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 ~/.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) Bookmarks the passed URL. infoBox(text) Show text in a message box. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- `-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.