Using Wiki With Lynx

Q: How do you insert lines in Wiki pages using the LynxBrowser?

First, set your Lynx editor
- Use "o" to get to the options page
- Set the editor to "emacs" or "vi" (or whatever)
- "Accept Changes"
- This sets it for one session. Different versions of Lynx will save your options in different ways: tap a ">" in older versions; in newer versions, click on a checkbox to save options to disk.
On a Wiki page, select "Edit"
Move the cursor onto an edit field on the Wiki edit page.
Control-V e. This will bring the form up in your editor (see below if this doesn't work).
When done editing, save and exit (in emacs, control-x control-s control-x control-c; in vi, :wq or :x followed by <enter>).
Important: If Lynx asks "wrap long lines," tell it "no". Wrapping long lines will munge the page.
Important: If your editor turned tabs into spaces, scroll down to the bottom of the form and turn on the "I can't type tabs" checkbox.
Now select "save" on the Wiki edit page.

Contributors: DickBotting and others

Why does Lynx say "Very long lines have been wrapped!" after I return from my editor?

Lynx has a built-in hard limit on line length. In version 2.8.3, find this line in LYGlobalDefs.h:

#define MAX_LINE 1024 /* Hope that no window is larger than this */

Change it to something larger like 8192 and recompile.

What if Control-V e doesn't work?

Very cool! One hint: I found in the version of Lynx I'm using that I have to hit Ctrl-V Ctrl-V e for it to work. Bizarre but true. -- SunirShah

For Lynx 2.8.3rel.1 (apr-2000): tab into the text area, then Ctrl-X e -- DavidEsposito

Actually, it matters not what version you're using; it actually has more to do with your terminal settings. Someone with more time may want to check into this further.

When you define ^X as your 'escape' char with screen or stty, you can be confused again. ^V is sometimes (often?) assigned to lnext (literal next) of stty (see 'man stty' for how to get rid of it). This makes this ctrl-code (^V) to be used for escaping special interpretation of the next input. However, many shells already provide their own escaping mechanism (sometimes via '\', or even '^V' again). Assign a different escape char to your 'shell, stty, screen, lynx,' ... whatever, to get straight to the editor. -- RadoSmiljanic

Warning: Caching with Lynx can be a hazard.

If you happen to edit the same page more than once in a session, you might be presented with cached "Edit-Text" forms from earlier edits. To avoid this remember to use the "reload page" function and/or to follow links without caching (by default with "x" instead of enter). -- RadoSmiljanic

Kudos

Hey it works! -- DickBotting

I confirm. -- BenoitDeckmyn

Excellent! I've always preferred reading wiki in Lynx, but editing was a pain. Now it's miles better than Netscape. Folks, try this, it rocks! -- BrianEwins

Another option is to use w3m (another TextModeBrowser). With w3m, I just double-click on the text field and it fires up my favorite editor. -- StephanHouben

CategoryWiki