html2text
reads HTML documents from the
input-urls,
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).
Documents that are specified by a URL (RFC 1738) that begins with
"http:" are retrieved with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(RFC 1945). URLs that begin with "file:" and URLs that do not
contain a colon specify local files. All other URLs are invalid.
If no
input-urls
are specified on the command line,
html2text
reads from standard input. A dash as the
input-url
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.
OPTIONS
-ascii
By default,
html2text
uses
ISO 8859-1
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".
-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,
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 accomplished with this command line option.
-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.
html2text
provides only a basic implementation of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP). It requires the complete and exactly matching URL to be given as
argument and will not follow redirections (HTTP 301/ 307). Proxy
servers are not supported.
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.
