man > html2text(1)

html2text(1)                           General Commands Manual                          html2text(1)

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 substi‐
       tutes 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 -rc‐
       file 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 format‐
       ting  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.  Out‐
       put 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. Speci‐
              fying this option, UTF-8 is used instead (both for input and output). This option  im‐
              plies -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 "under‐
              score-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 docu‐
              mented 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 AT unkrig.de> for GMRS Software
       GmbH, Unterschleissheim.

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

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

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

                                             2008-09-20                                 html2text(1)