w3m - Man Page
a text based web browser and pager
Examples (TL;DR)
Synopsis
w3m [OPTION]... [ file | URL ]...
Description
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.
Arguments
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.
Options
Command line options are introduced with a single “-” character and may take an argument.
General options
- -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
Browser options
- -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
Text pager options
- -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
Data type/encoding options
- -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
Options for data output, followed by immediate exit
- -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
Options for overriding default settings and resources
- -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
Examples
Pager-like usage
- 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
Browser-like usage
- 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'
Filter-like usage
- 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
Start with no input
- Welcome users with a built-in page
$ w3m -v
Environment
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.
Files
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
See Also
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
Acknowledgments
w3m has incorporated code from several sources. Users have contributed patches and suggestions over time.
Author
Referenced By
a2x(1), elinks(1), links2(1), w3mman(1).