Information for the Experienced Lynx User

What This Document IS

• Targeted for someone with at least a basic understanding of Lynx
• Assumes a basic working knowledge of UNIX

Keyboard Commands

• "\" - toggles between "rendered" (normal) and "HTML code" display of the current document. Can be used to display the HTML coding of the current document. Helpful as a learning tool when trying to figure how someone did something in one of their documents
• "=" - provides information about the currently selected document and link, such as size, owner, etc.
• "D" - downloads the currently selected link (not the current document). If that link is to an HTML document, its HTML source is downloaded to a file. Useful for saving an entire document for later study and dissection of coding techniques
• "C" - sends a comment to the owner of the current document, if that document specifed an owner with a LINK REV="MADE" tag within it
• "O" - sets Lynx options and preferences which will be stored in a text file in your home directory called ".lynxrc". The most important (or at least interesting) of these are:
  • Personal E-mail Address - specified default reply address to be used when using the "C" command (described above)
  • Editor - specifies the editor to be invoked when composing a comment using the "C" command
  • Bookmark File - name of a file in your home directory used to store bookmarks of specific URLs. Can be added to using the "A" command. May want to change to ".lynx_bookmarks.html" so that, like the ".lynxrc" file, it too will be a hidden file
  • User Mode - specifying ADVANCED will display the URL of the current document at the bottom of the screen instead of the two lines of help
• "^G" - cancel current transfer. Useful to break out of a transfer when Lynx has connected to a remote server but is unable to complete the transfer. ^C also works, but this exits you from Lynx as well
• "!" - starts a subshell for you, using your default shell. Type exit to return to Lynx

How To's

• To convert an HTML-formatted document to ASCII - execute Lynx from the command line as:
  
  lynx -force_html -dump filename.html >ascii_filename.txt
• To start Lynx at a specific URL instead of the Univ. of Kansas' Homepage - execute Lynx from the command line as:
  
  lynx url_to_start_at

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