emacs-w3m

    NEWS: 2019-01-31: emacs-w3m has launched an official git repository on
                      github https://github.com/emacs-w3m/emacs-w3m ,
                      including support there for project-specific wiki.

Description

emacs-w3m, also known on this wiki as WThreeM, is an emacs internet browser and interface to the w3m text browser. It supports tabs (ie. multiple buffers), images, https, cookies, history, bookmarks, asynchronous operation, session management, a form of “filtering” similar to firefox’s greasemonkey, and more. Note that it has nothing to do with the w3 or the eww web browsers written entirely in EmacsLisp. Using the Emacs interface to w3m is much faster than using w3, since the parsing and displaying is done by the external w3m process.

Though you can download an old static release of emacs-w3m from its homepage at http://emacs-w3m.namazu.org, please note that since 2005 the project has operated on a rolling-release model, based upon its CVS repository, and as of 2019-01-31, its github repository (https://github.com/emacs-w3m/emacs-w3m). There also exists a convenient un-official third-party mirror on MELPA, allowing you to directly install the package.

There are English and Japanese language mailing-lists. Their archives are available at the website. The lists are also archived and gatewayed on Gmane, as gmane.emacs.w3m. Emacs-w3m comes with a manual in TexInfo format, from which a normal, comfortable section of the manual in InfoMode form will be built by the installation process.

If you are building from cvs, be aware of one gotcha: if the first emacs executable in your $PATH is a symlink, then the directory containing that symlink will be used as the base install location by make install. Fix: either change $PATH to expose the actual installed emacs binary first, at least for the duration of the configure/make/install procedure, or hand-edit the Makefile created by running ./configure.

Basic Setup

 (setq browse-url-browser-function 'w3m-browse-url)
 (autoload 'w3m-browse-url "w3m" "Ask a WWW browser to show a URL." t)
 ;; optional keyboard short-cut
 (global-set-key "\C-xm" 'browse-url-at-point)

GUI Desktop Integration

If your GUI desktop complies with the freedesktop standard, you can have all your GUI programs open links in emacs-w3m instead of, say, firefox or chrome. Most linux desktops are compliant (eg. gnome, kde, xfce, lxde)

1. Create a file emacs-w3m.desktop. Here’s an example: 

[Desktop Entry]
Name=emacs-w3m
GenericName=Emacs Web Browser
X-GNOME-FullName=Emacs w3m Web Browser

Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Comment=Using emacsclient
NoDisplay=true

Exec=emacsclient --eval "(browse-url (replace-regexp-in-string \"'\" \"\" \"%u\"))"

Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=firefox-esr
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
StartupWMClass=Firefox-esr
StartupNotify=true
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/unknown;x-scheme-handler/about;text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;

2. Save your emacs-w3m.desktop file in an appropriate place. If you want the change to be applied system-wide for all users, that would be /usr/local/share/application/. For a single user, the correct location would be ~/.local/share/applications.

3. run xdg-settings set default-web-browser emacs-w3m.desktop.

Other WThreeM pages

CategoryExternalUtilities CategoryHypermedia