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ELinks Manual ($Revision: 1.2.2.2 $) | J. Fonseca
| P. Baudis
| L. Monin
| M. Masters
| J. González
| May 2, 2005

ELinks Manual for version 0.10

### Abstract

Welcome! This is the entry point for the current humble ELinks manual. It is by no way complete, it is not even very homogeneous and it should be eventually superseded by a complete ELinks Book, which you can find in the book/ subdirectory in a very prenatal stage.

There was a complete (or from a large part complete) manual for the Links 0.82 once, you can still find it at: http://links.sourceforge.net/docs/manual-0.82-en/index.html While large parts of it do not apply anymore, you may still find some relevant information there.

You may also refer to the manual page for a very quick reference, however little effort is done to keep it always up-to-date. On the other hand, the built-in documentation is _always_ up-to-date. Check the --long-help and --config-help ELinks command-line arguments.

Hold harmless the author, and any lawful use is allowed.

### Table of Contents

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### 1. Introduction to the World of ELinks

The goal of this introduction is to explain the basic concepts in ELinks, give an overview of how to get started and serve as an entry point to many of the (undocumented) features of ELinks. It won't tell you all the details, but should hopefully give you an idea of how things work and make it possible for you to even figure out how to go further.

Allthough ELinks is text-based, the user interface has many of interaction methods normally found in graphical environments. There are menus, dialogs with buttons and hierarchic list boxes with folders. Care has been taken to make the interaction between various dialogs consistent, so the controls will quickly become familiar to new users.

The user interface can be controlled using both mouse and keyboard, but currently it is only possible to configure keybindings. Looking back, the key-controls have been more advanced than the mouse support, but during the 0.10 prereleases the mouse support has been much improved. You will now find find stuff like contextual menus when right-clicking in different document zones.

#### 1.1 Overview of the User Interface

The main user interface of ELinks consists of the document view and dialog bars displaying the information such as the title of the currently viewed document, all opened tabs and the browsing status. The 3 bars are elaborated further below.

The most important dialogs that you will meet include the Main, Link and Tab menus and the different managers. The menus serve as entry points to the actions available from different contexts, while the managers let you check the state and control the various subsystems, such as loaded cookies and the global history. The utility menus and the manager tools are investigated further below.

The document viewer in ELinks provides a feature-rich set of ways to browse documents. That is, multiple options exist for navigating, searching and displaying documents and you will hopefully figure in time what works best for you. The basic browsing possibilities are presented below.

ELinks is highly configurable, so if there is something that you would like to change, it is most likely possible. The best overview of the many options are given in the elinks.conf(5) man page. Keybindings are discussed in the elinkskeys(5) man page. It is not always up-to-date, so you should also check the keybinding manager and the overview of all the configured keybindings given in the Help -> Keys dialog. The Keys dialogs serves as a good introduction to the most common keybindings.

#### 1.2 The Title, Tab and Status bar

The title bars main purpose is to display the title of the current document. Documents bigger than can be displayed with the current screen size are divided into subpages. In this case the current document position is indicated in the far right of the title bar as a suffix to the actual document title. The syntax is: ( current-subpage / total-subpages ), an example is "(4/9)" that indicates the 4th subpage of 9 subpages.

The tab bar by default is only visible when 2 or more tabs are open. It is divided into slots containing the trimmed title of the tabs' loaded document. Between each tab is a separator. The current tab is highlighted and all tabs that has not been viewed after being loaded are highlighted as fresh. Tabs are explained in details in the tabs.txt file.

The status bar has multiple purposes. Most of the time it will contain the URI (and title) of the currently selected link. If a link is followed, connection information is shown in the status bar. When using cursor routing, the status bar will show the coordinates of the cursor when a link is not followed.

#### 1.3 The Main, Link and Tab Menus

The Main Menu gives you access to many of the features of ELinks via submenus and serves as a good entry point for performing actions on the different objects of interest, such as links, documents and tabs. The Link menu and Tab menus are more specialized and targeted to a specific context, such as link handling or managing the tab bar. Actually, the Link Menu is accessible from the Main Menu as a submenu.

Once you have familiarized yourself with the menus, you will have a good chance at gradually learning the most common keybinding, since all the configured keybindings are shown as right aligned text. Menu entries can also be quickly accessed using hotkeys. Hotkeys appear highlighted in the menu entry text. For example the key-combo "Alt-v i" will open the document info dialog accessible from the View sub menu in the Main menu.

#### 1.4 The Managers

The managers let you control the state of subsystems, such as cookies and the global history. They are accessible from the Tools or Setup submenu in the Main Menu. The managers consists of an area showing a hierarchic listbox and buttons at the bottom. Below, a view of the cookie manager is shown.

    +------------------------- Cookie manager -------------------------+
    |                                                                  |
    |   [-]- bugzilla.elinks.or.cz                                     |
    |    |    |-- BUGLIST                                              |
    |    |    `-- LASTORDER                                            |
    |   [+]- kerneltrap.org                                            |
    |   [+]-*dictionary.reference.com                                  |
    |   [+]-*bjork.com                                                 |
    |   [-]- www.google.com                                            |
    |         `-- PREF                                                 |
    |                                                                  |
    |                                                                  |
    |                                                                  |
    |                                                                  |
    |   [ Info ]  [ Add ]  [ Edit ]  [ Delete ]  [ Save ]  [ Close ]   |
    +------------------------------------------------------------------+

Each item is either a folder or a leaf. A folder is displayed with a "[-]" or "[+]" before the name telling whether the folder is currently open or closed. Nested items are displayed indented compared to the folder they are nested in. In the cookie manager example above "bjork.com" is a folder and "PREF" is a leaf.

Items can be "marked", which makes it possible to select a group of items and perform an action on them, such as deleting all marked items. If any item has been marked the currently selected item is ignored when performing the action. Marked items are displayed with an asterics ('*') prefixing the name.

The buttons make it possible to perform actions either on selected or marked items or on all items in the manager. Buttons named "Clear" and "Save" are performed on all items; "Clear" will delete all items and "Save" will update the runtime state file associated with the manager in the ~/.elinks/ directory. Most buttons presses will query you before completing the action.

At any time, both the currently selected item and button are highlighted. The same goes for marked items. Most manager dialogs also maintains the state, so that when you reopen the manager later it will have the same items selected and the same folders opened or closed.

The basic default controls for managers are the following:

Keys | Action
--- | ---
Up/Down | Select the item above/below.
'*' | Toggle marking of a item.
Space | Open and close folders.
Left/Right | Select the button to the left/right.
Home/End | Select the first/last item.
Enter | Press the currently selected button.
Esc | Close the manager dialog.

