BROWSER-HISTORY(1)					      General Commands Manual						BROWSER-HISTORY(1)

NAME

       browser-history - external history of web browsers, such as netscape

SYNOPSIS

       browser-history [ options ]

DESCRIPTION

       Browser-History	is  a client-side X daemon maintaining a browser-independent global history of all the web sites you visited. Its usage is
       very simple, just put the following line in your .xinitrc or your X start-up script:
	      browser-history &
       And open the file ~/.browser-history/history-log.html and bookmark it.

       Browser-history came from the will to overcome a Netscape bug: there was no global history, and if you close a window, its whole history is
       lost.  For  people  browsing  lots  of sites, having a possibility to track back where one has been before means that you don't have to put
       everything in your bookmarks file. If you are not sure if a site may be worth remembering, don't add it in your bookmarks. If you  need	it
       later, just browse your history files.

       Later,  it  came  to  our minds that this also could be a valuable add-on to people writing experimental browsers, so they dont have to add
       this functionality to their browser itself.

       Browser-history is a small and efficient daemon. Real user services could be built on top of the log files it maintains for more possibili-
       ties (graphical representation, advanced search options, collective histories). It can be seen as a quick-and-dirty hack wrt to the general
       solution of using a personal proxy to provide this history and housekeeping facilities. But in the meantime, it	is  easy  to  use  and	it
       works.

IMPLEMENTATION

       Browser-History	spies your web browser and logs in ~/.browser-history/history-log.html all the URLs you went through.  You can then browse
       the log under Netscape or other browsers via the URL: file:~/.browser-history/history-log.html (replace the ~ by your home directory).	It
       tracks  automagically  all  already present browser windows, and all new ones created in the future. This program has no user interface. It
       just appends information to a log file in html format so you can browse it through a web browser. If more that one hour	has  passed  since
       last  entry,  it draws an horizontal lines, and adds H1 headers to delimit new days. Each week (Sunday mornings), it archives the week his-
       tory, compresses it by gzip (that you must have in your path), and starts a new history with links to the older ones. To make room you  can
       just remove the obsolete history files. You can search files for string XXX in shell via:
	      zgrep XXX ~/.browser-history/*

       This version (2.6) works with Netscape, Arena and Amaya.

       URLs can be excluded from logging by putting them, one per line in the file ~/.browser-history/history-log.exclude , then, if an URL begins
       with a line from this file, it is not logged.  In this file, empty lines or lines beginning by # are comments This file	is  read  once	at
       startup, and re-read when receiving the signal 1.  e.g:

		  # We exclude local files
		  file:
		  # Exclude search engines...
		  http://home.netscape.com
		  http://guide.infoseek.com

       When browser-history is run, it looks if another one is running, and by default it kills the previous one if it is an older version. Other-
       wise, it the new one is the same version number or older, it just aborts.

OPTIONS

       All options can be given by their first letter: you can specify either -verbose or -v, but you cannot group options, e.g. you must  say	-v
       -k , but not -vk

       -display display_name
	      Specifies X display, otherwise contents of $DISPLAY is used

       -verbose
	      outputs information on what it is doing. useful for debug.

       -Version
	      prints version number and exit.

       -logdir directory
	      which directory to store files into? defaults to ~/.browser-history

       -gzip gzip_filename
	      the complete path to the gzip compressor. Defaults to "gzip". E.g:
	      -gzip /usr/gnu/bin/gzip

       -seconds delay
	      if  two  entries	are made are more than	delay seconds apart, an horizontal rule will separate them, else just a simple line break.
	      Defaults to one hour (3600).

       -replace
	      If there is an already running browser-history on the display, aborts.  Default is to replace it only if the version is  older  than
	      ours.

       -noreplace
	      If  there  is an already running browser-history on the display, aborts.	Default is to replace it only if the version is older than
	      ours.

       -kill  If there is an already running browser-history on the display, kills it, then terminates immediately in all cases.

       -DontGrab
	      Never Grab the X Server, which might cause deadlocks while debugging, when browser-history or gdb tries  to  print  on  the  grabbed
	      xterm or emacs.

       -checkpoint
	      Cause  the  currently  running  instance of browser-history to save a list of all the URLs and their titles that are currently being
	      viewed by a browser-history compatible browser to the normal history file as a "checkpoint".

LOG FILE FORMAT

       A log file can have some decorative HTML to represent days, but each entry has the form: (on a single line since version 2.4)
		  separator
		  <b>name</b>
		  <a href="URL">URL</a>
		  YYYY/MM/DD-HH:MN:SS <small>windowid</small>
       where the following items are:
	      separator: either <hr> or <br>
	      name: the name of the document (window title)
	      URL: its URL
	      YYYY/MM/DD-HH:MN:SS: year, month number, day number, hour,
			      minutes, seconds. (2-digit numbers)
	      windowid: the X window ID of the browser window, in hexadecimal

       Note: Before version 2.4, the 4 sub-parts were separated by newlines, but since 2.4, they are only blank-separated to  ease  searching  for
       URL in log files via "grep".

       Note: Before version 2.5, the year was stored in 2 digits. Now it is stored in 4 (or more :-) digits, to fix this Y2K bug

HOME

       The latest version of browser-history can be found at:
	      http://koala.ilog.fr/ftp/pub/browser-history/
       and its WWW home page, with full technical documentation is at:
	      http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas/browser-history

AUTHOR

       Colas Nahaboo, http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas

COPYRIGHT

       browser-history	bears  the  same  license  as the X Window System: you can do everything with this code (selling it, modifying it), except
       suing me or using my name in your advertisements, or expecting any kind of support or guarantee.

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