Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Michael J. Barillier]

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I've been using w3 off-and-on in the past, but since I'm trying to go
far more text-centric on my desktop[1] I'd like to do the little web
browsing that I do from within Emacs.  I've downloaded w3 v4.0pre.47
and have been getting that nasty ``wrong type argument: stringp, nil''
error[2] that's been mentioned lately.  Anyone have an opinion[3] on
W3 vs. emacs-w3m?

[1] Full-screen xterm running screen, with a Mozilla tab (using the
    PWM window manager) as a last resort.

[2] No, I haven't tried to get a backtrace ... sorry.

[3] Heh

-- 
Michael J. Barillier
Registered Linux user #125310 <http://counter.li.org/>
``A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is
nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.''
        -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Adam P.]

"Michael J. Barillier" <blackwolf@pcisys.net> writes:

> I've been using w3 off-and-on in the past, but since I'm trying to go
> far more text-centric on my desktop[1] I'd like to do the little web
> browsing that I do from within Emacs.  I've downloaded w3 v4.0pre.47
> and have been getting that nasty ``wrong type argument: stringp, nil''
> error[2] that's been mentioned lately.  Anyone have an opinion[3] on
> W3 vs. emacs-w3m?

Never managed to get w3 to work properly (I tried v4.Opre.47 at one
point) while w3m works nicely.  I've seen lots of comments (on various
emacs lists / newsgroups) in favour of w3m and virtually no opposite
opinions.

        Adam
-- 
Name and address in X-Real...

Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Henrik Enberg]

"Michael J. Barillier" <blackwolf@pcisys.net> writes:

> I've downloaded w3 v4.0pre.47 and have been getting that nasty ``wrong
> type argument: stringp, nil'' error[2] that's been mentioned lately.

  Get w3 from CVS.

  <http://savannah.gnu.org>

-- 
Booting... /vmemacs.el

Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Oliver Scholz]

"Michael J. Barillier" <blackwolf@pcisys.net> writes:
[...]
> I've downloaded w3 v4.0pre.47 and have been getting that nasty
> ``wrong type argument: stringp, nil'' error[2] that's been mentioned
> lately.

FWIW, I encountered this error message myself some time ago. In my
case the backtrace told me that it was related to the font size spec
in the default.css in w3/etc. I could get rid of the error by changing
default.css. I don't remember how exactly; it was something with
removing a "+", or somesuch. A backtrace should tell you more. But I
don't know if this is a proper solution (I doubt it).

> Anyone have an opinion[3] on W3 vs. emacs-w3m?

IMHO Emacs/W3 feels a lot more emacsish. Well, it is written in Elisp
anyways. I really wish it would be more actively developed, because
actually it is my favourite browser. And yes, I know emacs-w3m and I
use it as a last resort, when Emacs/W3 fails to render a page. I am
not happy with this, though.

    Oliver
-- 
14 Brumaire an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[A. Lucien Meyers]

alkibiades@gmx.de (Oliver Scholz):
>  "Michael J. Barillier" <blackwolf@pcisys.net> writes:
>  [...]
> > I've downloaded w3 v4.0pre.47 and have been getting that nasty
> > ``wrong type argument: stringp, nil'' error[2] that's been mentioned
> > lately.
>  
>  FWIW, I encountered this error message myself some time ago. In my
>  case the backtrace told me that it was related to the font size spec
>  in the default.css in w3/etc. I could get rid of the error by changing
>  default.css. I don't remember how exactly; it was something with
>  removing a "+", or somesuch. A backtrace should tell you more. But I
>  don't know if this is a proper solution (I doubt it).
>  
> > Anyone have an opinion[3] on W3 vs. emacs-w3m?
>  
>  IMHO Emacs/W3 feels a lot more emacsish. Well, it is written in Elisp
>  anyways. I really wish it would be more actively developed, because
>  actually it is my favourite browser. And yes, I know emacs-w3m and I
>  use it as a last resort, when Emacs/W3 fails to render a page. I am
>  not happy with this, though.