Some managers also supports searching, either by pressing the "[ Search ]" button or by pressing '/'. By searching the empty string, all hidden items from the previous search will be shown again.

#### 1.5 Navigation

ELinks provides various ways to navigate documents. Depending on how documents are structured, it can be a great help to change navigation style. The navigation styles can roughly be divided into page-oriented, link-oriented and screen-oriented. They overlap in many ways, so this separation is mostly used as a mean to present them.

#### 1.5.1 Page-Oriented Navigation

This involves scrolling documents horizontally and vertically. Documents can be scrolled page-wise, where the next or previous subpage will be displayed. It is also possible to scroll documents in steps, either line-wise (vertically) or column-wise (horizontally). The step size can be configured and by default is 2 lines and 8 columns. Alternatively, whole documents can be scrolled to the start or the end.

The basic default controls:

Keys | Action
--- | ---
Insert/Delete | Scroll up/down line-wise. (vertically)
PageUp/PageDown | Scroll up/down page-wise.
'['/']' | Scroll left/right column-wise. (horizontally)
Home/End | Scroll to the start/end of the document.

#### 1.5.2 Link-Oriented Navigation

For hypertext documents, access to the links makes it more practical to navigate by jumping between links in the document. There are two ways to do this; either you can move between links relationally or by number. Using relational link navigation it is possible to focus the next/previous link or move in a directional manner to the link in a certain direction such as left/right/up/down.

In order to navigate using link numbers, you have to first toggle link numbering on; this will prefix all links with a number using the notation [number]. "[23]" indicates link number 23. When link numbering is enabled, pressing any number key will pop up a "Go to link"-dialog where the complete link number can be entered. By pressing Enter the entered link number will be focused, but only if it is a valid link number.

Note: it is also possible to jump to links by searching the link text; check the documentation on searching.

The basic default controls:

Keys | Action
--- | ---
Up/Down | Move to the previous/next link.
'.' | Toggle link numbering.
Enter/Right | Follow the current focused link.

No keys are by default configured for directional link navigation.

#### 1.5.3 Position-Oriented Navigation

Positional navigation (sorry, bad word) uses the either the position of the cursor or the mouse click to navigate the document. If you are familiar with the w3m text-browser you will be familiar with cursor routing. Basicly, you move the cursor around -- kind of like a mouse -- in the document area of the user interface. When the cursor is over a link, the link is highlighted, and when the cursor moves outside the current document view, it will cause the document view to scroll.

The possibilities when using the mouse to navigate the document depend on what terminal you are using. In some terminals, it is possible to scroll by using the mouse wheel. Scrolling is however also possible by clicking in the edge areas of the document view. Highlighting links can be done by clicking on a link but waiting to release the mouse button until the link is no longer under the mouse pointer.

No keys are by default configured for cursor routing.

#### 1.5.4 Forms

The status bar will indicate the type and name of the field.

> Input text/Password fields:
>   These will be displayed as "________". Note that passwords will be obscured using "*" characters. Status bar will display something like "Text field, name q", or "Password field, name password" for password fields.
> Textarea boxes:
>   These will be displayed as multiple lines consisting of "_". Status bar will display something like "Text area, name comment"
> Buttons:
>   These will be displayed as "[ Go ]". Status bar will display something like "Submit form to ...", "Post form to ..." for submit buttons.
> Checkboxes:
>   These will be displayed as "[ ]" or "[X]". Status bar will display something like "Checkbox, name c, value 1". To set one just press ENTER on it.
> Radio buttons:
>   These will be displayed as "( )" or "(X)". Status bar will display something like "Radio button, name radio1". To set one, you may use ENTER.
> Select lists:
>   These will be displayed as "[first item____]". Note that if multiple attribute is used, these are displayed as a group of checkboxes instead. Status bar will display something like "Select field, name list" To select one entry, press ENTER, then navigate using UP/DOWN, then press ENTER again.

#### 1.6 Searching

Searching is by default available by pressing '/'. This will open a search dialog with a input text field for entering the search terms and checkboxes to control how searching is performed. You can indicate whether matching should be case sensitive and whether regular expressions or normal searching should be used.

It is also possible to make an incremental search, also called type-ahead searching. You can search either the whole document text or only link text. The latter can be useful if you see a link deep inside a page and want to get to it quickly.

Matches of the search term will be high-lighted. After having performed document text search all matches will be high-lighted. To get rid of this high-lighting you have to ``search for the empty string'', that is open a search dialog and just press Enter in the input field.

Previous search words are saved in the search history, so they can easily b found and used later. Browsing the history will replace the current entered search terms.

The basic default controls for searching are the following:

keys | action
--- | ---
'/' | Open search dialog
'?' | Open search dialog for backwards searching
'#' | Start incremental link text search
'#/' | Start incremental document search
'n'/'N' | Show next/previous match
Tab | Show next match (only for incremental searching)
Up/Down | Insert previous/next search word from history (only when the input field is selected)

#### 1.7 Hints and Odd Features

Note: This is still a work in progress and from here on an below everything is marked TODO!

- Numerical action prefixes. Example: 3<Down> jumps down three links.
- How to move forward in the document history ('u').
- Toggling color modes, plain/html and image link rendering.
- Link numbering.
- Insert mode in text-input form-fields.
- Menu searching.

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### 2. The Ultimate Bookmarks Guide

Glad to see you again, mortal. Now, we are going to learn about bookmarks - how to use them, how to maintain them, and also something more about the file formats and maybe even about the code structure later. But don't fear, we won't burden you with it, just stop reading when you already know enough.

In order to read this, you need some common sense, the ability to start ELinks and some idea about what's a Web document, a URL address and knowledge like that.

If we ever mention some keys here, please note that you can rebind almost any action to another key which you like more - then you must obviously imagine your own key in place of that. Below, we will list all actions, options and so on related to bookmarks. We won't tell you how to rebind the keys, though; another document will take on that.

Somewhat out-of-order, a very frequent FAQ: In order to move bookmarks around, you need to mark them first - press Insert or '*' (if you use the default keymap) to do that.

#### 2.1 The Bookmark Manager

Basically, almost everything is going on in the so-called bookmark manager. That's a special dialog window, which contains a listing of all the bookmarks you ever told ELinks to remember and it lets you to do with them anything you would ever want to do with them.

