W3M(1) General Commands Manual W3M(1)
NAME
w3m - a text based web browser and pager
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 in-
line graphics in web pages. And whenever w3m's HTML rendering capabili-
ties 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 file-
names.
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 op-
tion -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
-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. (Implemen-
tation 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 "Con-
tent-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
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
-debug DO NOT USE
-o option=value
modify one configuration item with an explicitly given value;
without option=value, equivalent to -show-option
-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.
FILES
~/.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 <http://w3m.sourceforge.net>
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
w3m has incorporated code from several sources. Users have contributed
patches and suggestions over time.
AUTHOR
Akinori ITO <aito@fw.ipsj.or.jp>
w3m 0.5.3 2016-08-06 W3M(1)