NAME

vilistextum - html to ascii converter

SYNOPSIS

vilistextum [OPTIONS] [inputfile |-] [outputfile | -]

DESCRIPTION

vilistextum is a html to ascii converter specifically programmed to get the best out of incorrect html.

OPTIONS

inputfile,- resp. outputfile,-

replace inputfile with '-' for reading from standard input, likewise outputfile with '-' for writing to standard output.

-a, --no-alt

don't output anything for IMG tags even if they have an ALT attribute. Implies --no-image.

-c, --convert-tags

Some of the tags will be converted to special characters.

-e, --errorlevel NUMBER

Increase level of verbosity for error messages.

-i, --defimage STRING

IMG tags without alt attribute are output as [STRING]. Default: Image.

-l, --links

Numbers the links in the document and creates footnotes of each link at the end of the file. Similar to 'lynx -dump'. Relative URIs are not resolved and won't be printed.

-k, --links-inline

print the links directly after the html tag.

-m, --dont-convert-characters

The entities from windows1252 (€ - Ÿ and their proper entity names) will not be converted.

-n, --no-image

don't output [Image] for IMG tags that have no ALT attribute.

-p, --palm

This outputs text more suitable for reading on a PDA. Palm textreaders do their own word wrapping, so the width is set to infinity and the program doesn't right justify or center the text.

-r, --remove-empty-alt

if there is an empty ALT attribute in a IMG tag (eg <IMG href="..." alt="">), don't output '[]'.

-s, --shrink-lines [NUMBER]

If there are more than number empty lines, output only NUMBER. Default: 1.

-t, --no-title

Don't output title of the HTML document

-w, --width NUMBER

Maximum width of the output text. Default: 72.

-h, --help

print a list of the command line options.

-v, --version

output version information and exit

MULTIBYTE OPTIONS (Only available if compiled with multibyte support)

-u, --output-utf-8

instead of the character set of the html document, everything will be output as utf-8.

-x, --translit

use the //TRANSLIT feature of libiconv. Consult the iconv manual for details.

-y, --charset CHARSET

if the HTML document doesn't provide a character set in the meta tags, use CHARSET.

LIMITATIONS

The rendering of tables is not very good.
The handling of OL is incomplete. The program treats it as UL and more than 10 nested lists confuse it.
Text is never justified.

REPORTING BUGS

Please report bugs to bhaak@gmx.net.

AUTHOR

Vilistextum was written by Patric Mueller <bhaak@gmx.net>.
It may be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY for this program.

SEE ALSO

iconv(3), lynx(1), links(1), w3m(1)