Converting html to ascii?

ENRIQUESTEFANINI · 05-24-2009, 01:26 PM

Hi:
GNU, Slack 12.
Is there a gnu utility to transform html to plain ascii?
Any sgestion would be gladly received. Thanks for reading.

bathory · 05-24-2009, 02:17 PM

You can use lynx:

Code:

lynx -dump file.html > file.txt

knudfl · 05-24-2009, 03:25 PM

I prefer this script

http://comp.eonworks.com/scripts/
http://comp.eonworks.com/scripts/html2txt
http://comp.eonworks.com/scripts/html2txt.gz

Simpler command : 'html2txt <file.html>'
will save the text file as <file.txt>
.....

ENRIQUESTEFANINI · 05-24-2009, 05:32 PM

Thank you so much. I made 'slocate -i html2' and got no results, but I didn't make a complete installation. Your script ends up doing same thing as bathory's command but, not only is it very didactic but also more powerful. So, I'd
very much like to have a means of running it line by line (debugging). Is that possible? Regards.

E.S.

H_TeXMeX_H · 05-25-2009, 07:04 AM

Why not just use a text editor search and replace ... that does it line-by-line ... takes forever, but it's line-by-line.

AwesomeMachine · 05-25-2009, 09:13 AM

There's a gizillion java jar files for stripping formatting out of html, and leaving the text. Seriously, html is text, albeit not plain English prose. It's the web browser that puts the spin on html. And I agree, when I want stripped out html, I use search and replace in a text editor. That leaves the text part roughly the way it was.

ENRIQUESTEFANINI · 05-25-2009, 07:07 PM

Very helpful of you. Now, having solved the HTML conversion problem, I'm now interested in script writing itself. And taking knudfl's script as a starting point, I would like to study it. For that purpose, being able to debug it would be great fun.
There's many tutorials around there. Also, the shell man page, which is huge. And I'm a little lazy or rather impatient. So, beginning some point at the middle, is what I
aim at. And the question? How to debug a script. Oh, yes. I know little more than nothing about shell scripts.

Regards.

H_TeXMeX_H · 05-26-2009, 01:06 PM

Well there's the usually places to learn bash:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/

I learned mostly from 'Sams teach yourself shell programming in 24 hours', I don't really know too much about its status (free or otherwise), but I got it for free online.

senseproof · 05-26-2009, 01:09 PM

w3m -dump does the same like lynx but imho better.

ENRIQUESTEFANINI · 05-26-2009, 01:51 PM

Thanks a lot. E.S.

chrism01 · 05-26-2009, 08:14 PM

This is also very good: http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

ENRIQUESTEFANINI · 05-28-2009, 12:09 PM

Thanks, chrism01.