You launch the bookmark manager by pressing the 's' key in standby (standard) mode. You should see a big empty space (bookmarks will slowly appear there as you will add them) and couple of buttons shriveling at the bottom. So, as a start, move with the right (or left; both will do) arrow to the button "Add bookmark" and fill in the input fields it offers to you. I mean, you can type something like "ELinks homepage" to the first field, then move down by e.g. the down arrow and fill "http://elinks.or.cz/" to the second field. Then, bravely press enter and watch the bookmark popping up at the top of the vast area reserved for bookmarks.

Repeat this step few times. Now, you can move between bookmarks by the up and down arrow, jump to the location any of them points to by the Goto button, change it by the Edit button, delete it with the Delete button and so on. When you'll become bored, press the escape button and you're free again!

#### 2.2 The Ancient Forests

It's not very convenient to have all the bookmarks mixed up - soon, you will get lost in them. Thus, in ELinks you can categorize them to various folders, subfolders, subsubfolders and so on, then you can expand and back enfold them and so on.

In order to create your first folder, use the button "Add folder" and fill the first input field. You can safely ignore the URL field, ELinks will do the same. *POOF* and you see it - it has that strange [+] or [-] thing there. If it has [+] near, it's enfolded, while when it has [-] near, it is expanded, while you can change that by pressing the spacebar.

In order to add a bookmark into a folder, move on the item of the folder (it must be expanded) or onto any bookmark inside of the folder and simply do the usual "Add bookmark" job. You can also move the bookmarks around, obviously. You need to first mark all the bookmarks (or even folders) you want to move using the Insert or '*' key--asterisk will appear near of all marked bookmarks--and then move to where you want to have the stuff moved to, and press the "Move" button.

Separators can be inserted as well, using "Add separator" button, or by entering a special bookmark with "-" as title and no url.

#### 2.3 Searching needle in the haycock

Of course, you can search in the bookmarks. Just use the "Find" button - for convenience, you have the current document's URL and title pre-filled there, and for convenience only up-up-enter-down-down sequence is enough to have the playground clean. Then, just fill a substring of what you are looking for, and the bookmarks will be filtered so that only the matching ones are shown. (Actually, currently it will not be filtered but the cursor will only jump to the first matching bookmark below the current cursor position - and it will NOT wrap around. The exact behaviour changes time by time and hasn't been stabilized yet.)

#### 2.4 File formats

ELinks supports two bookmark formats: the native format and a generic bookmark exchange format called XBEL. Each of those formats has its pros and cons, which we shall discuss below. You can switch between then by changing the option bookmarks.file_format.

However, first please note that ELinks CANNOT read Links bookmarks directly. Importing Links-0.9x (or Links-1.x) bookmarks is easy - it is just matter of changing all the '|' (pipe) characters to tabs. There is a script for that in the contrib/conv/ directory. Importing Links-2.xx bookmarks is not so easy; in fact, the scribe knows of no way of doing that at the time of writing this, so this is up to you to figure out (if you do, please tell us so that we can add it here). Perhaps you might find a way to convert Links2 bookmarks to the XBEL format, which can then be loaded in ELinks.

#### 2.4.1 Native file format

This is the preferred bookmarks format, which is also used by default. The bookmarks file is ~/.elinks/bookmarks, in a simple format:

    	<name> '\t' <url> [ '\t' <depth> ['\t' <flags>]] '\n'

'\t' represents a tab character, '\n' represents a newline character. [Square brackets] denote optional parts. The <name> and <url> fields should be obvious. <depth> contains the depth level of the entry - by that, ELinks can unambiguously figure out the bookmarks hierarchy:

    	Bookmarks structure:                                Depth:
    	 ,-- The Pasky's C Bestiary                         0
    	[-]- Wonderful things                               0
    	 |    |-- Christmas Carol in l33tsp34k by L.M.      1
    	 |   [-]- Beautiful Potato Camera Shots             1
    	 |   [-]- Gallery of Scary Images of Jonas Fonseca  1
    	 |         |-- Jonas torturing gdb                  2
    	 |        [-]- Urgh                                 2
    	 |         |    `-- Jonas consuming Tofu            3
    	 |         `-- Jonas with crashed ELinks            2
    	 |-- Slides from Witek's hack-patch show            0
    	 `-- Miciah's English Grammar Spellbook             0

<flags> is a string of characters. Currently, two flags are supported:

> E:
>   This folder is currently expanded. (No effect for non-folders.)
> F:
>   This entry is a folder. The <url> part is usually empty.

Separators: these are special bookmarks with "-" as title and no url.

Pros: Naturally, ELinks handles the native format the best, easiest and most reliably.

Cons: It is unlikely that you could use the native format anywhere else than in ELinks.

To use the native format, set bookmarks.file_format = 0.

#### 2.4.2 XBEL file format

The XBEL file format support was added at some point during the 0.4 development by Fabio Boneli. It has never been complete and has plenty of troubles, but generally, it works at the basic level. The bookmarks file is ~/.elinks/bookmarks.xbel (thanks to a different filename, you can have both XBEL and native bookmarks saved in your ~/.elinks directory).

We shall not describe the XBEL file format here, http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/topics/xbel/ is the authoritative resource on that. It also contains list of some of the applications supporting the format. Basically, you will be probably able to convert from/to the XBEL format to/from most of the other widely used formats, so this way you can import your bookmarks to ELinks from basically anything.

Pros: XBEL is the gateway to the rest of the bookmarks world.

Cons: The support for XBEL is incomplete and there are known bugs. Especially, national character sets are basically not supported, so ELinks will most likely get it wrong if you have any non-ASCII characters in your bookmarks. Generally, the XBEL support should be considered experimental and you shouldn't rely on it. It *could* trash your XBEL bookmarks file so make regular backups.

To use the XBEL format, set bookmarks.file_format = 1.

#### 2.4.3 Usage hints

As already noted above, probably the best usage pattern is to use XBEL for importing/exporting your bookmarks to/from ELinks and the native format for regular operation. Of course, if you want to synchronize your bookmarks in ELinks and some other XBEL-supporting gadget and you are brave, you can use XBEL as your exclusive bookmark format - the choice is upon you.

Regarding the bookmarks synchronization, there is one important note. ELinks saves your bookmarks each time you added one through the 'a' shortcut (add-bookmark action) or when closing the bookmarks manager if you made any changes or when quitting ELinks. However, ELinks reads your bookmarks only _ONCE_, during the startup. This behaviour may change in the future (tell us if you need a way for ELinks to re-read the bookmarks file), but this is how it is done now.

Actually, you may now ask "So how do I convert bookmarks between the two formats?". It is quite easy. ELinks simply follows the current value of bookmarks.file_format whenever loading/saving the bookmarks.

