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-url ...  ]

DESCRIPTION

       html2text reads HTML documents from the input-urls, 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-urls  are	specified on the command line, html2text reads from standard input. A dash as the input-url 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.

       (open)SUSE  version  of html2text also can do input and output recoding.  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, (open)SUSE 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 ISO 8859-1 for the input. 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  swal-
	      lowed.

       -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, (open)SUSE 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 syn-
	      tactically correct. If html2text has problems parsing a syntactically incorrect HTML document, this option may help  you	to  under-
	      stand 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

       (open)SUSE version of html2text have no http support. Use html2text through pipes with curl or wget instead.

       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>

       This man page was modified for (open)SUSE by Klaus Singvogel <klaus@singvogel.net> <>

SEE ALSO

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

								    2008-09-20							      html2text(1)