gkedrovs
06-25-2003, 05:48 PM
After getting my text-based Mutt trained and behaving himself (see my screenshot link in the sig below), I wanted to try out Lynx, our friendly, text-based web browser. It’s easy enough to install, just get the zipped tarball, unzip, detar, config, make, make install.
http://lynx.browser.org/
After that, it’s as simple as opening a terminal window and typing “lynx” (no quotes) to bring it up.
But, if you’re like me, you gotta have a cool desktop and that means (in my case) transparency! Mutt is awesome on a transparent background (gotta tweak the colors in muttrc, though). Term windows gotta be transparent. It’s just... fun, you know? Well, Lynx would not run transparent for me.
RTFM: in the tarball dir of the Lynx is a file INSTALLATION. Read it (cat INSTALLATION | more) and it gives various options to tag onto ./configure. Here are the options I used (you need to type them in all on one command line; I listed them to keep it neater; it should all be one big line ./configure --enable-foo --enable--bar etc.).
--enable-read-eta
--enable-justify-elts
--enable-prettysrc
--enable-underlines
--enable-font-switch
--libdir /etc
--bindir /bin
--enable-default-colors
--with-screen=slang
You can read through what each of those options do in the INSTALLATION file. The last one is the key to getting your transparency. You have to --enable-default-colors and then add the --with-screen=slang.
Make sure you have ncurses and slang libs up to date! This one threw me off for a while. I had the libs (installed by RH8.0 who knows where), but Lynx still didn’t “grab” the transparency of my aterm window. So, I downloaded the current zipped tarballs of the libs and installed them. Here’s where you can get them:
ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses (I got ncurses-5.3.tar.gz)
ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/davis/slang (I got slang-1.4.9.tar.gz)
I did a "make uninstall" in my Lynx tarball directory to clean out my first install that didn’t work. Then, after installing ncurses and slang (and testing them according to the recommendations in the README files), I re-installed Lynx:
./configure --enable-[all of the above options]
make
[su]
make install
And now... I have a transparent text-based web browser to keep my transparent text-based Mutt e-mail client happy as a text-based clam!
Oh, one more thing... just in case your new to aterm and transparency, here are couple helps:
1. To get aterm up and running transparent:
aterm -sr -tr -fg white -sh 60 -bg black
2. To get Lynx up and running in a transparent aterm window:
aterm -sr -tr -fg white -sh 60 -bg black +sb -geometry 140x50+140+110 -e lynx
That geometry is just what I use to fit nicely on my desktop how I have it configured. The first 2 numbers (145x50) set the size of the window and the next 2 (+140+110) positions that window on the desktop. Play with it and see what happens or delete the whole -geometry 140x50+140+110. That’ll work, too.
Dang this is fun!
-Greg
http://lynx.browser.org/
After that, it’s as simple as opening a terminal window and typing “lynx” (no quotes) to bring it up.
But, if you’re like me, you gotta have a cool desktop and that means (in my case) transparency! Mutt is awesome on a transparent background (gotta tweak the colors in muttrc, though). Term windows gotta be transparent. It’s just... fun, you know? Well, Lynx would not run transparent for me.
RTFM: in the tarball dir of the Lynx is a file INSTALLATION. Read it (cat INSTALLATION | more) and it gives various options to tag onto ./configure. Here are the options I used (you need to type them in all on one command line; I listed them to keep it neater; it should all be one big line ./configure --enable-foo --enable--bar etc.).
--enable-read-eta
--enable-justify-elts
--enable-prettysrc
--enable-underlines
--enable-font-switch
--libdir /etc
--bindir /bin
--enable-default-colors
--with-screen=slang
You can read through what each of those options do in the INSTALLATION file. The last one is the key to getting your transparency. You have to --enable-default-colors and then add the --with-screen=slang.
Make sure you have ncurses and slang libs up to date! This one threw me off for a while. I had the libs (installed by RH8.0 who knows where), but Lynx still didn’t “grab” the transparency of my aterm window. So, I downloaded the current zipped tarballs of the libs and installed them. Here’s where you can get them:
ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses (I got ncurses-5.3.tar.gz)
ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/davis/slang (I got slang-1.4.9.tar.gz)
I did a "make uninstall" in my Lynx tarball directory to clean out my first install that didn’t work. Then, after installing ncurses and slang (and testing them according to the recommendations in the README files), I re-installed Lynx:
./configure --enable-[all of the above options]
make
[su]
make install
And now... I have a transparent text-based web browser to keep my transparent text-based Mutt e-mail client happy as a text-based clam!
Oh, one more thing... just in case your new to aterm and transparency, here are couple helps:
1. To get aterm up and running transparent:
aterm -sr -tr -fg white -sh 60 -bg black
2. To get Lynx up and running in a transparent aterm window:
aterm -sr -tr -fg white -sh 60 -bg black +sb -geometry 140x50+140+110 -e lynx
That geometry is just what I use to fit nicely on my desktop how I have it configured. The first 2 numbers (145x50) set the size of the window and the next 2 (+140+110) positions that window on the desktop. Play with it and see what happens or delete the whole -geometry 140x50+140+110. That’ll work, too.
Dang this is fun!
-Greg