URL Schemes
retawq supports several types ("schemes") of URLs. This page lists a few examples of currently supported URLs and general notes to show what's possible and how retawq interprets URLs, including some "magic assumptions" (built-in defaults) for URLs which don't contain an explicit scheme.
retawq can currently handle the following schemes: "http", "ftp", "finger", "file", "local", "local-cgi" (if enabled), "about". The scheme "local-cgi" is retawq-specific; a similar feature is available in Lynx with the scheme "lynxcgi". The scheme "about" is available in several other web browsers, but with different URLs.
"http://foo.org/" - download the document "/" (normally this means "/index.html" or "/index.htm") from the server "foo.org" via HTTP; the default HTTP port (80) will be used.
"foo.org" - the same unless you have a file or directory with that name in the current directory on your local computer
"www.foo.org" - if no explicit scheme is given and the domain name begins with "www.", the HTTP scheme is assumed, no matter whether a file or directory with that name exists on your local computer
"http://foo.org:42/bar.html" - download the document "/bar.html" from the server "foo.org" via HTTP; the non-standard port 42 will be used.
"http://foo.org/cgi-bin/bar.cgi?whatever" - send the query "whatever" to the CGI script "/cgi-bin/bar.cgi" on the HTTP server "foo.org" and download the resulting document
In general, HTTP URLs can be of the form "http://hostname:port/path?query#fragment", where anything after the host name is optional; the "#fragment" part is recognized and removed, but not yet handled.
"ftp://ftp.foo.org/" - download the top-level FTP directory ("/") from the FTP server ftp.foo.org; the default FTP port (21) will be used.
"ftp.foo.org" - the same; if no explicit scheme is given and the domain name begins with "ftp.", the FTP scheme is assumed.
"ftp://ftp.foo.org:42/bar/" - download the directory "/bar" from the server ftp.foo.org via FTP; the non-standard port 42 will be used.
"ftp://username:password@ftp.foo.org/home/user/" - download the directory "/home/user" from the server ftp.foo.org via FTP, logging in as user "username" with password "password"; if you need to log in frequently, consider using the run-time configuration option "ftp-login".
"finger:username@foo.org" - show information about the user "username" on the server "foo.org"; the default finger port (79) will be used.
"finger:username@foo.org:42" - show information about the user "username" on the server "foo.org"; the non-standard port 42 will be used.
"finger:@finger.kernel.org" - show information about current Linux kernel versions
"local:/home/" - list the contents of the local directory "/home"
"/home" - the same; if no explicit scheme is given and the URL begins with a "/", "~" or ".", a local file/directory is assumed
"local:/home/foo/bar.html" - show the local file "/home/foo/bar.html"
"local:~/foo/bar.html" - show the local file "foo/bar.html" in the user's local home directory (depending on the environment variable "HOME"); normally this will result in an absolute path like "/home/your_home/foo/bar.html".
"local:/home/my_home?sort=tS" - show the contents of the local directory "/home/my_home", sorted by file type (lower-case "t", ascending) and size (upper-case "S", descending); see the run-time configuration option "local-dir-sort" for more information.
"local:foo/bar.html" - show the local file "foo/bar.html" in the "current" directory; this is normally the directory in which you were when you launched retawq.
Most other browsers use the scheme "file" instead of "local"; with retawq, you can use both of them, and they have the same meaning; "local" is just preferred because "file" might seem as if you could only access files and no directories...
"local-cgi:/usr/cgi-bin/script.cgi" - launch the script "/usr/cgi-bin/script.cgi" on the local computer and show its output
For security reasons, this scheme only works if the compile-time configuration option OPTION_LOCAL_CGI has been enabled, and scripts are only launched as the run-time configuration option "local-cgi" explicitly allows it.
retawq currently uses version 1.1 of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) to launch scripts. There's a script example available.
"about:retawq" - show information about retawq and possibly about used libraries; this is normally shown when you start retawq without providing URLs on the command-line.
"about:" - the same
"about:ctconfig" - show information about the actual values of compile-time configuration options used when retawq was built
This documentation file is part of version 0.1.4 of retawq, a network client created by Arne Thomaßen. retawq is basically released under certain versions of the GNU General Public License and WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. Copyright (C) 2001-2002 Arne Thomaßen.