elinks/doc/remote.txt

Managing remote ELinks instances
--------------------------------

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. Commands must begin with a nonempty sequence of ASCII alphabetic
characters followed by optional whitespace and an opening parenthesis. They
must end with a closing parenthesis optionally followed by whitespace. 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)''.


Limitations and outstanding issues
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remote control is implemented using the intercommunication socket created in
~/.config/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.


Remote Actions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

.Mozilla `-remote` compatible commands.
`-------------------------------`----------------------------------------------
Command				Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
`-------------------------------`----------------------------------------------
Command				Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
addBookmark(URL, title)		Bookmarks the passed URL and set title.
infoBox(text)			Show text in a message box.
reload()			Reload the document in the current tab.
search(string)			Search for the string in the current tab
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

`-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.