html2text(t) html2text(t) 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 ] [ input-uri ... ] DESCRIPTION html2text reads HTML 3.2 documents from the input-uris, formats each into a stream of plain text characters (ISO 8859-1) and writes the result to standard output (or into output-file, if the -o command line option is used). Documents that are specified by an URI that begins with "http:" (RFC 1738) are retrieved with the Hypertext Trans- fer Protocol (RFC 1945). URIs that begin with "file:" and URIs that do not contain a colon specify local files. All other URIs are invalid. If no input-uris are specified on the command line, html2text reads from standard input. A dash as the input- uri 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 pro- vide good substitutes for the elements it cannot render. It also accepts syntactically incorrect input and attempts to interpret it "reasonably". The way in that 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(c) manual page. OPTIONS -help Print command line summary and exit. -version Print program version and exit. -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 origi- nal HTML code means. -check This option is for diagnostic purposes: The HTML document is only parsed and not processed other- wise. In this mode of operation, html2text will report on parse errors and scan errors, which it does not in other modes of operation. Notice 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-scanner While scanning the HTML document, html2text reports on each lexical token scanned. This option is for diagnostic purposes. -debug-parser While scanning the HTML document, html2text reports on the tokens being shifted, rules being applied, etc. This option is for diagnostic purposes. -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 html2tex- trc(c). 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. -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. -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. -nobs By default, html2text renders underlined letters with sequences like "underscore-backspace-charac- ter" and boldface letters like "character- backspace-character", which works fine when the output is piped into more(e), less(s), or similar. For other applications, or when redirecting the output into a file, it may be desirable not to ren- der character attributes with such backspace sequences, which can be specified with this command line option. 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), RFC 1945 (Hypertext Transfer Protocol - HTTP). NOTES html2text undergoes considerable effort to parse syntacti- cally incorrect input, but is not always as successful as other HTML processors. If you have the possibility to cor- rect the HTML source code, you may want to use the -unparse or -check options to find out what exactly html2text's problem is. RESTRICTIONS html2text provides only a basic implementation of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It requires the com- plete and exactly matching URI to be given as argument and will not follow redirections (HTTP 301/ 307). AUTHOR html2text was written up to version 1.2.2 by Arno Unkrig <arno@unkrig.de> for GMRS Software GmbH, Unterschleiheim. Current maintainer and primary download location is: Martin Bayer <mbayer@zedat.fu-berlin.de> http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~mbayer/tools/html2text.html SEE ALSO html2textrc(c), less(s), more(e) 2001-10-05 html2text(t)