Why not, Oliver?  w3m works and works well. w3 does not.  Basta.

BTW w3m also works quite well as a stand-alone browser under X.
Have got w3m to render some sites which mozilla would not grok
properly, e. g. http://www.lostworldsinc.com .

Am I a w3m fan?  Yes.  Why?  It works.

Lucien
-- 
If you receive this by error, please delete and inform sender.
www.consult-meyers.com recommends e-mail encryption using pgp.

Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Henrik Enberg]

"A. Lucien Meyers" <nospam.look@replyto.please.because.this.is.invalid> writes:

> alkibiades@gmx.de (Oliver Scholz):

>>  IMHO Emacs/W3 feels a lot more emacsish. Well, it is written in Elisp
>>  anyways. I really wish it would be more actively developed, because
>>  actually it is my favourite browser. And yes, I know emacs-w3m and I
>>  use it as a last resort, when Emacs/W3 fails to render a page. I am
>>  not happy with this, though.
>
> Why not, Oliver?  w3m works and works well. w3 does not.  Basta.

  For me it's the other way round.  w3 works for pretty much anything I
  throw at it, once you turned off image loading and use your own
  colors.   emacs-w3m on the other hand won't follow any links for me
  (it just reloads the first page I've viewed) and it frequently freezes
  Emacs so I have to kill it.  

> BTW w3m also works quite well as a stand-alone browser under X.
> Have got w3m to render some sites which mozilla would not grok
> properly, e. g. http://www.lostworldsinc.com .

  I do agree that w3m is buttkickin' good as a stand-alone browser.  It
  is what I use most of the time.  On the other hand, if w3 ever gets
  reasonably fast, I'll switch in a heartbeat.

-- 
Booting... /vmemacs.el

Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Oliver Scholz]

"A. Lucien Meyers" <nospam.look@replyto.please.because.this.is.invalid> writes:

> alkibiades@gmx.de (Oliver Scholz):
>>  "Michael J. Barillier" <blackwolf@pcisys.net> writes:
[...]
>> > Anyone have an opinion[3] on W3 vs. emacs-w3m?
>>  
>>  IMHO Emacs/W3 feels a lot more emacsish. Well, it is written in Elisp
>>  anyways. I really wish it would be more actively developed, because
>>  actually it is my favourite browser. And yes, I know emacs-w3m and I
>>  use it as a last resort, when Emacs/W3 fails to render a page. I am
>>  not happy with this, though.
>
> Why not, Oliver?  w3m works and works well. w3 does not.  Basta.

*hehehe* I don't think that this "Basta" is well applied on a piece of
free software. :-) I would read that statement rather as "Emacs/W3
still needs a lot of work before it is reliable and usable as your
main browser."

[Actually on my system Emacs/W3 is not reliable only in cases, where
emacs-w3m is not reliable, too: in dealing with images and some
advanced css stuff (Come to think about it, I doubt that emacs-w3m
even tries to address the latter). So the main disadvantage is that
Emacs/w3 is slow. Very slow, to be sure.]

I do not want say anything bad against emacs-w3m, but it feels like
the interface to an external console application. (Probably, because
it is one.) While Emacs/W3 -- slow and incomplete and imperfect as it
may be -- has at least the potential to be a full fledged graphical
(!) web browser integrated in Emacs.

I envision Emacs/W3 as the equivalent to Gnus in the far future: the
slowest but most powerful and extensible html browser out
there. O.k. maybe this is rather dreaming ...

But apart from that, I'd like to see it in a broader context: I am
pretty sure that Emacs will get more and more word processing
facilities in the future. I see Emacs/W3 as a component of the Emacs
Integrated Text Processing and Rendering System. As I read W. Perry's
papers about the future of Emacs/W3, he seems to have something like
that in mind.

It is true that Emacs/W3 has suffered some bit rott, because nobody
seems to develop it actively. But this will not change, if we allow it
to become a public opionion that Emacs/W3 should be disregarded.

