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91 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
91 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
Managing remote ELinks instances
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--------------------------------
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Some programs provide the ability to pass URIs to external programs. When
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stumbling upon a reference to a page you want to see, it is sometimes a kludge
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to copy and paste it into ELinks. This is where -remote can be a nifty
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solution.
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When invoking ELinks with the -remote argument, it does not start a new
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instance, but instead connects to an already running ELinks, making it
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possible to control that ELinks instance. The -remote command line switch
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takes a command consisting of the action to invoke and any parameters to the
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action. Commands must begin with a nonempty sequence of ASCII alphabetic
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characters followed by optional whitespace and an opening parenthesis. They
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must end with a closing parenthesis optionally followed by whitespace. Here is
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an example for opening freshmeat.net in a new tab:
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$ elinks -remote "openURL(http://freshmeat.net/, new-tab)"
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When running this command in a terminal, you will see a small delay before
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ELinks returns. If no running instance was found, it will return with the
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error message:
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ELinks: No remote session to connect to.
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All URLs passed to the openURL() commands can be URL prefixes, so the command
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above could have simply used ``openURL(fm, new-tab)''.
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Limitations and outstanding issues
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Remote control is implemented using the intercommunication socket created in
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~/.elinks/, so the command has to be run on the same machine as the instance
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you want to control; or put differently: the two ELinkses need to share a file
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system that supports socket files, which rules out usage of -remote over NFS.
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This also implies that the ELinks instance you want to control should be
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started without passing -no-home nor -no-connect.
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The built-in -remote support is to some degree compatible with the one Mozilla
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provides (http://www.mozilla.org/unix/remote.html), but with some homebrew
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extensions added and few unsupported features. All the supported actions are
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documented below.
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Under some circumstances, use of the -remote control can cause ELinks to
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become unresponsive. This is cause by the current key press and mouse focus
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being redirected to new tabs or dialogs opened by the -remote action.
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Remote Actions
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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The command syntax is case-insensitive. For readability, we use the casing in
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the listing of supported commands.
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.Mozilla `-remote` compatible commands.
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`-------------------------------`----------------------------------------------
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Command Description
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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ping() Checks for existence of a remote instance. \
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Makes it possible for scripts to query if \
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remote controlling is possible.
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openURL() Prompts for a URL in current tab by opening \
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the Goto dialog.
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openURL(URL) Open the passed URL in current tab.
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openURL(URL, new-tab) Opens the passed URL in new tab.
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openURL(URL, new-window) Opens the passed URL in new window.
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xfeDoCommand(openBrowser) Opens an ELinks instance in a new window. \
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This ELinks instance will connect to the \
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already running one.
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.ELinks extensions.
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`-------------------------------`----------------------------------------------
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Command Description
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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addBookmark(URL) Bookmarks the passed URL.
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infoBox(text) Show text in a message box.
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reload() Reload the document in the current tab.
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search(string) Search for the string in the current tab
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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`-remote` can also take a list of URLs without an explicit action, in which case
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the URL arguments will be opened in new tabs in the remote instance. For
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example, by running:
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$ elinks -remote slashdot.org fm g:elinks
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new tabs containing `slashdot.org`, `freshmeat.net` and a Google search of elinks
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will be opened.
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