On Tue, 28 Jul 2015 23:58:14 -0400 Brendan Desmond <bren...@imap.cc> wrote:
> On 2015-07-29, Scarlett wrote: > >(My last few mails to this list have been caught by the spam daemon, > >so I'm replying directly and hoping this makes its way through). > > > >I've wrestled with w3m's code plenty. What I found did not make me > >happy, as bcallah@ can attest (they also pointed me to this message). > > > >Numerous Linux distributions have fixes for fairly serious bugs in > >w3m sitting in their patches directories that have not been fixed > >upstream. > > > >Fuzzing it did not have positive results. > > > >Memory management practices are terrible. I suspect that replacing > >the GC layer with regular malloc() and adding free() in the correct > >places would be a major effort. A rewrite would possibly be > >preferable. > > > >I've merged a lot of fixes from various Linux distributions, and > >some of my own (C-standard-libraryification, overflow checks, NULL > >pointer deref bugs). I've also made some non-trivial simplifications > >to the code, removed a lot of cruft, and made it use libtls. > > > >You can check out my repository here, if you're interested: > >https://bitbucket.org/Scarletts/w3m/src > > > >I'd be really happy if other people took an interest and sent in > >some patches, or just tested it. > > > >w3m is fairly terrifying code. I would recommend using a "modern" > >intensively audited browser and disabling features like JavaScript > >over using w3m if security is a major concern. > > > >On the bells and whistles end of the spectrum, I'm rather partial to > >Iridium at the moment. Video performance on YouTube is much nicer > >than Firefox, and the process-per-tab feature adds some much needed > >stability. > > I am not a programmer at all, so I avoided stating that my gut tells > me that w3m is likely in dire need of major fixes and optimizations. > My dream project, if I ever learn C, would be to fork w3m or to write > a brand new browser in the spirit of w3m. I'll check out your repo > and mess around with it, for sure :) Thanks for the reply. > > -BSD > For plaintext browsing lynx has a lot of nice defaults that w3m lacks out of the box (meaningful page caching being the kicker). I like the promise of Dillo too with its graphical www minus all of the cancerous scripting. It is just not likely that there can ever again be a web browser worthy of getting the default designation in any serious OS.
