                              Command Line Syntax for the W3C Command Line Tool
   W3CComLineMANUAL
   
   The generic syntax is:
   
        w3c [ options ]  [ URI [ keywords ]]

   Check here the following options
   
      Getting Help
      
      Main Modes of execution
      
      Using Different HTTP Methods
      
      Data Format Conversions
      
      Destination Address for PUT and POST
      
      Other Options
      
      Form Submission and Searching
      
   Henrik Frystyk Nielsen
   
   
   ___________________________________
   
OPTIONS

   The order of the options is not important and options can in fact be
   specified on either side of any docaddress. Currently available options
   are:-
   
  Getting Help
  
  -help or -?            Load this file from directly into the browser
                         
  -v [ a | b | c | g | p | s | t | u ]
                         Verbose mode: Gives a running commentary on the
                         program's attempts to read data in various ways. As
                         the amount of verbose output is substantial, the -v
                         option can now be followed by zero, one or more of the
                         following flags (without space) in order to
                         differentiate the verbose output generated:
                         
      a: Anchor relevant information
      
      b: Bindings to local file system
      
      c: Cache trace
      
      g: SGML trace
      
      p: Protocol module information
      
      s: SGML/HTML relevant information
      
      t: Thread trace
      
      u: URI relevant information
      
  The -v option without any appended options shows all trace messages. An
                         example is
                         
        -vpt

  showing thread and protocol trace messages
                         
  -version               Prints out the version number of the software, and the
                         version number of the WWW library, and exits.
                         
  Main Modes of execution
  
  -                      A minus sign with no trailing characters indicates
                         that the program will accept HTML format input from
                         the standard input. This allows www to be used as a
                         filter from html to plain text for example. Relative
                         links in the input are parsed as though the address of
                         the document was that of the home page (or docaddress
                         if specified). Implies non-interactive mode.
                         
  -cl                    Counting content length of the output. This flag
                         appends the Content-Length counter stream to the
                         output stream so that everything is counted. This
                         works exactly like piping the output into wc.
                         
  -n                     Non-interactive mode. Outputs the formatted document
                         to the standard output without ever asking for
                         anything. Pages are delimited with form feed (FF)
                         characters.
                         
  -o [ file ]            Redirects output to specified file. The default value
                         is "w3c.out". This mode forced non-interactive mode
                         
  -single                Singlethreaded mode. If this flag is set then the
                         browser uses blocking, non interruptible I/O in
                         interactive mode. Non-interactive mode always uses
                         blocking I/O.
                         
  Using Different HTTP Methods
  
   The Command Line Tool supports several HTTP methods. The default value is
   "GET". These options imply non-interactive execution.
   
  -get                   Gets a document. This is the default operation! See
                         Form Submission and Searching for how to submit HTML
                         forms and to issue queries.
                         
  -head                  Returns the header information (if any) but not the
                         document
                         
  -delete                Deletes a resource (or makes it unavailable) for
                         future references.
                         
  -put                   Uploads a document from either the local file system
                         or a remote HTTP server to a remote HTTP server
                         (destination) using PUT method. You must indicate the
                         destination using the -dest command line option.
                         
  -post                  Uploads a document from either the local file system
                         or a remote HTTP server to a remote HTTP server
                         (destination) using POST method. You must indicate the
                         destination using the -dest command line option. See
                         Form Submission and Searching for how to submit HTML
                         forms and to issue queries.
                         
  -options               Ask for the available options for this URL
                         
  -trace                 Ask for trace messages for this URL. You can supply
                         the number of hop counts with the additional
                         -maxforwards command line option
                         
  Automatic Authentication
  
  -auth                  If you are willing to try this then you can include
                         your username, password, and the realm for where to
                         apply it using the -auth command line option. I don't
                         want to hear anything about security, OK? The format
                         is user:password@realm
                         
  Data Format Conversions
  
   You can convert the outcome of a request to some other format by using the
   following flags:
   
  -from [ format ]       Only if the Line mode Browser is executed as a filter
                         (using the "-" option), this option indicates the
                         desired input format. The default value is
                         "text/html".
                         
  -to [ format ]         Format is the output format for www. Default value is
                         "www/present" but may be changed according to the
                         HTTP-specifications. Two common output formats are
                         "www/source" that is the source without MIME-headers
                         and "www/mime" that is the source with the MIME-header
                         if any. Though also "text/latex" is possible which
                         generates a LaTeX version of the (HTML) document. This
                         can then be compiled using latex and put out as
                         Postscript. Default value is presenting the output to
                         the user.
                         
  -source                Display the original source (without any MIME-headers)
                         of a document instead of parsing it.
                         
  Destination Address for PUT and POST
  
  -dest                  You can specify a (relative) destination URL, for
                         example for the operations PUT and POST using this
                         flag. For example:
                         
        -dest http://myserver/newfiles/foo.html

  Other Options
  
  -l [ file ]            Specifies a log file with a list of visited documents.
                         The default value is "w3c.log"
                         
  -maxforwards <n>       Max forwards to be used with the TRACE method
                         
  -r <file>              Rule file, a.k.a. configuration file. If this is
                         specified, a rule file may be used to map URLs, and to
                         set up other aspects of the behavior of the browser.
                         Many rule files may be given with successive -r
                         options, and a default rule file name may be given
                         using the WWW_CONFIG environment variable.
                         
  -timeout <n>           Timeout in seconds on open connections. If we don't
                         get a reply within n secs then about the request.
                         Default timeout is 20 secs
                         
URI

   If present, the next argument (docaddress) is the hypertext address , of the
   document at which you want to start browsing. You may want to define an
   alias for www followed by name of your favorite index.
   
FORM SUBMISSION AND SEARCHING

   Any further command line arguments are taken as keywords. Keywords can be
   used for two purposes:
   
      As search tokens in an HTTP request-URI encoded so that all spaces are
      replaced with "+" and unsafe characters are encoded using the URI "%xx"
      escape mechanism. This is the default use of keywords.
      
      As form data in an HTTP POST request. Use the -form command line option
      to treat all keywords as form data. If the method is GET then the data is
      encoded as for search data, that is as part of the URI. If it is a POST
      request then the data is encoded as application/x-www-form-urlencoded and
      sent in the body of the request.
      
   An example of a search query is
   
        w3c http://... "RECORD=ID" "par1=a" "par2=b" "par3=c" "par4=d"

   and of a POST form submission
   
        w3c -post http://... -form "RECORD=ID" "COL1=a" "COL2=b" "COL3=c" "COL4
=d"

   
   ___________________________________
   
                                                         Henrik Frystyk Nielsen
            @(#) $Id: CommandLine.html,v 1.15 1998/09/10 21:48:56 frystyk Exp $
                                                                               
   
