html2pdbtxt(1)						      General Commands Manual						    html2pdbtxt(1)

NAME

       html2pdbtxt - HTML to Doc Text converter for Palm Pilots

SYNOPSIS

       html2pdbtxt [ -bchars ] [ -ttitle ] [ -uURL ] file.html [ file.txt ]
       html2pdbtxt -v

DESCRIPTION

       html2pdbtxt  converts HTML to text suitable for conversion to a Doc(4) file via txt2pdbdoc(1).  If no text filename is given, the generated
       text is sent to standard output.

   HTML Tags
       The following HTML tags (and corresponding ending tags) are recognized: ADDRESS, A NAME, BLOCKQUOTE, BR, CENTER, DIV, DL, DT, H1,  H2,  H3,
       H4,  H5,  H6,  OL,  OPTION, PRE, P, SELECT, SCRIPT, STYLE, TABLE, TITLE, UL.  In all cases, the most ``reasonable'' thing is done given the
       constraints of the Doc(4) format which is essentially plain text.  ALT attributes (typically found in IMG tags) have their  text  extracted
       and placed between brackets [like this].  All other HTML tags are stripped.

   Character Entities
       Both  HTML  character and numeric (decimal and hexadecimal) entity references are converted to their byte value according to the ISO 8859-1
       (Latin 1) character set so they appear properly on the Pilot.  For example, ``résumé'' becomes ``resume'' with accented  letter
       'e's.

   Document Title
       Unless  specified  with the -t option, the HTML file is scanned for <TITLE> ... </TITLE> tags and, if found, the title is extracted and put
       on line 1 of the generated file.

   Bookmarks
       Bookmarks are placed into the generated file wherever <A NAME="..."> tags are found in the HTML file.

OPTIONS

       -bchars	 Specify the character sequence that is to serve as the bookmark indicator.  The default is (*).  (See the CAVEATS.)

       -ttitle	 Specify the title of the document that is to appear on line 1 of the generated file overriding any title found  inside  the  HTML
		 file between <TITLE> ... </TITLE> tags.

       -uurl	 Specify the URL the HTML file supposedly came from and put it on the line after the title, if any, in the generated file.

       -v	 Print the version number to standard output and exit.

EXAMPLE

       To convert an HTML file to Doc:

	    html2pdbtxt -u http://www.wonderland.org/ alice.html alice.txt
	    txt2pdbdoc "`head -1 alice.txt`" alice.txt alice.pdb

CAVEATS

       1.  Some  Doc  readers  have a ``feature'' whereby, during the scan for bookmarks phase, they recognize the bookmark sequence of characters
	   anywhere in the text and not just at the beginning of a line.

       2.  Some Doc readers do not allow the bookmark sequence to contain the > character since they interpret that  as  the  sequence	delimiter,
	   e.g., <->> will be interpreted as the sequence being merely -.

       3.  Ordered  lists  (via the OL tag) are treated as unordered lists (like the UL tag) because it would greatly complicate the code since it
	   would have to be parsed rather than simple substitutions being performed.

SEE ALSO

       pdbtxt2html(1), txt2pdbdoc(1), doc(4), pdb(4)

       International Standards Organization.  ``ISO 8859-1: Information Processing -- 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets  --  Part	1:
       Latin alphabet No. 1.''	1987.

       World Wide Web Consortium.  ``Character entity references in HTML 4.0.''  HTML 4.0 Specification, http://www.w3.org/

AUTHOR

       Paul J. Lucas <pauljlucas@mac.com>

html2pdbtxt							 January 21, 2005						    html2pdbtxt(1)