Moving w3m out of standard

[Bud Roth]

I agree with Dustin's point.  When an install goes flawlessly, a text
web browser may be superfluous, but when things go crunch and your
laptop is not handy, a text web browser is a quick way to find solutions
on the Internet.  Sometimes, it can be as simple a need as looking up a
VMWARE key or making sure that the server's Apache server is serving
pages.  Wget doesn't really fit the bill.  Some form of text web browser
should be easily apt-gettable...

Bud


On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 10:30 -0500, Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 9:31 AM, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at canonical.com> wrote:
> >  * w3m            # we need some text-based html presenter
> >
> > I'd like to formally cast doubt on this statement from the standard seed.
> > This was originally added a long time ago in order to provide a text-based
> > browser for use on servers, at a time when the default server installation
> > was a strict subset of the desktop.  It is completely superfluous on a
> > modern desktop.
> >
> > Now that this is becoming possible with the new server seed[1], I'd like to
> > propose that it move to the server seed instead (or even be removed, if the
> > server team doesn't feel it's appropriate).
> >
> > Note that wget, which is much smaller, simpler and more generally useful
> > (e.g. in scripts) is already in standard.
> 
> Matt, et al.-
> 
> I agree 100% that w3m is completely unnecessary on a modern Ubuntu
> desktop machine.  No argument there.
> 
> On a server without X, however, I think that some form of an
> interactive text web browser is still useful.  I know of 3 in Ubuntu
> main, (w3m, lynx, elinks).  I can't speak for the state of upstream
> development of any of those.  They may be other alternatives.
> 
> But I do see a distinct difference between w3m/lynx/elinks and
> wget/curl.  The latter are useful for scripting the downloading of
> files/content and then acting on it.  The former are more interactive,
> and allow for web searching, following links, reading pages.
> 
> We can debate whether an interactive text browser belongs in the
> default server seed, or if we simply document how to install and use
> it in the Server Guide.  I'd like to see an interactive web browser
> remain on the server, though.
> 
> 
> :-Dustin
>