[buug] Lynx: Re: firefox/iceweasel: how to auto-gunzip files

[Michael Paoli]

Okay, probably not the answer you were looking for, but I typically use
Lynx for that.  It handles gzipped files (with names ending in .gz) just
fine on file: URLs.  Most of those documentation files aren't html with
(important/significant - if any) images in them anyway.


> From: "Ian Zimmerman" <itz at buug.org>
> Subject: [buug] firefox/iceweasel: how to auto-gunzip files
> Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 23:46:38 -0800

>
> Since back before the beginning of history, I have run apache on my
> desktop.  Originally there was some justification in that I had cgi
> scripts, for example to browse version control repos.  But now all that
> is on a personal server machine and /usr/lib/cgi-bin on my desktop is
> empty.
>
> However, I still find it necessary to keep apache for a single stupid
> reason: it is the only way I know to conveniently browse Debian's
> /usr/share/doc tree, where files (of any type) are gzipped depending on
> size (which means that in a single directory of HTML files, for example,
> some can be gzipped and some not).  When apache serves these files it
> sends a Content-Encoding header and firefox knows what to do, but if I
> browse them as a file:// URL it just asks a stupid question like:
>
> You have chose to open
>
> foo.html.gz
>
> which is a: gzip
>
> What should iceweasel do with this file?
>
> And of course there is no good answer, or the good answer would be like
> "gunzip and render it, dammit!"  How _can_ I force iceweasel to do  
> just that??
> Or do you other Debian users also run apache on every box?