06 W3M(1)