History of w3m

1999/2/18
1999/3/8 revised
1999/6/11 translated into English
Akinori Ito
aito@fw.ipsj.or.jp

Introduction

W3m is a text-based pager and WWW browser. It is similar application to the famous text-based browser Lynx. However, w3m has several advantages against Lynx. For example,

W3m can render tables.
W3m can render frame (by converting frame into table).
As w3m is a pager, it can read document from standard input. (I heard Lynx also can display standard-input-given document, like this:
```
   lynx /dev/fd/0 > file
```
Hmm, it works on Linux. )
W3m is small. Its stripped binary for Sparc (compiled with gcc -O2, version beta-990217) is only 260kbyte, while binary size of Lynx is beyond 1.8Mbyte. (Actually, lynx it 800K on my i386 system, w3m is 200K + libgc.)

It is true that Lynx is an excellent browser, who have many features w3m doesn't have. For example,

Lynx can handle cookies.
Lynx has many options.
Lynx is multilingual. (W3m is Japanese-English bilingual)

etc. It is also a great advantage that Lynx has a lot of documentation.

I don't intend w3m to be a substitute of any other browsers, including Netscape and Lynx. Why did I wrote w3m? Because I felt inconvenient with conventional browsers to `take a look' at web pages. I am browsing web pages in LAN environment. When I want to take a glance at a web page, I don't want to wait to start up Netscape. Lynx also takes a few seconds to start up (you can get lynx startup time to almost zero when you rm /etc/mailcap). On the other hand, w3m starts immediately with little load to the host machine. After looking at the information using w3m, I use other browser if I want to read the the page in detail. As for me, however, w3m is enough to read most of web pages.

The birth of w3m

w3m was derived from a pager named `fm'. Fm was written before 1991 (I don't remember the exact date) when WWW was not popular. At that time, the word `browser' meant a file browser like `more' or `less'.

I wrote fm to debug a program for my research. To trace the status of the program, it dumped megabytes of values of variables into a file, and I debugged it by checking the dumped file. The program dumped information at a certain time in one line, which made the dumped line several hundred characters long. When I looked the file using `more' or `less', one line was folded into several lines and it was very hard to read it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which didn't fold a line. Fm displayed one logical line as one physical line. When seeing the hiddead it. Therefore, I wrote fm, which di