Edbrowse, a Command Line Editor Browser

Edbrowse is a combination editor, browser, and mail client that is 100% text based. The interface is similar to /bin/ed, though there are many more features such as editing multiple files simultaneously and rendering html. This program was originally written for blind users, but many sighted users have taken advantage of its unique scripting capabilities which can be found nowhere else. A batch job, or cron job, can access web pages on the internet, submit forms, and send email, with no human intervention whatsoever. edbrowse can also tap into databases through odbc.

The original version, version 1, was written in perl. You can download version 1.5.17 here, though it is no longer supported or documented. It also lacks many important features that are present in the C package, such as javascript support and the aforementioned scripting capabilities. Still, the perl implementation has one overarching advantage; it is 100% portable. You can run it on Unix, Linux, Windows, Dos, Mac, OS2 - anything that has perl. So you may want to play with the perl version as a demo to see if you like it. Then at your leisure you can download the C source and build edbrowse version 2 or 3.

I wrote version 2 in C, and rolled my own javascript compiler and engine from scratch - not a trivial task. The home-grown javascript engine worked, but keeping up with changes to an evolving language turned out to be a hassle. Version 3 uses the Spider Monkey javascript engine from Mozilla.org, which is also open source. This allowed me to leverage some 30,000 lines of code - more than everything I had written to date. And somebody else was maintaining it! That's the power of open source. You can download edbrowse version 3.4.8 as a zip archive here. Note, if your Mozilla javascript is less then version 1.8 then you will need edbrowse 3.4.7.

Edbrowse is sometimes described as dense in its code and in its human interface. It contains many cryptic one and two letter commands, and few interactive help facilities. So it is important that you read the user's guide before you take edbrowse out for a spin. (Also available in French.) Remember, this manual describes the C version of edbrowse; the perl version will be lacking in many areas.

Even the C version is a work in progress. It does not support dynamic document objects, digest authentication, or imap, to name a few. My time is limited, and I am always looking for developers to help me with this project. I am particularly interested in porting the C to Windows, and support for Spanish, German, Italian, and other languages. Please let me know if you can help.

This is intended for Unix-like platforms. You'll need the packages pcre-devel and openssl-devel to compile this program. If you didn't say yes to "Software Development" at time of installation, these may not be present on your system, but they should be on your master disks. Version 3 requires SMJS from Mozilla.org. All this is described in the README file.

The commandline list, hosted at Yahoo Groups, is a place to discuss edbrowse and other command-line applications in general. It is friendly and informal. You may subscribe by sending a message to commandline-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Send questions or comments to the maintainer, Karl Dahlke. Thank you.