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Rene Kita's weblog

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Gemini support for w3m

2023-01-23

_tl;dr_ I wrote a patch[4] to add Gemini support to w3m.

I started adding Gemini[5] support to w3m[6]. As a user w3m is a great piece of software. It has good HTML support and speaks nearly all other protocols you'll come across while surfing the web#0. It bothered me that I had to use a different tool when I came across a gemini link. Also, you don't often get the chance to add a new protocol to a 28 year old piece of software.

This is still Work in Progress, but has enough features to be usable.

Features

'Clickable' links
Folds lines at word boundary
Pressing 'v' (VIEW) on a text/gemini buffer toggles between rendered and text/plain view
Follows redirects
Permanently accept self-signed certificates (Trust On First Use)
Partial support for INPUT (still quoting issues)
Use command GEMINIZE (via Esc-c) to render text/plain as text/gemini

To-do

Fix quoting of special chars in URL for INPUT
Do not overwrite known_hosts/accepted self-signed certificates if they were modified by another instance of w3m
Clean up code (Current stage: "Make it work"; next stage: "Make it good")
Add a configure switch to enable/disable Gemini support for the compile stage
Make handling of 'Advanced line types' (Headings, lists and quotes) configurable through options

How to

Get the w3m sources: git clone https://github.com/tats/w3m
Change into the new directory: cd w3m
Download the patch[7]: wget https://rkta.de/assets/gemini.patch
Apply the patch: patch < gemini.patch
Get the build dependencies: apt-get build-dep w3m (or the equivalent of your distro)
Configure and build: ./configure && make
Try: ./w3m gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/

I've you need help or just want to leave feedback send me an email or join #w3m[8] on irc.libera.chat[9]

Updates

*2023-03-26:* Update the patch to indent blockquotes with four spaces.
*2023-08-13:* Fix a bug that added empty entries to known_hosts. Simplify the code a bit. Let geminize command show up in help menu.

0: Another not supported protocol is finger, let's see what happens when gemini support is finished

E-mail: mail@rkta.de[10] IRC: #rkta[11] on Libera.Chat[12]