So, e.g. if you normally use the native format but you want the bookmarks to be saved in the XBEL format once, change bookmarks.file_format to 1, then cause the bookmarks to be resaved (e.g. by doing some simple change, like adding a trailing space to some bookmark's title or so), then change the bookmarks.file_format value back to 0.

It is a little more complicated if you normally use the native format but you want to import bookmarks from the XBEL format once. You again change bookmarks.file_format to 1, then cause the bookmarks to be reloaded. That involves saving the configuration, quitting ELinks _completely_ (that means closing/killing all instances of it you have running), then restarting it and changing bookmarks.file_format to 0. Then save the configuration again and cause ELinks to resave the bookmarks.

Agreed, this all strange dances are quite clumsy, likely some simple wizard-like interface for switching the bookmarks formats will be introduced in the future. So far, we have had no reports from our users that anyone wants to switch their bookmarks format frequently, so this is not too high on our TODO list. So be sure to tell us if you would like this process to be simplified rather sooner than later.

TOC

### 3. The Wonders of Tabbed Browsing

In this information age with our stream of consciousness constantly being dispersed by links to different resources on the Net, it is a challenge to keep track of where you are going. The need for being able access several pages in parallel arises. Tabbed browsing gives you an easy way to browse multiple sites in parallel.

If you are not already familiar with the concept of tabbed browsing you can think of a tab as a separate browsing context with its own history and the various other browsing state information, like search word and document loading. Whenever you stumble upon a link to a document that you want to follow without leaving the current document, you can open it in a new tab. This makes it possible to more easily jump between pages on the Net and removes the need for running more than one ELinks to do that.

Options related to tabs are located under ``User Interface -> Window Tabs'' in the option manager. In the configuration file the naming prefix is ``ui.tabs''.

Tabbed browsing has been supported since version 0.9.0 and is fairly complete. The documentation on tabs is therefore divided into two chapters: a general introduction and an introduction to advanced topics.

#### 3.1 Introduction to the basic actions involving tabs

#### 3.1.1 The tab bar and the tab menu

The current state of all opened tabs are displayed in the tab bar. The tab bar will by default become visible when more than one tab is open, but this is configurable. For each open tab, the document title will be shown, possibly truncated. The current tab is highlighted. The tab bar will also display a load meter for tabs that are loading documents. Finally, any tab that has not been selected since its document was loaded will be marked as ``fresh'' by using a different coloring scheme.

The tab menu gives access to tab specific actions along with some other useful document specific actions. So even if you haven't configured keybindings for all actions, chances are you will find it in the tab menu. It is by default opened by pressing 'e'.

#### 3.1.2 Creating new tabs

When creating new tabs, it is possible to specify whether to create the tab and make it the current active tab or if the tab is to be created ``in the background''--that is, without it taking over the focus.

Tabs can be created either with or without specifying a desired first document to load. That is, you can open links or submitted forms in a new tab or just open a new tab. Depending on your configuration, the latter will load the configured homepage in the newly created tab or simply leave the tab blank with no loaded document.

By default, 't' will open a new tab and 'T' will open the current link in a new backgrounded tab. You can configure keybindings for opening a new tab in the background and opening the current link as the active tab.

#### 3.1.3 Switching between tabs

By default, it is possible to switch between tabs by using '<' and '>' to select the previous and next tab. When currently positioned at the leftmost tab and switching to the previous tab the switching between tabs will perform a wrap-around so that the rightmost tab will be selected. The wrap-around behaviour is configurable.

#### 3.1.4 Closing tabs

Tabs can by default be closed by pressing 'c'. It is possible to optionally have a confirmation dialog pop up when closing a tab to avoid accidental closing. To complement closing of the current tab, it is also possible to close all tabs but the current one. No key is by default configured for this; the tab menu, however, provides this ability.

Note: downloads initiated from a tab are in no way tied to that tab, so tabs can be closed while the download will be unaffected.

#### 3.2 Advanced topics involving tabs

#### 3.2.1 Moving tabs

Newly created tabs are always positioned as the rightmost tab, but it is possible to move the current tab either to the left or the right. The default keybindings have them bound to Alt-< and Alt->. Note, however, that there are problems recognizing those kaybindings when using XTerm, so you might want to rebind them.

#### 3.2.2 Saving and restoring tabs

Several features use bookmarks to save tabs; they will create a folder and bookmark therein the currently displayed document of each tab:

- You can explicitly command all tabs to be bookmarked. This will ask you for a folder name in which the tabs will be bookmarked.
- At startup and shutdown tabs can automatically be bookmarked in order to save and restore the browsing state. Note that when restoring, all history information will be gone. It is possible to configure both tab saving and restoring via options in ``UI -> Sessions''.
- As a mean of crash protection, tabs can periodically be saved so that it is later possible to reconstruct opened tabs. In case of a clean shutdown periodically saved tabs will be removed.

TOC

### 4. Marks (the lite edition)

So, were you ever reading this huge 300-pages specification heavily cross-referencing itself, jumping around and getting a headache when looking for the place where you stopped reading the last time?

Were you doing something similar in C code, but praising *vi* for document marks?

ELinks can do them, too! For vim non-users:

#### 4.1 What it is?

When you place a "document mark" (just "mark" from now on), you place an _invisible_ anchor at the current position in the document. You can place several such marks --- each mark is identified by a single character (any reasonable character will do). Then, you can just happily browse around aimlessly (but see below) and when in the same document again, you can return to any of the marks in the file again. That will restore your position in the file at the time of placing the mark.

You can place a mark by the "m" key followed by the mark character. You can go to a mark by the "'" (apostrophe) key followed by the mark character. E.g., you can place a mark named "a" in the file by pressing "ma", then return to it anytime later by typing "'a". You can of course change those shortcuts at any time to anything you wish in the keybindings manager.

Short summary: you can place a mark (e.g. 'z') in a document by pressing "mz" and then go back to it anytime later by pressing "'z".

#### 4.2 Restrictions

To make a good start, one non-restriction comes first. The document marks are local to the document. That means you can have a mark "x" in one document and another mark "x" in another document and ELinks won't mind and it will get it right each time.

Now for the restrictions. ALL the document marks are always local to the document. I.e. the vim text editor has an extension that makes the capital-letter marks to be global to the whole program and going to such a mark will make it to open the right document. This is not implemented in ELinks _yet_.

Contrary to vim, ELinks doesn't support numbered marks (jumping to the last n documents in history) nor the special "'" mark (jumping to the last mark). Yet.

There is no way to get a listing of all marks set in a document. Yet.

