NAME

       HTML::Clean - Cleans up HTML code for web browsers, not humans

SYNOPSIS

         use HTML::Clean;
         $h = new HTML::Clean($filename); # or..
         $h = new HTML::Clean($htmlcode);

         $h->compat();
         $h->strip();
         $data = $h->data();
         print $$data;

DESCRIPTION

       The HTML::Clean module encapsulates a number of common techniques for minimizing the size
       of HTML files.  You can typically save between 10% and 50% of the size of a HTML file
       using these methods.  It provides the following features:

       Remove unneeded whitespace (beginning of line, etc)
       Remove unneeded META elements.
       Remove HTML comments (except for styles, javascript and SSI)
       Replace tags with equivalent shorter tags (<strong> --> <b>)
       etc.

       The entire process is configurable, so you can pick and choose what you want to clean.

THE HTML::Clean CLASS

   $h = new HTML::Clean($dataorfile, [$level]);
       This creates a new HTML::Clean object.  A Prerequisite for all other functions in this
       module.

       The $dataorfile parameter supplies the input HTML, either a filename, or a reference to a
       scalar value holding the HTML, for example:

         $h = new HTML::Clean("/htdocs/index.html");
         $html = "<strong>Hello!</strong>";
         $h = new HTML::Clean(\$html);

       An optional 'level' parameter controls the level of optimization performed.  Levels range
       from 1 to 9.  Level 1 includes only simple fast optimizations.  Level 9 includes all
       optimizations.

   $h->initialize($dataorfile)
       This function allows you to reinitialize the HTML data used by the current object.  This
       is useful if you are processing many files.

       $dataorfile has the same usage as the new method.

       Return 0 for an error, 1 for success.

   $h->level([$level])
       Get/set the optimization level.  $level is a number from 1 to 9.

   $myref = $h->data()
       Returns the current HTML data as a scalar reference.

   strip(\%options);
       Removes excess space from HTML

       You can control the optimizations used by specifying them in the %options hash reference.

       The following options are recognized:

       boolean values (0 or 1 values)
                 whitespace    Remove excess whitespace
                 shortertags   <strong> -> <b>, etc..
                 blink         No blink tags.
                 contenttype   Remove default contenttype.
                 comments      Remove excess comments.
                 entities      &quot; -> ", etc.
                 dequote       remove quotes from tag parameters where possible.
                 defcolor      recode colors in shorter form. (#ffffff -> white, etc.)
                 javascript    remove excess spaces and newlines in javascript code.
                 htmldefaults  remove default values for some html tags
                 lowercasetags translate all HTML tags to lowercase

       parameterized values
                 meta        Takes a space separated list of meta tags to remove,
                             default "GENERATOR FORMATTER"

                 emptytags   Takes a space separated list of tags to remove when there is no
                             content between the start and end tag, like this: <b></b>.
                             The default is 'b i font center'

       Please note that if your HTML includes preformatted regions (this means, if it includes
       <pre>...</pre>, we do not suggest removing whitespace, as it will alter the rendered
       defaults.

       HTML::Clean will print out a warning if it finds a preformatted region and is requested to
       strip whitespace. In order to prevent this, specify that you don't want to strip
       whitespace - i.e.

         $h->strip( {whitespace => 0} );

   compat()
       This function improves the cross-platform compatibility of your HTML.  Currently checks
       for the following problems:

       Insuring all IMG tags have ALT elements.
       Use of Arial, Futura, or Verdana as a font face.
       Positioning the <TITLE> tag immediately after the <head> tag.

   defrontpage();
       This function converts pages created with Microsoft Frontpage to something a Unix server
       will understand a bit better.  This function currently does the following:

       Converts Frontpage 'hit counters' into a unix specific format.
       Removes some frontpage specific html comments

SEE ALSO

   Modules
       FrontPage::Web, FrontPage::File

   Web Sites
       Distribution Site - http://people.itu.int/~lindner/

AUTHORS

       Paul Lindner for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

COPYRIGHT

       The HTML::Strip module is Copyright (c) 1998,99 by the ITU, Geneva Switzerland.  All
       rights reserved.

       You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the
       Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file.