Web browsing usage from base

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 3 Apr 2014, Royce Williams wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 6:21 AM, Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 2 Apr 2014, Eitan Adler wrote:
>>
>>  On 2 April 2014 09:02, Brian Kim <briansan24 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Would anyone like to share their best approach to browsing the web only
>>>> using utilities from a base install?
>>>>
>>>
>>> $pkg install firefox
>>> $firefox
>>>
>>> seems to work (provided X is running).
>>>
>>
>> fetch(1) was already mentioned.  telnet(1) or nc(1) would allow
>> interactive use, admittedly not conveniently (level: neckbeard).  I can
>> imagine a (terrible) text browser hacked together with fetch, sh, dialog,
>> and grep/sed/awk to parse out links.  But even full text browsers like
>> lynx, links, and w3m are often useless due to the modern web's dependence
>> on images, Javascript, and such.
>>
>> Incidentally, the issue of the base OS not having a text web browser has
>> come up several times lately.  I don't know if there's one suitable for
>> import, but it's something to consider.  Writing one using only the tools
>> from base would be an interesting/horrifying experiment.
>>
>
> It would also be useful to hear more about the use cases that are causing
> this spike in interest.

The most recent ones were about reading HTML documentation.  The earlier 
ones... I want to say it involved the installer, but can't recall.