Finally the OP got the religious flame war he asked for. :-)

> BTW w3m also works quite well as a stand-alone browser under X.

Outside of Emacs I tend to be a lynx fan.

    Oliver
-- 
14 Brumaire an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Oliver Scholz]

I wrote:
>>>  I really wish it would be more actively developed, because
>>>  actually it is my favourite browser. And yes, I know emacs-w3m
>>>  and I use it as a last resort, when Emacs/W3 fails to render a
>>>  page. I am not happy with this, though.

And then I wrote:
> [Actually on my system Emacs/W3 is not reliable only in cases, where
> emacs-w3m is not reliable, too: in dealing with images and some
> advanced css stuff (Come to think about it, I doubt that emacs-w3m
> even tries to address the latter). So the main disadvantage is that
> Emacs/w3 is slow. Very slow, to be sure.]

I realize now that theese statements may seem a bit contradictory. I
should add that in the former case I was talking about the CVS version
of Emacs/W3 which I used until recently on my old work station and
which indeed failed to render some pages (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu
being my main source of grief -- or maybe url.el is to blame
here?). The latest released version (which I use now) works
o.k. AFAICS.

Large pages can get even a new computer on its knees, though. :-(

    Oliver
-- 
14 Brumaire an 211 de la Révolution
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Michael J. Barillier]

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>>>>> "os" == Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> writes:

    os> Finally the OP got the religious flame war he asked for. :-)

I wasn't asking for a flame war--merely assumed that my search for
information would draw out strong opinion ...

So what do y'all think of that vi editor? :)

-- 
Michael J. Barillier
Registered Linux user #125310 <http://counter.li.org/>
``A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is
nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.''
        -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Jay Belanger]

"Michael J. Barillier" <blackwolf@pcisys.net> writes:
...
> I wasn't asking for a flame war--merely assumed that my search for
> information would draw out strong opinion ...
> 
> So what do y'all think of that vi editor? :)

I don't like the keybindings much, but vi/w3 is pretty good, and a
little bit faster than emacs/w3.

Jay

Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[mr.sparkle]

On Sun, 03 Nov 2002, blackwolf@pcisys.net wrote:
> I've been using w3 off-and-on in the past, but since I'm trying to
> go far more text-centric on my desktop[1] I'd like to do the little
> web browsing that I do from within Emacs.  I've downloaded w3
> v4.0pre.47 and have been getting that nasty ``wrong type argument:
> stringp, nil'' error[2] that's been mentioned lately.  Anyone have
> an opinion[3] on W3 vs. emacs-w3m?
> 
> [1] Full-screen xterm running screen, with a Mozilla tab (using the
>     PWM window manager) as a last resort.
> 
> [2] No, I haven't tried to get a backtrace ... sorry.
> 
> [3] Heh

I found w3 to be sloooooow. emacs-w3m is reasonably fast and it
renders html nicely. I use emacs-w3m as the browser for html files in
dired and I have no complaints so far.

Re: Holy Wars redux: w3 vs. emacs-w3m

[Sacha Chua]

happy@vole.com (mr.sparkle) writes:

> I found w3 to be sloooooow. emacs-w3m is reasonably fast and it
> renders html nicely. I use emacs-w3m as the browser for html files in
> dired and I have no complaints so far.

I briefly checked out ewb (Emacs Web Browser? I think it's on
EmacsWiki), but couldn't get it to run easily. I actually sort of like
Emacs/w3 in console mode (stops it from trying to render graphics and
stuff), although the default colors seem to suck when on a
light-on-dark terminal, so I defined my own CSS and forced its use.

It's actually quite usable, although rendering is slooooooow. I wonder
how that can be improved? I'm fine with not having tables displayed,
although I'd like to be able to navigate through them with keystrokes
and manipulate them with functions.

-- 
Sacha Chua <sacha@free.net.ph> - 4 BS CS Ateneo geekette
interests: emacs, gnu/linux, wearables, teaching compsci