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.
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)