#### 4.3 Marks lifespan

I already hinted something about another restriction regarding aimless browsing. The lifespan of document marks depends on rather ill-defined and (for an average mortal) mostly non-deterministic technical conditions.

Generally, marks _always_ survive when not moving away from the document or when moving only in the session history (and unhistory). That means, if you go back and the "unback" to the document, you will find your marks safely in place. If you follow a link from the document (or typed an address to the Goto URL dialog) and then go back (by pressing the right arrow or through the File menu), your marks are safe too. These are in fact by far the most common usage cases for the marks, so most of the time it will just work as you expect. That's a good news.

The bad news is that in all other cases, nothing is guaranteed. It might work if you get back to the document by any other means (by following some link or typing its address to the Goto URL dialog), or it might not. It might be possible to achieve two instances of the document inside a single ELinks, each with its own set of marks. However, again, generally it will work as expected - this paragraph serves only as a disclaimer in cases it doesn't. Don't rely on it.

Marks never survive over ELinks restarts. If you quit your ELinks completely and run it again, the marks you placed will be no more. No exceptions. Well. In some cases, it *might* appear that they survived, but that just means you did not quit your ELinks _completely_ --- if you run multiple ELinks instances under a single user on a single system, they "join" together and you must quit (or kill) them all to get rid of the damn thing. But that's a different story.

TOC

### 5. URL Shortcuts in ELinks

One extremely useful and convenient feature on ELinks which is presumably not very well known is so-called URL rewriting. If you give ELinks a URL (by passing it on the command line, through the -remote magic device or most frequently by typing it to the Goto URL dialog), it can mangle it in certain ways before processing it. This mangling is called URI rewriting.

#### 5.1 What it does

The URI rewriting can expand certain URL shortcuts to complete URLs. For example, if you type 'sd' to the Goto URL dialog, it will get rewritten to

    		http://www.slashdot.org/

first, then loaded --- /.'s front page will be displayed.

More so, if you type 'g elinks' to the Goto URL dialog, it will be rewritten to

    		http://www.google.com/search?q=elinks&btnG=Google+Search

and then loaded --- therefore, a Google search for the 'elinks' keyword will ensue. Note that you can separate the 'g' by either a space or a colon, so 'g:elinks' will do the exact same thing.

A large number of those shortcuts is already predefined. You can browse the Protocols :: URI Rewriting :: Dumb/Smart prefixes in the Options Manager for complete listing of already defined shortcuts (press the [Info] button on a shortcut to see what it gets rewritten to). See below for details on how to enable/disable this rewriting and how to define own shortcuts.

#### 5.2 How it works

All the URI rewriting can be controlled by options in the 'protocol.rewrite' options tree.

In the 'sd' case, URI rewriting mechanism called 'dumb prefix' is used. If protocol.rewrite.enable-dumb is true, ELinks looks at the contents of protocol.rewrite.dumb tree, and if it finds option protocol.rewrite.dumb.sd, it will use its value as the target URI.

Therefore, in the general way, if ELinks looks at protocol.rewrite.dumb.<typed_string> and if it exists, it replaces the URI with it. These dumb prefixes can be used as kind of alternative bookmarks - if you want to have a fast access to a certain site and you don't want to spend lengthy seconds navigating in the bookmarks manager, you can just fire up the Goto URL dialog, type the shortcut and there you go.

A dumb prefix can contain '%c', which will be replaced by the URI of the current document. This is used, for example, in the 'arc' dumb-prefix, which provides a shortcut to the Wayback machine at archive.org.

In the 'g' case, a slightly different URI rewriting mechanism called 'smart prefixes' is used. If protocol.rewrite.enable-smart is true, ELinks looks at the contents of protocol.rewrite.smart tree and if it finds option protocol.rewrite.smart.g, it will use its value as the target URI.

The difference is that the smart prefixes can take arguments and reference them in the target URI. As with dumb prefixes, '%c' in the URI means the current address. Additionally, '%s' will be substituted by the whole string following the prefix ('elinks' in the 'g' example above; '%s' is by far the most frequently used expansion), while you can reference individual space-separated arguments with the codes '%0' thru '%9'. Finally, if you want a plain % to the resulting URI, use '%%'.

Note that the prefix searched in the protocol.rewrite.smart tree is everything in the typed address up to the first space or colon (so 'bug:123' and 'bug 123' make no difference). These prefixes are generally useful for searching anything very fast - be it Google ('g:foo', 'gi:foo', 'gr:foo', ...), ELinks Bugzilla bugs ('bug:1234'), RFC database ('cr:foo'), or Czech-English dictionary ('czen:foo'). But only your imagination is the limit.

#### 5.3 Alternative URI rewriting mechanisms

In the past before this was implemented, Lua scripting did the job. And you still have complete control over the URI in the internal scripting goto-url hook. The advantages are clear - you get complete control over the URI and you can do much more interesting things with it (e.g., there is some very advanced CVSweb and Debian packages database URIs prefixes support in the sample Lua hooks file). One disadvantage is clear too - you must have Lua scripting enabled in order to make use of this, and many users don't have Lua installed. Another hidden disadvantage is that the goto-url hook is not triggered all the times when the built-in URI rewriting has its say on the URL. Specifically, the goto-url hook isn't triggered when the URL is passed on the command line.

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### 6. The Terminal Setup

ELinks uses neither (n)curses nor termcap/terminfo, so unless you are using a terminal that is known by ELinks and have a built-in configuration (see below for a list), it might be required that you do a little configuring of how your terminal should be handled. The easiest way to do this is using the Terminal Options dialog located in the Setup submenu of the Main menu.

It is possible to have configurations for multiple terminals as long as the TERM environment variable -- used to distinguish terminals from one another -- is set to something different for each terminal. So be sure to set TERM to different values for two terminals that cannot share the same configuration. For example, always setting TERM to xterm-color can lead to problems if you run ELinks under the Linux console. This is because the Linux console does not support underlining and ELinks will not know that underlined characters will have to be color highlighted so they stand out.

In short, ELinks does not use termcap or terminfo. ELinks uses $TERM, but only to distinguish between terminals in its own configuration. That is, you need only configure your terminal within ELinks: Go to the Setup menu and select Terminal Options. If $TERM is set to 'screen' when you configure ELinks' terminal settings, ELinks will remember to use those settings when $TERM is 'screen'.

#### 6.1 Options

Apart from the last charset option configurable through the Setup -> Character Set submenu in the Main menu, the rest can be configured using the Terminal Options dialog.

