Friday, December 8, 2017

How to install GNU EMACS Text Web Browser on Windows 10

Goal: Surf the web with no ads and paywalls.
Solution: Use a Text Browser;  

  • tried Lynx browser but could not get it to work. 
  • Emacs which is well supported for all platforms comes with a web browser ! 

The Emacs Web Browser (Eww) is a very basic and fast text/image browser. Flash and Javascript are not supported which gets rid of ads. Emacs Web Browser original instructions herewarning very sparse.

Emacs Web Browser surfing http://www.google.ca/

Source:

Get latest version GNU EMACS 26.0.90 for Windows

http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/

Update 2020:

Get https://metadataconsulting.blogspot.com/2020/04/How-to-get-a-Text-Browser-for-Windows-7-10-Surf-the-web-in-text-only-no-ads.html

How to get EMACS Web Browser to work

  1. Unzip emacs-26.0.90-x86_64-with-deps.zip - Depends
  2. Unzip emacs-26.0.90-x86_64.zip - Compiled
  3. Copy Compiled sub-directories to Depends sub-directories;
        bin -> bin
        lib -> lib
        libexe -> libexe
        share -> share - you can say NO to copy overwriting info and man directories.
  4. Run EMACS by clicking runemacs.exe in Depends bin directory
  5. In EMACS, choose Tools -> Browse the Web -> Enter your URL or Keywords: 
  6. Voila! it works!
Trivia

  1. EWW, the Emacs Web Wowser, is a web browser package for Emacs.
  2. If you just use emacs-26.0.90-x86_64.zip it will complain about not loading LIBXML2.dll.
  3. You can download that here http://xmlsoft.org/sources/win32/, but then complains about gnutls not being installed, then we are into dependency hell. Hours later....

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