How to display an HTML file with Conkeror

[Haines Brown]

In a terminal the command

$ conkeror file.html

starts an instance of Conkeror, but does not display the file. If in a
running instance of Conkeror I g(o) to file:///home/<user>/file.html,
the same thing happens. The file is not displayed.

I ask here because the Conkeror mozdev list seems to have died last
month.

Haines Brown

[Haines Brown]

I've perhaps narrowed things down a bit. When I do as you suggest in a
terminal:

$ conqueror file:///home/haines/file.html

Conkeror responds as would be expected and displays the file.html
properly. On a hunch I removed my .cokerorrc file, and find that now
Conkeror works as it should and can display the local file:

g(o) file:///home/haines/file.html

So while Conkeror now can display a local file whether or not it is
preceded with "file://" the "! conkeror" command issued in dired opens
an instance of Conkeror but fails to display the file. Instead it pops
up a dialog:

Address not found
www.file.html could not be found.

In Emacs, I don't know how to view the command being sent to Conkeror. I
tried:

! on file.html: conkeror &>/home/haines/test.txt

but the test.txt is not created.

Incidentaly, mozdev.org no longer carries the conkeror list. Is the
Conkeror community so small and inactive the application does not
warrant a list? I find it wonderful to browse the web without without
using the mouse.

Haines

[Haines Brown]

Roger Burton West <roger+ao...@nospam.firedrake.org> writes:

> If I want a keyboard-focused browser, I use elinks, lynx, or w3m. I
> don't want the massive overhead of the xulrunner back-end if I don't
> need it.

Yes, I've been using w3m for the reason you suggest. Unfortunately, I
must read a fair number of .html files every day from a source that
formats them in a way that makes it quite difficult to identify its
functional parts. I waste significant time trying to pull out what I
need.

This task is not the same as viewing web sites as such (rather than for
extracting pieces of information). For this purpose Conkeror falls down
because for me it consistently segfaults on certain pages, such as
certain pages of the NYTimes. Probably need to turn off flash (don't
know off hand how to do that). This is an old problem having to do with
XULrunner that may not be fixed until a later version.

It seems that a dired command cannot display a HTML page in either
Firefox or Conkeror. That is, the command "! firefox" issued on the
currently selected .html file in dired opens the browser, but with file
not found message. So the problem is not peculiar to Conkeror. I'll have
to search to see if there's a solution for this problem.

Haines

[Haines Brown]

Roger Bell_West <roger+ao...@nospam.firedrake.org> writes:

> On 2013-03-21, Haines Brown wrote:
>>It seems that a dired command cannot display a HTML page in either
>>Firefox or Conkeror. That is, the command "! firefox" issued on the
>>currently selected .html file in dired opens the browser, but with file
>>not found message. So the problem is not peculiar to Conkeror. I'll have
>>to search to see if there's a solution for this problem.
>

> My inclination would be to try a command that'll dump its environment
> to somewhere useful, as it might be:
>
> #! /bin/bash
> set >~/envdump
>
> and see what you have in PWD. I still think that it's changing
> directory and therefore can't find the bare filename.

I cd to the location of my test .html (~/Downloads/file.html), run the
script and find that its path is:

PWD=/home/haines/Downloads

This is as expected, but you got me thinking more about paths, and
/Downloads is not in my PATH. That may be the problem. I don't know
how to put it there just for Conkeror (a line in .conkerorrc?). I did
put a line to put ~/Directory into my path in ~/.profile, but I can't
restart my X system at this point because of a lot of open work.

I discovered a work-around in the sense that I can now display .html
files in dired that are far more readable than w3m. I put this into
my .emacs:

(define-key global-map (kbd "\C-b") 'browse-url-of-dired-file)

I never use C-b to backspace one letter in dired, and this maping does
as I want ("b" for browse).

Haines

[Richard Kettlewell]

Haines Brown <hai...@histomat.net> writes:
> I cd to the location of my test .html (~/Downloads/file.html), run the
> script and find that its path is:
>
> PWD=/home/haines/Downloads
>
> This is as expected, but you got me thinking more about paths, and
> /Downloads is not in my PATH. That may be the problem. I don't know
> how to put it there just for Conkeror (a line in .conkerorrc?).

PATH is only used to search for executables; it’s certainly not relevant
here.

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Haines Brown]

Roger Bell_West <roger+ao...@nospam.firedrake.org> writes:

> On 2013-03-22, Haines Brown wrote:
>>I cd to the location of my test .html (~/Downloads/file.html), run the
>>script and find that its path is:
>>
>> PWD=/home/haines/Downloads
>

> As expected. What do you get when this script is run _from within
> emacs_ as you want to run the browser?

If I understand you correctly, While in dired mode I ran M-x shell and
used it to run the little executable script. Same result:
PWD=/home/haines/Downloads.

>>This is as expected, but you got me thinking more about paths, and
>>/Downloads is not in my PATH. That may be the problem. I don't know
>>how to put it there just for Conkeror (a line in .conkerorrc?). I did
>>put a line to put ~/Directory into my path in ~/.profile, but I can't
>>restart my X system at this point because of a lot of open work.
>

> Do you want to run _executables_ out of the Downloads directory?
> That's all that $PATH is for. It won't search for other files.

No, but I was guessing that maybe conkeror might need the .html file to
be in user's path. Apparently not.

Haines