#### 6.1.1 Terminal type

It maps roughly to the terminal type, such as Linux console, XTerm, VT100 etc. It matters mostly when drawing frames and borders around dialog windows. As already mentioned, it also turns on certain features which try to compensate for ``missing'' terminal capabilities when drawing. Special highlighting of underlined text if underlining is not supported is one such thing.

Type | Notes
--- | ---
No frames | Dumb terminal type / ASCII art
VT 100 frames | Works in most terminals
Linux or OS/2 frames | Linux console / you get double frames and other goodies
KOI-8 |
FreeBSD | FreeBSD console

The default is to assume dumb terminal/ASCII art.

#### 6.1.2 Color mode

The color mode controls what colors are used and how they are output to the terminal. The available color modes are:

Mode | Color codes
--- | ---
Mono mode | Only 2 colors are used
16 color mode | Uses the common ANSI colors
256 color mode | Uses XTerm RGB codes (if compiled in)

The default is to use mono mode.

#### 6.1.3 Switch fonts for line drawing (aka 11m hack)

This is related to the drawing of frames and window borders controlled by the option above. It controls whether to switch fonts when drawing lines, enabling both local characters and lines working at the same time.

This boolean option only makes sense with the Linux terminal. Off off by default.

#### 6.1.4 Restrict frames in cp850/852

This is related to the drawing of frames and window borders controlled by the option above. If enabled, it restricts the characters used when drawing lines.

This boolean option only makes sense with the Linux terminals using the cp850/852 character sets. Off by default.

#### 6.1.5 Block cursor

Move cursor to bottom right corner when done drawing if possible. This is particularly useful when we have a block cursor, so that text colors are displayed correctly. If you are using a screen reader you do not want to enable it since the cursor is strategically positioned near relevant text of selected dialog elements.

This boolean option is off by default.

#### 6.1.6 Transparency

Whether to set the background to black. This is particularly useful when using a terminal (typically in some windowing environment) with a background image or a transparent background. If this option is enabled the background will be visible in ELinks as well.

Note that this boolean option makes sense only when colors are enabled. On by default.

#### 6.1.7 Text underlining capability

This boolean option controls whether to underline text or enhance the color instead.

Note: not all terminals support text underlining, so it is off by default.

#### 6.1.8 UTF-8 I/O

This boolean option controls outputting of I/O in UTF-8 for Unicode terminals.

Note that currently, only the subset of UTF-8 according to the terminal codepage is used. Offff by default.

#### 6.1.9 Character Set

Codepage of the charset used for displaying content on terminal.

The value 'System' (which is the default) will set the charset according to the current locale. The default is to use the charset of the current locale.

#### 6.2 Terminal Configurations

Built-in configurations exists for the following terminals:

    		linux, vt100, vt110, xterm, xterm-color and xterm-256color

The last configuration requires that support for 256 is compiled in.

GNU Screen is VT100-compatible, so select 'VT 100 frames'. GNU Screen also supports colors just fine, so select '16 colors'; or if you are running Screen within a terminal emulator that supports 256 colors and you have compiled both Screen and ELinks to support it, choose '256 colors'.

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### 7. Introduction to MIME handling

At some time along the 0.4 prereleases, ELinks replaced the old Links file configuration system with its own one. Now, the configuration is stored in elinks.conf, much more complete and featuring a new syntax. You can set most options from the UI (so usually there is no need to deal with elinks.conf), and that used to be true for setting MIME handlers and extensions as well; but now the associations menu is gone temporarily, forcing you to set the handlers from the configuration file.

The comments provided within elinks.conf for the MIME options are not much helpful, and those options may seem a bit obscure or confusing at first. This document is a basic introduction to setting of MIME associations for ELinks. If you want to know how to automatically launch a program to view some kind of file (like images), then read on. Some basic knowledge of MIME is recommended.

#### 7.1 Handling MIME types, the ELinks way

#### 7.1.1 What are MIME types and why may you want to use them?

If, while browsing with ELinks, you need to display files that it can't show (like images or PDF documents), then you will likely want to pass them to other programs that are suitable for this task. While you may do it manually (saving the file to disk, running the auxiliar program to show it and then removing the file when finished), ELinks provides a method to do this automatically using MIME types.

ELinks usually knows what the MIME type is for any file (which is a kind of description of its format), thus you only need to specify how to manage the MIME types for the files you want to open. If you don't tell ELinks how to manage a given MIME type then it will show you on screen the contents of the file (as if it was ASCII text) instead of calling an external program to show them.

#### 7.1.2 Associating files to MIME types

If the file is fetched from a web server then this web server should tell ELinks what its MIME type is, so you should have generally no need to care about it. However, the web server might send an incorrect type, or you may be retrieving it by FTP or from your local filesystem, so sometimes ELinks needs to guess it.

The easiest method to guess a MIME type for a file is to just look at its name trusting it was given the right extension. ELinks supports this, letting you to specify a type for any given extension.

#### 7.1.3 Managing a given MIME type

This usually means specifying programs to open files of this type and the conditions in which those programs may be used. For instance, you may want to use zgv (a popular svgalib image viewer) when you are using the text console, but xli (a image viewer for X) when running the X window system.

#### 7.1.3.1 Binding it to a handler

Instead of directly attaching a program to a MIME type, ELinks lets you associate an abstract handler to each type. Then you can specify which programs implement the handler and how are they used.

For instance, you may create an image_viewer handler and assign it to MIME types image/jpeg, image/png and image/gif. Then you would associate to image_viewer the programs you would like to use for viewing images and the details on how to use them. This is less cumbersome than repeating all these details for each MIME type.

#### 7.1.4 Specifying the details for a handler

There are three issues to specify for a handler: the program associated to it, whether you want confirmation before using it and whether you want the terminal to be blocked while it is being used.

When specifying any of these issues, you must tell ELinks the situation in which it gets applied, which is typically either the text console or the X window sytem. So you can specify that you don't want confirmation before running the program when running X, and that you want it otherwise. Similarly, when you are attaching a program (name it foo) to this handler you must tell if it's for X or not (you can attach a second program for the other choice if you want).

#### 7.1.4.1 Attaching a program to it

You must tell ELinks the exact command for running it (with any options you wish). In place of the filename you must enter %.

#### 7.1.4.2 Choosing whether you want confirmation before applying it

This is rather simple. If you choose not to do so, then the handler will be automatically called upon when you demand ELinks to show something attached to this handler. Otherwise, if you ask for confirmation, you will be prompted to open it with a external program, with additional choices that include cancelling the operation and viewing it with ELinks. E.g: you may use this option for programs written in C so that you may always choose if you want to read the source with ELinks, or if you want to save it, or if you want to use indent to display it with less.

