Table of Contents

Name

links - lynx-like alternative character mode WWW browser

Synopsis

links [options] URL

Description

links is a text mode WWW browser, supporting colors, correct table rendering, background downloading, menu driven configuration interface and slim code.

Frames are supported. You can have different file formats associated with external viewers. mailto: and telnet: are supported via external clients.

links can handle local (file://) or remote (http://, ftp:// or https:// if there’s compiled-in SSL support) URLs.

Options

Most options can be set in the user interface or config file, so usually you do not need to care about them.

-anonymous
Restrict links so that it can run on an anonymous account. No local file browsing. No downloads. Executing of viewers is allowed, but user can’t add or modify entries in association table.

-assume-codepage <codepage>
Use the given codepage when the webpage did not specify its codepage. (default: ISO 8859-1)

-async-dns <0>/<1>
Asynchronous DNS resolver on(1) /off(0). Default is on.

-base-session <number>
Linkses are connecting together, forming sessions by default. Normally, there’s only one session with number 0. In this way, you can make him to form more sessions at once. See also -no-connect option.

-download-dir <path>
Default download directory. (default: actual dir)

-download-utime <0>/<1>
Set time of download files on(1) /off(0). Default is off.

-dump
Write a plain-text version of the given HTML document to stdout.

-format-cache-size <num>
Number of formatted document pages cached. (default: 5)

-ftp.anonymous-password <password>
Use this as the password for anonymous ftp sites.

-ftp-proxy <host:port>
Host and port number of the FTP proxy, or blank. (default: blank)

-help
Print a help screen.

-http-bugs.http10 <0>/<1>
Turn use of HTTP/1.0 on(1) /off(0). Default is off.

-http-bugs.allow-blacklist <0>/<1>
Turn blacklist of buggy servers on(1) /off(0). Default is on.

-http-bugs.bug-302-redirect <0>/<1>
Turn broken redirect 302 (violates RFC, but compatible with Netscape) on(1) /off(0). Default is off.

-http-bugs.bug_post-no-keepalive <0>/<1>
Turn no keepalive connection after POST request (for some buggy PHP databases) on(1) /off(0). Default is off.

-http-proxy <host:port>
Host and port number of the HTTP proxy, or blank. (default: blank)

-language <langname>
Language to use in user interface.

-max-connections <max>
Maximum number of concurrent connections. (default: 10)

-max-connections-to-host <max>
Maximum number of concurrent connection to a given host. (default: 2)

-memory-cache-size <Kbytes>
Cache memory in Kilobytes. (default: 1024)

-width <size>
Size of screen in characters, used in combination with -dump. (default: 80)

-no-connect
Runs links as a separate instance - instead of connecting to existing instance. Prevents him to connecting to an existing session. See also -base-session option.

-receive-timeout <sec>
Timeout on receive. (default: 120)

-retries <retry>
Number of retries. (default: 3)

-source
Write the given HTML document in source form to stdout.

-unrestartable-receive-timeout <sec>
Timeout on non restartable connections. (default: 600)

-version
Print the links version number and exit.

Navigation Keys

You may optionally prefix each of this keys with a number, telling its repeat count (how much times to do it). You can also re-bind those keys, altough this feature is still in the state of testing, so undocumented. The keys you may use for navigation are:
PGDN
page down
Space
page down
PGUP
page up
b
page up
B
page up
CursorDOWN
next link/down
CursorUP
prev link/up
^INS
copy to clipboard
^C
copy to clipboard
INS
scroll up
^P
scroll up
DEL
scroll down
^N
scroll down
[
scroll left
]
scroll right
HOME
home
END
end of page
CursorRIGHT
enter link/press button
ENTER
enter link/press button
CursorLEFT
go back
d
download link
D
download link
/
search in the page
?
search back in the page
n
find next match
N
find next match backwards
f
zoom actual frame
F
zoom actual frame
^R
reload page
g
go to URL
G
go to the current URL
a
add a new bookmark
A
add a new bookmark
s
bookmark manager
S
bookmark manager
q
quit
Q
quit
=
document information
|
header information
\
toggle HTML source/rendered view
*
toggle display of images
TAB
next frame
ESC
menu/escape
F9
menu
F10
file menu

Editing Keys

The following keys can be used while editing a line/jumping to a URL:
CursorRIGHT
move right
CursorLEFT
move left
HOME
jump to the beginning
^A
jump to the beginning
END
jump to the end
^E
jump to the end
^INS
copy to clipboard
^B
copy to clipboard
^X
cut to clipboard
^V
paste from clipboard
ENTER
enter line
BACKSPACE
delete back character
^H
delete back character
DEL
delete character
^D
delete character
^U
delete from beginning of the line
^K
delete to the end of the line
^W
auto complete

line

Environment

CONFIG_DIR
The location of ".links/"

WWW_HOME
Homepage location (as in lynx )

LINKS_XTERM
The command to run when selecting "File/New window" and if DISPLAY is defined (default "xterm -e")

LINKS_TWTERM
The command to run when selecting "File/New window" and if TWDISPLAY is defined (default "twterm -e")

SHELL
Used for "File/OS Shell" menu

COMSPEC
Used for "File/OS Shell" menu in DOS/Windows

Files

~/.links/links.cfg
Per-user config file, automatically created by links. Its format is same as the one of user.cfg.

~/.links/html.cfg
Per-user config file, automatically created by links. It contains HTML rendering options. Its format is same as the one of user.cfg.

~/.links/user.cfg
Per-user config file, not overwritten while saving links configuration. You can add your own options there (e.g. keybindings). Each line consists from option name (same as the command-line one, but without leading dash and with dashes converted to underscores), space, and its value, in quotes if it’s a string. Lines which start with # are considered as comments and skipped.

~/.links/bookmarks
Bookmarks file

~/.links/links.his
Sites

history file

~/.links/socket
Internal links socket for communication between its instances.

Platforms

links is known to work on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, IRIX, HPUX, Digital Unix, AIX, OS/2 and BeOS. Port for Win32 is in state of beta testing.

Bugs

Can’t connect to some FTP servers (Novell, NT). Connection stays in "Request sent" state.

Frames don’t work if there’re more frames with same name. Turn them off in such case.

You can’t upload large files; it takes _lots_ of memory.

You shouldn’t press ’^Z’ when you are in a viewer

Please report any other bugs you find to Mikulas Patocka <mikulas@artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> or to links mailing list <links-list@linuxfromscratch.org>.

License

links is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Author

links was written by Mikulas Patocka <mikulas@artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>. See file AUTHORS in the source tree for a list of people contributing to this project.

The homepage of links can be found at http://links.browser.org/

This manual page was written by Peter Gervai <grin@tolna.net>, using excerpts from a (yet?) unknown links fan for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). Contributions from Francis A. Holop. Extended, clarified and made more up-to-date by Petr Baudis <pasky@ji.cz>.

See Also

lynx(1) , w3m(1) , wget(1)

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