html2text
Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 2008-09-20
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NAME
html2text - an advanced HTML-to-text converter
SYNOPSIS
html2text -help
html2text -version
html2text
[
-unparse
|
-check
] [
-debug-scanner
] [
-debug-parser
] [
-rcfile
path
] [
-style
(
compact
|
pretty
)
] [
-width
width
] [
-o
output-file
] [
-nobs
] [
-ascii
|
-utf8
] [
-nometa
] [
input-file ...
]
DESCRIPTION
html2text
reads HTML documents from the
input-files,
formats each of them into a stream of plain text characters,
and writes the result to standard output (or into
output-file,
if the
-o
command line option is used).
If no
input-files
are specified on the command line,
html2text
reads from standard input. A dash as the
input-file
is an alternate way to specify standard input.
html2text
understands all HTML 3.2 constructs, but can render only part of them due to
the limitations of the text output format. However, the program attempts to
provide good substitutes for the elements it cannot render.
html2text
parses HTML 4 input, too, but not always as successful as other HTML
processors. It also accepts syntactically incorrect input, and attempts to
interpret it "reasonably".
The way
html2text
formats the HTML documents is controlled by formatting properties read
from an RC file.
html2text
attempts to read
$HOME/.html2textrc
(or the file specified by the
-rcfile
command line option); if that file cannot be read,
html2text
attempts to read
/etc/html2textrc.
If no RC file can be read (or if the RC file does not override all
formatting properties), then "reasonable" defaults are assumed. The
RC file format is described in the
html2textrc(5)
manual page.
Debian version of html2text also can do input and output recoding (see
/usr/share/doc/html2text/README.Debian for more info).
html2text tries to fetch encoding from HTML document. If encoding is not
specified, you can use -ascii and -utf8 options.
Output is converted to user's locale charset (LC_CTYPE).
OPTIONS
- -nometa
-
By default, Debian version of html2text use 'meta http-equiv' tag for
input recoding. This option cancels this behavior.
- -ascii
-
By default, when -nometa is supplied,
html2text
uses
UTF-8
for the output. Specifying this option, plain
ASCII
is used instead. To find out how non-ASCII characters are rendered, refer to
the file "ascii.substitutes".
- -utf8
-
By default, when -nometa is supplied,
html2text
uses
ISO 8859-1
for the input. Specifying this option,
UTF-8
is used instead (both for input and output). This option implies -nobs.
- -check
-
This option is for diagnostic purposes: The HTML document is only parsed and
not processed otherwise. In this mode of operation,
html2text
will report on parse errors and scan errors, which it does not in other modes
of operation. Note that parse and scan errors are not fatal for
html2text,
but may cause mis-interpretation of the HTML code and/or portions of the
document being swallowed.
- -debug-parser
-
Let
html2text
report on the tokens being shifted, rules being applied, etc., while scanning
the HTML document. This option is for diagnostic purposes.
- -debug-scanner
-
Let
html2text
report on each lexical token scanned, while scanning the HTML document. This
option is for diagnostic purposes.
- -help
-
Print command line summary and exit.
- -nobs
-
By default, original
html2text
renders underlined letters with sequences like "underscore-backspace-character"
and boldface letters like "character-backspace-character". Because of issues with UTF-8, Debian version of html2text doesn't produce backspaces, so this option really does nothing.
- -o output-file
-
Write the output to
output-file
instead of standard output. A dash as the
output-file
is an alternate way to specify the standard output.
- -rcfile path
-
Attempt to read the file specified in
path
as RC file.
- -style ( compact | pretty )
-
Style
pretty
changes some of the default values of the formatting parameters documented in
html2textrc(5).
To find out which and how the formatting parameter defaults are changed, check
the file "pretty.style". If this option is omitted, style
compact
is assumed as default.
- -unparse
-
This option is for diagnostic purposes: Instead of formatting the parsed document,
generate HTML code, that is guaranteed to be syntactically correct. If
html2text
has problems parsing a syntactically incorrect HTML document, this option
may help you to understand what
html2text
thinks that the original HTML code means.
- -version
-
Print program version and exit.
- -width width
-
By default,
html2text
formats the HTML documents for a screen width of 79 characters. If redirecting
the output into a file, or if your terminal has a width other than 80
characters, or if you just want to get an idea how
html2text
deals with large tables and different terminal widths, you may want to specify
a different
width.
FILES
- /etc/html2textrc
-
System wide parser configuration file.
- $HOME/.html2textrc
-
Personal parser configuration file, overrides the system wide values.
CONFORMING TO
HTML 3.2
(HTML 3.2 Reference Specification - http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32),
RESTRICTIONS
Debian version of
html2text
have no http support. Use html2text through pipes with curl or wget
instead. See README.Debian for more information.
html2text
was written to convert HTML 3.2 documents. When using it with HTML 4 or
even XHTML 1 documents, some constructs present only in these HTML versions
might not be rendered.
AUTHOR
html2text
was written up to version 1.2.2 by Arno Unkrig <arno@unkrig.de>
for GMRS Software GmbH, Unterschleissheim.
Current maintainer and primary download location is:
Martin Bayer <mail@mbayer.de>
http://www.mbayer.de/html2text/files.shtml
This man page was modified for Debian by Eugene V. Lyubimkin <jackyf.devel@gmail.com>
SEE ALSO
html2textrc(5),
less(1),
more(1)
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- OPTIONS
-
- FILES
-
- CONFORMING TO
-
- RESTRICTIONS
-
- AUTHOR
-
- SEE ALSO
-
This document was created by
man2html,
using the manual pages.
Time: 13:37:51 GMT, March 28, 2024