#### 7.1.4.3 Choosing whether to block the terminal

If you don't want to allow going back to ELinks (or any other program from the same terminal) before the external program ends, then you should ask to block the terminal.

#### 7.2 Setting up elinks.conf

If you have old configuration files from old ELinks versions or from Links, then you may use the conf-links2elinks.pl script (which is placed at contrib/conv/ on the source distribution) to convert them to the new format. If you don't use it you will need to edit the configuration file, and here you will find how.

#### 7.2.1 Associating a file extension to a MIME type

You can still do this with the UI, from the the Setup->File Extensions submenu.

If you want to do so from the configuration file, enter set mime.extension.ext = "type", replacing ext with the appropiate file extension, and type with its MIME type. E.g. you may want to have set mime.extension.jpg = "image/jpeg".

#### 7.2.2 Defining a handler

For each handler you must define three items, specifying in what context the value of the item should be applied. You must enter set mime.handler.handler-name.item.context = value, replacing handler-name with the name for the handler you are defining, item with the item you are defining for this handler, context with the context this item value is to be applied, and value with the value you want to assign to the item. You must do so for each of the available items: program, ask and block.

The value for program is a string with the exact command you want to be issued to view the file, placing % were you would put the file name. The values for ask and block are either 0 (no) or 1 (yes). Available contexts include unix and unix-xwin, which mean UNIX text terminal and X respectively (others can be os2, win32, beos, riscos, ...). The latter does not mean you are running ELinks from X, just that the DISPLAY variable is set so that ELinks may run an X program.

To illustrate it, here is an example. Suppose you want to define the image_viewer handler which should be used to view images. The configuration file may look like this:

    	set mime.handler.image_viewer.unix.ask = 1
    	set mime.handler.image_viewer.unix-xwin.ask = 0

    	set mime.handler.image_viewer.unix.block = 1
    	set mime.handler.image_viewer.unix-xwin.block = 0

    	set mime.handler.image_viewer.unix.program = "zgv %"
    	set mime.handler.image_viewer.unix-xwin.program = "xli %"

In this example the image_viewer handler uses the svgalib image viewer zgv when X is not available, and the X image viewer xli when it is. The terminal would be blocked when X is not available and it would not be when it's available. Finally, ELinks would ask for confirmation before using the handler only with X not available.

#### 7.2.3 Associating a MIME type to a handler

Just enter set mime.type.class.name = "handler", replacing class with the class for the mime type, name with the specific name within that class, and handler with the name for the handler you want to assign to the MIME type. E.g. you may want to have set mime.type.image.jpeg = "image_viewer".

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### 8. Managing External Viewers with Mailcap

This document describes the support for Mailcap (RFC 1524) in ELinks. It does not describe the mailcap format. There are plenty of documents on the Web that does this. Google and thou wilt find. ;)

#### 8.1 A Short Intro to Mailcap

Mailcap is a file format defined in RFC 1524. Its purpose is to inform multiple mail reading user agent (MUA) programs about the locally-installed facilities for handling mail in various formats. It is designed to work with the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, known as MIME.

ELinks allows MIME handlers to be defined using its own configuration system, so why support mailcap? It can be seen as an alternative or simply as a supplement for setting up MIME handlers in ELinks. Mailcap files are present on most UNIX systems--usually in /etc/mailcap--so this makes it possible for ELinks to know how to handle a great variety of file formats with little configuration. To be able to use mailcap, it has to be compiled into ELinks. This is the default. If you don't need mailcap support, just configure ELinks with the flag: --disable-mailcap.

#### 8.2 Parameters to Mailcap Entries

The code has been ported from Mutt and thereby inherits some of its various features and limitation.

The following parameters are supported:

Parameter | Description
--- | ---
%s | The filename that contains the data.
%f | The content type, like 'text/plain'.

The following parameters are not supported, since they do not really make much sense for a non-MUA program:

Parameter | Description
--- | ---
%n | The integer number of sub-parts in the multipart
%F | The "content-type filename" repeated for each sub-part
%{parameter} | The "parameter" value from the content-type field

#### 8.3 Reading of Mailcap Files

Mailcap files will be read when starting ELinks. The mailcap files to use will be found from the mailcap path, a colon separated list of files similar to the $PATH environment variable. The mailcap path will be determined in the following way:

1. From the value of the mime.mailcap.path option in elinks.conf; for example:

       	set mime.mailcap.path = "~/.mailcap:/usr/local/etc/mailcap"

2. From MAILCAP environment variable.
3. If non of the above is defined, the mailcap path defaults to "~/.mailcap:/etc/mailcap".

#### 8.4 Fields

Since mailcap handling is primarily for displaying of resources, all fields like edit, print, compose etc. are ignored.

Note: Test commands are supported, but unfortunately, it's not possible to provide the file when running the test. So any test that requires a file will be considered failed and the handler will not be used.

Unfortunately, there are no 'native' support for the copiousoutput field. The field basicly mean 'needs pager'. So it is handled by appending a pipe and a pager program to the command. The pager program will be read from the PAGER environment variable. If this fails, test are made for common pager programs (/usr/bin/pager, /usr/bin/less and /usr/bin/more in that order). So if you define png2ascii as your handler for image/png and specify copiousoutput then the executed command will be "png2ascii |/usr/bin/less" if less is your pager or present on your system.

#### 8.5 Mailcap Configuration

Apart from the mime.mailcap.path option, you can configure if mailca support should be disabled. The default being that it is enabled. To disable it just put:

    	set mime.mailcap.enable = 0

in elinks.conf.

It is also possible to control wether ELinks should ask you before opening a file. The option is a boolian and can be set like this:

    	set mime.mailcap.ask = 1

if you would like to be asked before opening a file.

#### 8.6 Some Sample Mailcap Entries

Below are examples of how to specify external viewers:

    	# Use xv if X is running
    	image/*;                xv %s ; test=test -n "$DISPLAY";

    	# Convert images to text using the netpbm tools
    	image/*;                (anytopnm %s | pnmscale -xysize 200 150 | \
    				 pnminvert | ppmtopgm | pgmtopbm | \
    				 pbmtoascii -1x2 ) 2>&1 ; copiousoutput

    	# Various multimedia files
    	audio/mpeg;             xmms '%s'; test=test -n "$DISPLAY";
    	application/pdf;        xpdf '%s'; test=test -n "$DISPLAY";
    	application/postscript; ps2ascii %s ; copiousoutput

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### 9. The tale of ex-mode

Are you a vim-controls nerd who wants to see them everywhere? Welcome.

