Ubuntu Manpage: html2text - an advanced HTML-to-text converter

name
synopsis
description
options
files
conforming to
restrictions
author
see also

NAME

       html2text - an advanced HTML-to-text converter

SYNOPSIS

       html2text -help
       html2text -version
       html2text  [ -check ] [ -debug-scanner ] [ -debug-parser ] [ -rcfile path ] [ -width width ] [ -o output-
       file ] [ -nobs ] [ -from_encoding encoding ] [ -to_encoding encoding ] [ -ascii ] [ -utf8 ] [  input-file
       ...  ]

DESCRIPTION

       html2text  reads HTML documents from the input-files, formats each of them into a stream of UTF-8 encoded
       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.

OPTIONS

-ascii By default, html2text uses UTF-8 for its output. Specifying this option, plain ASCII is used
instead. Non-ASCII characters are rendered via iconv's transliteration feature. As such this
option is an alias for -to_encoding ASCII//TRANSLIT.

-utf8 Assume both terminal and input stream are in UTF-8 mode. This is an alias for -from_encoding UTF-8
-to_encoding UTF-8.

-from_encoding encoding
Sets the encoding of the input file or stream to the given encoding. By default, html2text tries
to obtain the encoding from the input file and uses ISO-8859-1 encoding as fallback. You might
want to override the detection or fallback using this option. See iconv -l for a list of
supported encodings.

-to_encoding encoding
Use the given encoding while writing output, instead of UTF-8. The same set of encodings as for
the -from_encoding option can be used.

-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.

-links Tags all external links with a number between brackets ([num]), and produces a numbered list at
the end of the document with all link targets.

-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.

CONFORMING TO

       HTML 3.2 (HTML 3.2 Reference Specification - http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32).

RESTRICTIONS

       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.

       Up to version 1.3.2a, the maintainer was Martin Bayer <mbayer@zedat.fu-berlin.de>.

       This version of html2text comes from https://github.com/grobian/html2text.  Please use the GitHub page to
       file issues and improvements.