Gemini support for w3m

tl;dr I wrote a patch to add Gemini support to w3m.

I started adding Gemini support to w3m. As a user w3m is a great piece of software. It has good HTML support and speaks nearly all other protocols you'll come across while surfing the web#0. It bothered me that I had to use a different tool when I came across a gemini link. Also, you don't often get the chance to add a new protocol to a 28 year old piece of software.

This is still Work in Progress, but has enough features to be usable.

Features

• 'Clickable' links
• Folds lines at word boundary
• Pressing 'v' (VIEW) on a text/gemini buffer toggles between rendered and text/plain view
• Follows redirects
• Permanently accept self-signed certificates (Trust On First Use)
• Partial support for INPUT (still quoting issues)
• Use command GEMINIZE (via Esc-c) to render text/plain as text/gemini

To-do

• Fix quoting of special chars in URL for INPUT
• Do not overwrite known_hosts/accepted self-signed certificates if they were modified by another instance of w3m
• Clean up code (Current stage: "Make it work"; next stage: "Make it good")
• Add a configure switch to enable/disable Gemini support for the compile stage
• Make handling of 'Advanced line types' (Headings, lists and quotes) configurable through options

How to

• Get the w3m sources: git clone https://github.com/tats/w3m
• Change into the new directory: cd w3m
• Download the patch: wget https://rkta.de/assets/gemini.patch
• Apply the patch: patch < gemini.patch
• Get the build dependencies: apt-get build-dep w3m (or the equivalent of your distro)
• Configure and build: ./configure && make
• Try: ./w3m gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/

I've you need help or just want to leave feedback send me an email or join #w3m on irc.libera.chat

Update 2023-03-26: Updated the patch to indent blockquotes with four spaces.

• 0: Another not supported protocol is finger, let's see what happens when gemini support is finished