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html2textrc(5) File Formats Manual html2textrc(5)
NAME
html2textrc - formatting properties file for html2text(1)
SYNOPSIS
Key [ = | : ] Value
DESCRIPTION
The html2textrc(5) file defines a set of formatting properties used by the html2text(1)
utility, that overrides the program's built-in formatting defaults. Each line of the
html2textrc(5) file is either a formatting property or a comment.
Lines with a leading "#" or "!" (i.e. the first non-space character is a "#" or a "!")
and blank lines (i.e. a line consisting only of white-space characters), are considered
comments and ignored. Everything else is literary interpreted by the parser as a format-
ting property, where a string-type property value may also be empty (unsets default
value). Both, the property key and the property value, may contain C-style escape se-
quences to mask meta characters.
A property definition line consists of:
(1) Optional leading space,
(2) the property key (a sequence of non-space characters except "=" and ":") as de-
scribed below,
(3) an optional space,
(4) an optional "=" or ":",
(5) optional space,
(6) the property value as described below.
Everything up to the next newline is interpreted literary as the value of the spec-
ified element. Literary meant leading white-space must be quoted with backslashes
(i.e. "\ "). Be aware not to include unwanted trailing white-space characters.
OPTIONS
The following is the list of valid formatting properties, together with their default val-
ues. If the -style command line option of html2text(1) is used, different default values
apply.
Curly braces indicate alternatives, e.g. {A B}C stands for AC or BC.
DOCUMENT.{vspace.{before after} indent.{left right}} = 0
Specifies how many blank lines are inserted before and after, and how many blank
columns are inserted to the left and to the right of the formatted document. (Nu-
meric.)
BODY.{vspace.{before after} indent.{left right}} = 0
Same for the document body. (Since the document body is currently the only document
part that is rendered, it is virtually the same whether you specify DOCUMENT or
BODY). (Numeric.)
{OL UL DIR MENU DL}.vspace.{before between after} = 0
Specifies how many blank lines are inserted before a list, between the individual
list items, and after the list. (Numeric.)
{OL UL DIR MENU}.indents = 6
Specifies by how deep list items are indented. If an item bullet would not fit into
the space created by the indentation, then the indentation is automatically in-
creased such that the bullet fits in (relevant for relatively wide bullets, e.g.
roman numbers). If N blank-separated integers are specified instead of one, then
the first N-1 integers specify indentation for the first N-1 list nesting levels,
while the last integer specifies the indentation for nesting levels N and higher.
(Numeric.)
{UL DIR}.default_types = DISC CIRCLE SQUARE
Specifies the default list type (i.e. the bullet style), if the HTML list tag does
not specify an explicit type. Legal values are NO_BULLET, DISC, SQUARE, CIRCLE,
CUSTOM1, CUSTOM2 and CUSTOM3. If more than one value is specified, then the values
apply for the respective list nesting levels (see indents). (Option.)
MENU.default_types = NO_BULLET
Same for <MENU>, but here the default is NO_BULLET. (Option.)
LI.{disc square circle custom1 custom2 custom3}_bullet = {* # o + - ~}
Specifies the strings used as list item bullets. (String.)
{DT DD}.{vspace.{before after} indent.{left right}} = 0
Specifies how many blank lines are inserted before and after, and how many blank
columns are inserted to the left and to the right of each <DT> or <DD> element.
(Numeric.)
HR.marker = =
Specifies the character to use for horizontal rules. (String.)
HR.{vspace.{before after} indent.{left right}} = 0
Specifies how many blank lines are inserted before and after, and how many blank
columns are inserted to the left and to the right of the horizontal rule. (Nu-
meric.)
{H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6}.prefix = {****** ***** **** *** ** *}
Specifies how headings are decorated with a prefix. (The default values have a
trailing blank, e.g. "****** ".) (String.)
{H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6}.suffix = {****** ***** **** *** ** *}
Specifies how headings are decorated with a suffix. (The default values have a
leading blank, e.g. "\ ******".) (String.)
{H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6}.vspace.{before after} = 0
Specifies how many blank lines are inserted before and after headings. (Numeric.)
{PRE P}.{vspace.{before after} indent.{left right}} = 0
Specifies how many blank lines are inserted before and after, and how many blank
columns are inserted to the left and to the right of these items. (Numeric.)
{BLOCKQUOTE ADDRESS}.{vspace.{before after} indent.{left right}} = {0 0 5 5}
Specifies how many blank lines are inserted before and after, and how many blank
columns are inserted to the left and to the right of these items. (Numeric.)
TABLE.vspace.{before after} = 0
Specifies how many blank lines are inserted before and after tables. (Numeric.)
{H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6}.attributes = BOLD
Specifies the cell attributes for headings. The value is a sequence of NONE, BOLD,
UNDERLINE and STRIKETHROUGH. (Option.)
{TT I BIG SMALL SUB SUP DFN CODE SAMP KBD CITE}.attributes = NONE
Specifies the cell attributes for these text items. Legal values are: NONE, BOLD,
UNDERLINE or STRIKETHROUGH. (Option.)
U.attributes = UNDERLINE
Same for <U> elements, but with a different default value. (Option.)
{B EM STRONG}.attributes = BOLD
Same for these elements, but with a different default value. (Option.)
STRIKE.attributes = STRIKETHROUGH
Same for <STRIKE> elements, but with a different default value. (Option.)
A.attributes.{internal_link external_link} = UNDERLINE
Specifies the cell attributes for links. A link is an <A> element that has an
"HREF" attribute. An internal link is a link whose "HREF" attribute starts with a
hash character (e.g. "<A href="#42">"). Legal values are again NONE, BOLD, UNDER-
LINE and STRIKETHROUGH. (Option.)
IMG.replace.{all noalt} = unset
Specifies the string used to replace all <IMG> elements, or those without an "ALT"
attribute set. (String.)
IMG.alt.{prefix suffix} = {[ ]}
Specifies how the values (if any) of IMG elements' "ALT" attributes are marked.
(String.)
AUTHOR
Current maintainer and primary download location for html2text is:
Martin Bayer <mbayer AT zedat.de>
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~mbayer/tools/ <>
SEE ALSO
html2text(1)
2001-06-11 html2textrc(5)
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On Apache
Under GNU General Public License
2025-11-21 16:14 @216.73.216.57 CrawledBy Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)