2025-01-25
Primitivist's guide to linkology
Working with images inside links2.
Most of this tutorial concerns itself with the TUI version of links2, as GUI links renders images itself. You should know however that the guide for associating file formats with external programs is handy for GUI links as well. This should become obvious with the pdf example below.
This is (not) an image
During your TUI links lifestyle you are bound to come across an image file. Selecting it will present you with this menu:
Save will save the file, Display will attempt to display it inside links in binary, like so:
Let's instead tell links we want to open image files in an external program.
Esc - Setup - Associations
By default there will be no associations. Press Add.
Next we define a bunch of image file formats and the program to open those in. The other options are for your
consideration. You probably want Run in X-Window checked, if you're planning to open the image in
a GUI program.
Label: image
Content-Type(s): image/png,image/jpeg,image/webp
Progam ('%' is replaced with file name): feh %
Now whenever you select (Enter or mouse click) an image of a format that is defined in Associations, a new option
Open will be present (you could skip this prompt by checking Ask before opening). Choosing open and pressing Enter will open the image in the desired program.
DO REMEMBER: If you want any changes in links' settings to persist, you HAVE to save them. Esc - s - s (Setup - Save options)
Note that if an image is enclosed in <a>, thus working as a url, pressing Enter will not give you
this prompt to open the image. You must instead press i (or Esc - Link - View image). Keep an eye on the
url preview at the bottom left to know what you're highlighting and where it leads.
GUI - application/pdf example
In this example a url pointing to a .pdf file is opened. Initially links doesn't know what to do with it.
Just like with images, a new file association is added. Here I use mupdf to open application/pdf files.
Now when the url is clicked and the option Open is selected, mupdf opens the pdf.
Consult this file which lists a large selection of potential mime types you could parse through links, courtesy of OpenBSD's /usr/share/misc/mime.types.
Ie:
Content-Type: video/mp4,video/webm,image/gif Program: mpv %
will open .mp4, .webm and .gif files in mpv.
Images and how to spot them
Firstly, it is vital that you enable: Display links to images, in Esc - View - Html options.
With this disabled, you will not be able to see where an image that doesn't have alt defined (blame webdevs) is. This will
show [IMG] where otherwise nothing would be. Additionally you can also select Display image filenames
in the same menu, this will instead show the filename.
With images disabled, know that in GUI links you cannot select an image that is not enclosed in <a> with a keyboard. You have
to use a mouse. This is not an issue in TUI links, where both urls and all images can be selected with the up and down
arrow keys.
The following examples show you the differences how links handles hidden images in both GUI and TUI.
The following screenshots render this code:
<h2>img with alt, no a href</h2> <p><img src="pic.png" alt="this is an image alt of an image that is not enclosed in a href"></p> <h2>img without alt, no a href</h2> <p><img src="pic.png"></p> <h2>img with alt, enclosed with a href</h2> <p><a href="/"><img src="pic.png" alt="this is an image alt of an image that is enclosed in a href"></a></p> <h2>img without alt, enclosed with a href</h2> <p><a href="/"><img src="pic.png"></a></p>
TUI - Display links to images is disabled:
Notice that the second image is completely missing, and cannot be selected in any way. The first image is selected.
TUI - Display links to images is enabled:
The second image is now visible and can be selected with both mouse and keyboard.
GUI - Display links to images is disabled:
Same as TUI, there's no way to tell there is an image.
GUI - Display links to images is enabled, Display image filenames is enabled:
This example shows the difference when Display image filenames is enabled. The now visible second image
is right clicked with a mouse to show the popup menu. In GUI, this can only be achieved with a mouse.
working the muscle memory
Kill all connections
For when a website is loading way too much stuff. Similar to stop loading this page in other browsers.
Press: Esc - f - t
Display/disable images
This has multiple uses. Notably if a website is downloading too many images, you can kill this process instantly. If images are disabled when a new page is opened, they are not loaded at all and will only load once images are re-enabled. This is only available in GUI links.
Press: *
GUI Caveat
GUI links2 doesn't play animated gifs and there is currently no way to automatize opening gifs (or any other images files)
externally via Associations (it works as expected in TUI links). You have to manually copy the url of the gif and open it in something else
(or save it and open it locally with a different program).