Links is a text and graphics mode WWW browser. It includes support for rendering tables and frames, features background downloads, can display colors and has many other features.
Download (HTTP): http://links.twibright.com/download/links-2.1pre33.tar.bz2
Download (FTP): ftp://ftp.linux.ee/pub/gentoo/distfiles/distfiles/links-2.1pre33.tar.bz2
Download MD5 sum: 8c4bc1ebbf4962d290df8218bfc21413
Download size: 4.1 MB
Estimated disk space required: 25 MB
Estimated build time: 0.3 SBU
In text mode, unpatched Links cannot be configured to use UTF-8 or other multibyte encodings for the terminal input/output. This limitation renders Links useless as a text-based browser in multibyte locales. See general discussion of this type of issue in the Needed Encoding Not a Valid Option section on the Locale Related Issues page.
The patch adds the “UTF-8 I/O” configuration option. With this option enabled, Links first renders the page using an 8-bit character set configured by the user, and then converts from this character set to UTF-8. The opposite conversion is applied to user input. This approach works if there is an 8-bit character set that contains all the characters that the user considers to be important. Such character set does not exist, e.g., for Chinese hieroglyphs, or when it is required to display both Cyrillic and Greek characters.
In graphical mode, Links displays text correctly even in UTF-8 locales, if all characters exist in the built-in font used by Links. This font contains Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement (without superscripts and vulgar fractions), Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B (partially), Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew characters. Form submission in non-ISO-8859-1 locales is handled correctly when running in X11-based graphical mode. Input handlers for other graphics drivers (fb, directfb, svgalib) either misinterpret non-ASCII characters, or don't allow them at all.
The patch has no effect on Links behavior in graphical mode.
GPM-1.20.1 (if mouse support is desired) and OpenSSL-0.9.8g
Support for graphical mode requires at least one of GPM-1.20.1 (to be used with a framebuffer-based console), SVGAlib, DirectFB, and X Window System
For decoding various image formats Links can utilize libpng-1.2.29, libjpeg-6b, and LibTIFF-3.8.2
User Notes: http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/LinksBrowser
If desired, apply the patch:
bzcat ../links-2.1pre33-utf8.diff.bz2 | patch -p1 && cd intl && ./gen-intl && ./synclang && cd ..
Install Links by running the following commands:
./configure --prefix=/usr && make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Now, as the root user:
make install &&
install -v -d -m755 /usr/share/doc/links-2.1pre33 &&
install -v -m644 doc/links_cal/* KEYS BRAILLE_HOWTO \
/usr/share/doc/links-2.1pre33
./gen-intl && ./synclang: These commands regenerate the language table.
--enable-graphics: This switch enables
support for graphics mode.
Links stores its configuration
in per-user files in the ~/.links
directory. These files are created automatically when
links is run for
the first time.
For the correct display of non-ASCII characters, Links has to be configured through the menu (accessible by pressing the ESC key), as follows:
If running Links in the text mode in a UTF-8 based locale, go to the “Setup > Terminal options” menu item and check the “UTF-8 I/O” box.
If running Links in the text mode, go to the “Setup > Character set” menu item and select the character set that matches your locale or, if you use UTF-8 based locale, the character set that contains all characters that you want Links to be able to display.
Optionally, go to the “Setup > Language” menu and select the user interface language.
Finally, select the “Setup > Save options” menu item.
Last updated on 2008-05-09 08:00:42 -0500