User abelenkiposted in the russian part of the forum about using Lynx to view html files.
I thought I'd make a tutorial in english using his post as a starting point, so, first of all, thanx abelenki for the idea.
Here are the programs that I've found that can display html files in text mode (there might be more)
Note : the "original" text browser, Linux users know it very well Latest version : lynx2-8-7 (lynx2.8.8dev.15 as development release) Home page: http://lynx.isc.org/ Download page(s): http://www.paehl.com/open_source/?TextB ... or_the_WWW (contains versions: 2.87 and 2.88dev9)
You can also check abelenski's post for more info and a configuration set to make lynx look more like FAR
Pros: - the original text browser
- supports most HTML settings
- supports color styles Cons: - cannot change the shortcut keys, so you'll need to learn a new set of keys when using lynx (for example, to exit press q then y (or Shift+Q for quick exit))
- last version from 2011
Pros: - the shortcuts can be customized (so it's easier to make it behave like FAR, thus it integrates better with FAR)
- displays tables from HTML files, including borders, very nice if you use a converter to convert XLS files to html Cons: nothing to report yet
Note : i couldn't find any Win32 package, it can be compiled under Cygwin, but I couldn't be bothered to try it Latest version : 0.5.3 Home page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/w3m/ Download page(s): none that include windows binary
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From the above 4 programs I'll describe how to set up eLinks to be used as viewer for htm/html files,
Step1 download the latest version you can find (i could only find version 0.11.6 stable and version 0.12pre3 beta), Step2 Extract it to a folder of your choice, for example %FARHOME%\utils\eLinks Step3 Download the attached eLinks.cfg.zip archive and extract it in the folder where you've put elinks in Step4 Make a new file association in FAR (F9->Commands->File Associations) and add
- to the "file mask" :
╔══════════════════════ Edit file associations ══════════════════════╗
║ A file mask or several file masks: ║
║ *.htm, *.html ↓║
║ Description of the association: ║
║ View with eLinks ║
╟────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ [x] Execute command (used for Enter): ║
║ ║
║ [x] Execute command (used for Ctrl-PgDn): ║
║ ║
║ [x] View command (used for F3): ║
║ "%FARHOME%\utils\eLinks\elinks.cmd" "!.!" ║
║ [x] View command (used for Alt-F3): ║
║ ║
║ [x] Edit command (used for F4): ║
║ ║
║ [x] Edit command (used for Alt-F4): ║
║ ║
╟────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ { OK } [ Cancel ] ║
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
Evrika, now, whenever you press the F3 key in FAR when you're on a htm/html file you'll view it in eLinks
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For those interested, here is the contents of the files from the archive (you can create them yourself) :
##############################
# Global History
# document.history.global.enable [0|1] (default: 1)
# Enable global history ("history of all pages visited").
set document.history.global.enable=0
##############################
# Keyboard : Far like shortcuts
bind "main" "F2" = "toggle-wrap-text"
bind "main" "F3" = "really-quit"
bind "main" "F10" = "quit"
bind "main" "Left" = "scroll-left"
bind "main" "Right" = "scroll-right"
bind "main" "Up" = "scroll-up"
bind "main" "Down" = "scroll-down"
bind "main" "F7" = "search"
bind "main" "Shift-F7" = "find-next"
bind "main" "Alt-F7" = "find-next-back"
The above configuration file disables the global history (so eLinks doesn't save what file it opened) and adds a few shortcuts to make eLinks behave like Far's viewer.
You can add your own settings, for more info read the documentation if you want to know what to write in this file.
Note : if you combine the text mode browser with file converters, you can make FAR display many types of files (for example you can convert XLS files to HTML or PDF to HTML and view the text in FAR retaining text coloring)
Note2: there is also a plugin called Hyperview that can display htm/html files, sadly it hasn't been developed in quite some time and it has some bugs (for example it cannot display tables and sometimes it doesn't decode the html file correctly).
P.S. I've tested the above commands with FAR3, in theory it should work with version 1.75 and 2 too, but i didn't test them.
P.S.2 if you know of any other text mode browser that works in windows, let me know and I'll add it here.
Sorry for writing in English in the Russian forums, but i don't speak Russian and don't trust online translators.
"There’s no teacher who can teach anything new He can just help us to remember the things we always knew." ~ ENIGMA