w3m-mode in emacs on osx

December 19, 2008 12:34 PM

Emacsfilter: Anyone had luck installing w3m to Emacs on OS X?

I'm an almost complete novice with emacs. I've successfully gotten org-mode and remember.el to work by adding their directories to the load path in .emacs.

I can't get the same to happen for w3m. I've run make and make install, no dice. I've copied the individual .el files to site-lisp inside of emacs, no luck.

I've follow a couple of sets of 'how-to' directions online, but none seem to work. I always get the error:

'Install w3m command in 'exec-path' or set 'w3m-command' variable correctly.'

Thoughts?

posted by mrstrotsky to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Response by poster: I'm running the GUI version of gnu emacs (i.e. not from the console) if that helps.
posted by mrstrotsky at 12:38 PM on December 19, 2008

Does w3m run from the terminal? It sounds like emacs is loading w3m-mode, trying to run w3m, and giving up. If your w3m is from macports or fink, it might live under /sw or /opt, and emacs might not inherit those paths from the shell for some reason.

Off-topic: if OS X is your first experience with emacs, you might try Aquamacs.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 12:55 PM on December 19, 2008

What are the values of Emacs' exec-path and w3m-command variables? You can check by using C-h v to run describe-variable. It would seem either that w3m is not in any of the directories in exec-path, or something is wrong with w3m-command. If you know where the w3m binary is installed and that directory isn't in exec-path, you can add this to your ~/.emacs file:

(setq exec-path (cons "/path/to/w3m/binary" exec-path))
posted by letourneau at 12:58 PM on December 19, 2008

Response by poster: w3m doesn't run from terminal either, but that would be a different instance of emacs, yes?

adding path to w3m doesn't work either, letourneau, same error.
posted by mrstrotsky at 1:40 PM on December 19, 2008

Response by poster: w3m-command is nil, how should I set it?
posted by mrstrotsky at 1:41 PM on December 19, 2008

Response by poster: fantabulous: Didn't care for Aquamacs, the mix of osxy and emacs just confused me. I just want to learn pure emacs stuff that'll work cross platform.
posted by mrstrotsky at 1:48 PM on December 19, 2008

Best answer: mrstrotsky: what you seem to misunderstand is that w3m is a seperate program from emacs. It is when w3m runs inside emacs (almost like the opposite of a browser plugin) that it becomes really useful and interesting. w3m needs to be installed seperately and independantly for emacs w3m mode to work.
posted by idiopath at 2:49 PM on December 19, 2008

Best answer: Yeah, I think idiopath has it. The Emacs w3m-mode is just a wrapper around the w3m browser, which is a separate, independent piece of software. Here's the download page for w3m at Sourceforge. You'll need to install the OS X Developer Tools to build the app from source, unless you can find a compiled OS X binary (I didn't see any in a quick Google search). Once you build w3m, you can add the location of the binary to the Emacs exec-path list (which on second thought I should have suggested you do as (add-to-list 'exec-path "/path/to/w3m"), but whatever), and w3m-mode should be able to fire up w3m in an Emacs buffer.
posted by letourneau at 3:36 PM on December 19, 2008

Response by poster: Boingo-Boing! Edited .emacs, ran ./config make and make install on w3m again, and it worked! Groovy! Thanks gang!
posted by mrstrotsky at 4:33 PM on December 19, 2008