Command Line Syntax
The generic syntax is:
www [ options ] [ docaddress [ keywords ]]
Please note that some of the command line
options have been moved to the new Command Line Tool.
With no arguments, and if the Line Mode Browser has not been customized then it automatically tries the following locations:
- ~/WWW/default.html
- /usr/local/lib/WWW/default.html
- http://www.w3.org/
The order of the options is not important and options can in fact be
specified on either side of any docaddress. Currently available options
are:-
Getting Help
- -help or -?
- Load this file from directly into the browser
- -v [ a | b | c | g | p | s | t | u ]
- Verbose mode: Gives a running commentary on the program's attempts
to read data in various ways. This can also be turned on and off
during normal execution, see Existing Commands. As the amount of verbose output from
the Browser and the Library is substantial, the
-v
option
can now be followed by zero, one or more of the following flags (without space) in
order to differentiate the verbose output generated:
- a: Anchor relevant information
- b: Bindings to local file system
- c: Cache trace
- g: SGML trace
- p: Protocol module information
- s: SGML/HTML relevant information
- t: Thread trace
- u: URI relevant information
The -v
option without any appended options shows all
trace messages. An example is
-vpt
showing thread and protocol trace messages
- -version
- Prints out the version number of the software, and the version
number of the WWW library, and exits.
Main Modes of execution
- -
- A minus sign with no trailing characters indicates that the
program will accept HTML format
input from the standard input. This allows www to be used as a filter
from html to plain text for example. Relative links in the input are
parsed as though the address of the document was that of the home page
(or docaddress if specified). Implies non-interactive mode.
- -h host
- Establish a telnet connection to the remote host specified. This
implies a "secure mode" execution where all references to the local
file system are canceled.
- -listrefs
- Adds a list of the addresses of all documents references to the
end of the HTML file. This mode forces non-interactive mode.
- -n
- Non-interactive mode. Outputs the formatted document to the
standard output, then exits. Pages are delimited with form feed (FF)
characters.
- -o [ file ]
- Redirects output to specified file. The default value is
"www-out". This mode forced non-interactive mode
- -single
- Singlethreaded mode. If this flag is set then the browser uses
blocking, non interruptible I/O in interactive mode. Non-interactive
mode always uses blocking I/O.
Data format conversions (non-interactive)
- -reformat
- The output is to be in HTML, "canonicalized" so that line breaks
will be put in common places. Comments, processing instructions, etc,
will be stripped. This feature allows HTML files produced by
different editors to be compared.
- -raw
- This command line option returns the output completely untouched
exactly as it is received by the protocol module. For
example, in the case of FTP, this format returns raw ASCII objects for
directory listings; for HTTP, everything including the header is
returned, for Gopher, a raw ASCII object is returned for a menu etc.
- -source
- Display the original source (without any MIME-headers) of a
document instead of parsing it.
- -from [ format ]
- Only if the Line mode Browser is executed as a filter (using the
"-" option), this option indicates the desired input format. The
default value is "text/html".
- -to [ format ]
- Format is the output format for www. Default value is
"www/present" but may be changed according to the HTTP-specifications.
Two common output formats are "www/source" that is the source without
MIME-headers and "www/mime" that is the source with the MIME-header if
any. Though also "text/latex" is possible which generates a LaTeX
version of the (HTML) document. This can then be compiled using latex
and put out as Postscript. Default value is presenting the output to
the user.
Screen options
- -p [ n ]
- where "n" is a number, specifies the page length. If "n" is not
specified then the page is set to length infinite (useful for
printouts). Default page size is 24 or is automatically set on some
systems.
- -w [ n ]
- where n is a number, specifies the page width in columns. The
default is 78, 79 or 80 depending on the system. (v1.0 or later)
Anchor formats
- -a <format>
- Specifies the printf-style format string to be used when printing
references. Must contain the two characters "%d" where the numbers
should occur. Be sure to escape or quote any special characters you
use. For example under Unix:
www -a \<%d\>
www -a "(Type %d)"
- -na
- Hides anchor positions in the text. Useful, when printing out the
document. The option can also be used together with the
-p
option with no number specified (infinite page
length).
Directory Listings
- -d 1*( t | b | r | n | s | y )
- This directive can be used to modify the directory listing
layout. More than one option can be specified but they might be
mutually exclusive. The following options are available (withour
space):
- t: Place any readme file at the top of the list (default)
- b: Place any readme file at the bottom of the list
- r: Ignore any readme file
- n: Directory listings are not allowed
- s: Directory listings are only allowed in the directories where a
file ".www_browsable" is located. The content of the file
is of no importance.
- y: Directory listings are always allowed (default)
An example is
-dts
makes selective directory listings and places a README file at the top
Configuration Options
- -cacheroot [ path ]
- This option enables local caching and defines the root of the
cache system. If the option is not specified, no local file cache is
generated. The default cache is "/tmp".
- -x 1*( i | n | a )
- There are various ways of handling Expires header when met in a
history list or in a local cache. Either it can be Ignored all
together, the user can be Notified with a warning, or the
document can be reloaded Automatically. The default action is
to ignore expired documents.
- -l [ file ]
- Specifies a log file with a list of visited documents. The default
value is "www-log"
- -r <file>
- Rule file, a.k.a. configuration
file. If this is specified, a rule file may be used to map URLs,
and to set up other aspects of the behavior of the browser. Many rule
files may be given with successive -r options, and a default rule file
name may be given using the WWW_CONFIG environment variable.
- -timeout <n>
- Timeout in seconds on sockets
If present, the next argument (docaddress) is the hypertext address , of the
document at which you want to start browsing. You may want to define
an alias for www followed by name of your favorite index. Any further command line arguments are
taken as keywords. The first argument must refer to an index in this
case. The index is searched for entries matching the keywords, and a
list of matching entries is displayed.
Tim BL, and Henrik Frystyk,
www-bug@w3.org, November 1995