html2text reads HTML 3.2 documents from the
input-uri s, 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 Transfer 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-uri sare 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 provide 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(5) 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 original HTML code means.
-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. 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
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.
-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-character"
and boldface letters like "character-backspace-character", which works fine
when the output is piped into
more(1) ,less(1) , or similar. For other applications, or when redirecting the output into a file,
it may be desirable not to render 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 syntactically incorrect input, but is
not always as successful as other HTML processors. If you have the possibility
to correct 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 complete 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, Unterschlei?heim.
Current maintainer and primary download location is:
Martin Bayer <mbayer@zedat.fu-berlin.de>
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~mbayer/tools/html2text.html