Actually ELinks doesn't shine in this area yet very much. Heck, the famous hjkl foursome is still occupied by some feeble managers in the default keymap (we have that in our monumental TODO lists). Still, if you know what to touch during the compilation (--enable-exmode), you can get at least some familiar reply to the mighty ':' (colon) grip.

#### 9.1 What it is

Ex-mode gives you some (still very rough and only marginally complete) access to advanced ELinks commands, to be invoked anywhere anytime, straight and fast.

When you activate the ex-mode (named after the equivalent gadget in the vi text editor flavours), a command line appears at the bottom of the screen for you to type the commands.

Only two kinds of commands are supported so far. First, (almost?) anything that can appear in the configuration file can be used in ex-mode. Second, you can invoke (almost) any action from the ex-mode.

#### 9.2 Configuration directives in exmode

There aren't many of these, so we can skim through them fast.

If you want to flip an option you know by name and refuse to engage with the option manager visuals, you can just drop in to the ex-mode and type 'set the.option = 1234'. See man elinks.conf (5) or the options manager for the list of options; you can also get a complete options tree saved to elinks.conf if you set config.saving_style = 2 (but do NOT keep that setting unless you know what are you doing; if we change a default value of some option in future releases, we (generally) know what are we doing - this change won't propagate to you during an upgrade if you already have the original default value saved in your configuration file, though).

It's the same story with keybindings. You can use 'bind "main" "h" = "move-cursor-left"'. It's not the same story with keybindings documentation. There is the elinkskeys (5) manual page but it's horribly obsolete, so don't rely on it. You can refer to the keybindings manager for names of actions and even their short descriptions. Also, all the 'bind' commands are saved to the configuration file if you set config.saving_style = 2 (but see above).

You can also use 'include my.conf', which will read my.conf as an ELinks configuration file.

Actually, ELinks would eat '#blahblah blah' too, if you see a point in feeding it that kind of stuff.

#### 9.3 Actions in exmode - or exmode in action?

There is too many of these, so we should better skim through them fast.

Actually, we already talked about them. It's the last argument to the 'bind' command. So, they are those listed in the keybinding manager. So if you enter 'move-cursor-left' command, it will move your cursor left - by a single character, making this a little awkward, but it's useful if you sometimes want to easily invoke an action and you don't want to waste a key for it.

Actually, actions could theoretically take arguments too. This is currently implemented only for the 'goto-url' action, which can take the location it should go at as a parameter (otherwise it opens the standard well-known dialog as if you pressed 'g' in the default keymap).

Regarding the mysterious "(almost)" hinted above, you can never invoke the "quit" action from the exmode - if you type it there, "really-quit" is invoked instead.

#### 9.4 How to use it

It's simple. You press ':' (without the apostrophes, of course) and type in the command, then you press enter. E.g., ':set config.saving_style = 3' (this is a good thing), ':quit' (and the game is over). The standard line-editing facility is present (cursor keys and so), and the ex-mode input line has own history.

#### 9.5 The "but"s

The biggest usability hurdle so far is that there is no tab-completion. This is why the ex-mode support is not enabled by default and part of the reason why its practical usage is somewhat limited yet - if you don't remember exactly what do you want to invoke, tough beans. Someone shall address this issue in the future.

Also, perhaps wider scale of commands should be implemented in ex-mode. The code is extremely flexible and it is very trivial to make another ex-mode command handler, it's just that no one has done it yet ;-). Also, more actions should be able to take arguments.

TOC

### 10. Managing remote ELinks instances with -remote

Some programs provide the ability to pass URIs to external programs. When stumbling upon a reference to a page you want to see, it is sometimes a kludge to copy and paste it into ELinks. This is where -remote can be a nifty solution.

When invoking ELinks with the -remote argument, it does not start a new instance, but instead connects to an already running ELinks, making it possible to control that ELinks instance. The -remote command line switch takes a command consisting of the action to invoke and any parameters to the action. Here is an example for opening freshmeat.net in a new tab:

    	$ elinks -remote "openURL(http://freshmeat.net/, new-tab)"

When running this command in a terminal, you will see a small delay before ELinks returns. If no running instance was found, it will return with the error message:

    	ELinks: No remote session to connect to.

All URLs passed to the openURL() commands can be URL prefixes, so the command above could have simply used ``openURL(fm, new-tab)''.

#### 10.1 Limitations and outstanding issues

Remote control is implemented using the intercommunication socket created in ~/.elinks/, so the command has to be run on the same machine as the instance you want to control; or put differently: the two ELinkses need to share a file system that supports socket files, which rules out usage of -remote over NFS. This also implies that the ELinks instance you want to control should be started without passing -no-home nor -no-connect.

The built-in -remote support is to some degree compatible with the one Mozilla provides (http://www.mozilla.org/unix/remote.html), but with some homebrew extensions added and few unsupported features. All the supported actions are documented below.

Under some circumstances, use of the -remote control can cause ELinks to become unresponsive. This is cause by the current key press and mouse focus being redirected to new tabs or dialogs opened by the -remote action.

#### 10.2 Remote Actions

The command syntax is case-insensitive. For readability, we use the casing in the listing of supported commands.

Mozilla -remote compatible commands:

> ping():
>   Checks for existence of a remote instance. Makes it possible for scripts to query if remote controlling is possible.
> openURL():
>   Prompts for a URL in current tab by opening the Goto dialog.
> openURL(URL):
>   Open the passed URL in current tab.
> openURL(URL, new-tab):
>   Opens the passed URL in new tab.
> openURL(URL, new-window):
>   Opens the passed URL in new window.
> xfeDoCommand(openBrowser):
>   Opens an ELinks instance in a new window. This ELinks instance will connect to the already running one.

ELinks extensions:

> addBookmark(URL):
>   Bookmarks the passed URL.

-remote can also take a list of URLs without an explicit action, in which case the URL arguments will be opened in new tabs in the remote instance. For example, by running:

$ elinks -remote slashdot.org fm g:elinks

new tabs containing slashdot.org, freshmeat.net and a Google search of elinks will be opened.

TOC

### 11. Acknowledgement

TOC

### 12 References

TOC

### Authors' Addresses

| Jonas Fonseca
EMail: | fonseca@diku.dk
| Petr Baudis
EMail: | pasky@ucw.cz
| Laurent Monin
EMail: | zas@norz.org
| Miciah Dashiel Butler Masters
EMail: | miciah@myrealbox.com
| José Luis González González
EMail: | jlg80@mi.madritel.es