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edbrowse(1) General Commands Manual edbrowse(1)

NAME

edbrowse - text editor and web browser

SYNOPSIS

edbrowse [ file1 ] [ file2 ] ...

edbrowse [ url1 ] [ url2 ] ...

DESCRIPTION

Complete documentation can be found in the user's guide; see below.

edbrowse is a line-oriented text editor very similar to ed(1), It is used to create, display, modify and otherwise manipulate text files.

In addition edbrowse can be used to display web pages and edit the contents of these pages. It supports the use of forms and Javascript in web pages.

If edbrowse is invoked with a file argument, then a copy of file is read into the editor's buffer. If it is invoked with a url argument, then the url is read into the editor's buffer and the HTML is rendered as text. Changes are made to this copy and not directly to file or url itself.

Please refer to ed(1) for further details regarding the editing commands. Explanation of the browsing functions can be found in the HTML documentation.

EXAMPLES

To read the HTML documentation you can do

edbrowse /usr/share/doc/edbrowse/usersguide.html

To read (say) 20 lines of the buffer at a time starting from the top use the command `0z20' followed by repeating `z' to scroll another 20 lines at a time.

To quit the editor completely type `qt' . Upon quitting edbrowse, any changes not explicitly saved with a `w' command are lost. The `w' command does not apply to URLs but one can save the corresponding buffer to a file by the command w file.

OPTIONS

Display the usage message.
Batch mode. This option causes edbrowse to exit when it encounters an error.
Debug level. Can be set to a value between 0 and 9. The default is 1 which prints the sizes of buffers. Some people like 2 which prints out URLs as they are retrieved. This value can be changed within the editor with the dbx command with x a value between 0 and 9.
Edit config file. This command suppresses the processing of the configuration file $HOME/.ebrc and starts editing it instead. This option is useful if this file is syntactically incorrect or otherwise corrupted.

FILES

$HOME/.ebrc
Configuration file. The file which edbrowse reads when it starts up. If the file exists then it must be syntactically correct.

DIAGNOSTICS

When an error occurs, if edbrowse it prints a `?' and returns to command mode. An explanation of the last error can be printed with the `h' (help) command.

Attempting to quit edbrowse with the `q' command or trying to edit another file before writing a modified buffer results in an error. If the command is entered a second time, it succeeds, but any changes to the buffer are lost.

BUGS

This manual page is not complete. Users should refer to the HTML documentation for fuller details of the configuration options and for details of the use of edbrowse.

SEE ALSO

ed(1), sed(1), pcrepattern(3).

The provides greater detail about the program.

AUTHORS

This manual page was originally written by Kapil Hari Paranjape <kapil@imsc.res.in>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but it may be used by others).

The edbrowse program is written by Karl Dahlke <eklhad@gmail.com>. The author maintains for the program.

2019-11-11 edbrowse 3.7.6