xenial (1) html2text.1.gz

Provided by: html2text_1.3.2a-18_amd64 bug

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 ] [ -ascii | -utf8 ] [ -nometa  ]  [  input-file
       ...  ]

DESCRIPTION

       html2text  reads  HTML  documents  from the input-files, 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).

       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.

       Debian     version     of    html2text    also    can    do    input    and    output    recoding    (see
       /usr/share/doc/html2text/README.Debian for more info).  html2text  tries  to  fetch  encoding  from  HTML
       document.  If  encoding  is  not specified, you can use -ascii and -utf8 options.  Output is converted to
       user's locale charset (LC_CTYPE).

OPTIONS

       -nometa
              By default, Debian version of html2text use 'meta http-equiv' tag for input recoding. This  option
              cancels this behavior.

       -ascii By default, when -nometa is supplied, html2text uses UTF-8 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".

       -utf8  By  default,  when  -nometa  is supplied, html2text uses ISO 8859-1 for the input. Specifying this
              option, UTF-8 is used instead (both for input and output). This option implies -nobs.

       -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, original  html2text  renders  underlined  letters  with  sequences  like  "underscore-
              backspace-character"  and boldface letters like "character-backspace-character". Because of issues
              with UTF-8, Debian version of html2text doesn't produce backspaces, so  this  option  really  does
              nothing.

       -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.

CONFORMING TO

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

RESTRICTIONS

       Debian version of html2text have no http support. Use html2text through pipes with curl or wget  instead.
       See README.Debian for more information.

       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.

       Current maintainer and primary download location is:
       Martin Bayer <mail@mbayer.de>
       http://www.mbayer.de/html2text/files.shtml

       This man page was modified for Debian by Eugene V. Lyubimkin <jackyf.devel@gmail.com> ⟨⟩

SEE ALSO

       html2textrc(5), less(1), more(1)

                                                   2008-09-20                                       html2text(1)